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In the last week, the Israeli Army invaded Lebanon. As I understand it, their objective was to punish Hezbollah
for capturing two Israeli soldiers on July 12; but they have done a considerable amount of damage to the civilian population
of Lebanon in the process. Needless to say, Israel has received quite a lot of criticism from the rest of the world
for this level of retaliation. The Lebanon Daily Star reports the story here. One day after the Israeli soldiers were captured, Amnesty International issued a strongly worded statement calling for Israel to cease and desist immediately from its retaliatory operations. That same day, Pravda also published
an editorial in its on-line edition condemning Israel's actions. In an interview to mark Bastille Day, French President Jacques
Chirac mused, "One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Lebanon, its equipment, its roads, its communication."
A resolution was introduced before the United Nations Security Council condemning Israel's actions, but the United States
vetoed it.
Of course, a large part of the problem is that Hezbollah can move through Lebanon at will in the first place, and can
use it as a base from which to launch attacks into Israel. For many obvious reasons -- that they are massively outnumbered
by their Arab neighbors and that they have therefore been teetering on the brink of annihilation for the last 60
years both rank high on this list -- this kind of safe-haven for terrorists is something Israel has never taken
lightly. Still, there is something about Israel's blatant disregard for Lebanon's borders, to say nothing of the callous
acceptance of civilian casualties, that does not sit comfortably on the stomach.
Why do we feel this way? If we can see a kind of logic behind Israel's strategy of massive retaliation, why does
it still make us uncomfortable?
The answer has a lot to do with how we understand the word "civilian" -- and that, in turn, depends on the specific expectations
that have been set in our minds by the last half century of European history.
The concept of a "civilian" -- as opposed to a soldier -- makes sense only when there is some clear criterion for distinguishing
the one from the other. Now, we in the West have gotten used to this distinction because it has been a staple of our
political life since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and that was a very long time ago.
As long as we are dealing with an international situation where the only actors are nation-states, this distinction
applies. A nation-state is a political organization with sovereign control over a defined territory and some kind of
well-defined -- and more or less unitary -- internal government. By "unitary" I don't rule out a government whose powers
are separated into different branches (as in the American model); all I mean is a government where there is no ambiguity
about who is in charge (unlike the case where, e.g., the King of France is at war with the Duke of Burgundy, who is nominally
his vassal).
Why am I backing up this far? Because one of the organs of the government of a nation-state is its army.
And part of the structure of a nation-state is that the army is a well-defined and self-contained unit. Therefore, as
long as we are dealing with nation-states, the only armed fighting actors on the international scene are soldiers. We
can tell soldiers from the rest because they wear uniforms and follow orders and execute national policy and so on, and all
others are by definition "civilians".
As an aside, I should add that I'm not making this stuff up. The theoretical underpinnings were developed at the
beginning of the Early Modern Period by Jean Bodin and Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf; they were made into international law (as I mentioned) by the Treaty of Westphalia. And they have undergirded every
piece of international law or thought since then ... pretty much until contemporary times.
The punchline, though, is that in the absence of a settled system of nation-states, the whole
thing breaks down. If there is no organized state apparatus in sovereign control of its territory, then there is no
guarantee that the only armed fighters in the area will be soldiers. Indeed, the whole concept of "soldier" disappears
because there is no state for those "soldiers" to report to. There is no state whose policy they are carrying out.
And when the concept of "soldier" disappears, so does the concept of "civilian".
When a state cannot control its own territory, when it is overrun by terrorists or used as a safe haven by pirates, then
there are no longer "soldiers" and "civilians". At that point, the only distinction is between the armed
and the unarmed. And it can be hard to tell them apart from a distance.
That this situation can result in significant carnage among the unarmed, I do not deny. That it is sad to see it
happen, and that it tears at the heartstrings, I freely grant. But as long as there are terrorists and pirates roaming
freely in some territory which is not effectively controlled by a sovereign state, it is unavoidable. This would suggest
-- at least at a theoretical level -- that the only way to stop this carnage in Lebanon is to create a functioning state there;
either (by some miracle) from within, or else by one of its stronger neighbors subjugating it permanently outright.
Since I don't hold out much hope for a miracle in this context, that leaves Lebanon with the choices of subjugation or bloody
anarchy, and I can't say that either one looks really good to me. But by the same token any option that looks decent
and humane and civilized -- such as that all these armed thugs will suddenly stop killing each other and clasp arms in
brotherly solidarity -- are also pure fantasy. And I can't bring myself to fault the Israelis (among others) for
having no patience with fantasy right now.
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