Intentions, Suicide, and Utility

by Adam Johnson

In his essay "The ‘Just War’ and The Right of Self-Defense," Frederick Struckmeyer addresses the morality of defensive wars. In this discussion, he brings up and rejects the pacifist stance of Donald Wells who holds the premise that all wars are equally immoral. Struckmeyer’s grounds for dismissing this stance center on the complaint that Wells is offering no real support for the premise that all wars are equally immoral, but instead begging the question and simply pointing out that wars involve killing and destruction – generally on a large scale. Amusingly, my primary complaint with Struckmeyer is rather similar – I find that he simply assumes all wars in self-defense are equally moral, as seen on page five “We have a general right, if not our duty, to defend ourselves as a nation.” My purpose thusly is to reject on utilitarian grounds the claim that all wars of self-defense are moral.

The element of intended consequences must first be examined before addressing the bulk of Struckmeyer’s stance. On page three he states “It is true, especially in the case of nuclear projectiles, that we can only decide whether to use certain kinds of weapons, and not what the human cost – even approximately – will be.” I find this claim to be utter rubbish logically and a moral cop out as well. Essentially what the premise boils down to is ‘we can only decide causes, not effects.” While it is true that one does not in strictest technical sense decide the effects of something, to claim that one has NO control on the effects is absurd. Even with an elementary understanding of the cause-effect relationship is it rather obvious that if you get to pick the causes you also acquire direct influence over the effects. Even if you do not want or like some of the effects of your cause, the fact that your action directly resulted in the effects logically makes you responsible for them. Your primary goal in dropping a nuclear bomb on a city may be to destroy military industrial complexes rather than killing a bunch of civilians and increasing cancer rates for decades, but the results are linked together and there is no way to separate them – choosing to drop the bomb means choosing to destroy the complexes AND killing the civilians. To deny responsibility for effects outside the primary purpose of a cause willingly and intentionally acted upon is a demonstration of ignorance and a wanton refusal of morality at all.

The effects of this premise begin to play out when Struckmeyer gives us a hypothetical scenario on the individual level in order to better elucidate his stance on defensive wars: the situation of a one on one confrontation in which all other options have been exhausted resulting in a binary conflict - kill or be killed. The assumption is of course that we do in fact have the right to kill the other person in this situation, as the other person has seemingly given up his right to not be killed when he attempted to violate the other person’s right to not be killed. However, as we noted in class while discussing pacifism, this is merely a necessary condition for killing and NOT a sufficient condition. Under Struckmeyer’s above-mentioned stance on intentions and effects, this condition does indeed shift from necessary to sufficient as it is a closed system – if the goal is to kill your attacker, and only your goals are under moral scrutiny then nothing else needs to be considered for when you slay your attacker the conflict ends. However, there are other effects that result from the action of killing your attacker. Suppose you know your attacker is the matron of 25 small children and does an excellent job with them (her only error is trying to kill you) and with her dead they too will surely die. Though it is not your primary intention to kill 25 small children when you kill your attacker, you are still responsible for their deaths as it results directly from your actions. Under utilitarian terms, it seems to be the case that the moral obligation in this situation is to let yourself be killed, as acting in self-defense will result in less utility by a large margin.

Obviously, the next step is to extrapolate this conclusion from the individual level to that of wars between states. However, the complexity of the situation increases with the scale. The root of the problem in scaling up is found on page five when Struckmeyer states “While I clearly have the prerogative of taking my own life, or of allowing someone else to take it, I do not have the prerogative where the lives of others are concerned. I cannot compel another man to sacrifice himself…” This makes it rather tricky for a state to have a moral obligation to suicide over self-defense in any situation. If we hold to the premise that an individual’s right to not be killed is only forfeit when they violate or attempt to violate some one else’s right to not be killed (necessary condition – not sufficient), then it is impossible for the state to hold a policy of suicide as it is doubtful that the entire populace has acted in such a way as to forfeit the right to not be killed. Yet, in the case of intelligence gathering (non violent) covert ops, if the agent is exposed there is a certain expectation for him to kill himself even though he has not violated or attempted to violate another’s right to not be killed. Thus the claim can be made that this premise isn’t truly a necessary condition, it is just a really nice to have around condition.

Ignoring the muckiness of that premise for a moment, I’ll argue that there are several situations in context of utilitarianism that individual sacrifice is a moral obligation even if the situation is not a result of the individual’s action. Should an armed grenade land in camp, the individual has a moral imperative to jump on the grenade and kill himself to save his comrades. If a plane is hijacked, it is expected that the passengers intentionally crash the plane rather than allow it to be flown into landmark buildings. Finally, there is of course the classic example of the toddler drowning in a muddy pond and a stranger ruining his new clothes in order to rescue the toddler from certain death. Although this last example obviously does not entail full suicide, it works perfectly well enough to establish the fundamental principles and patterns at work. Something of lesser moral weight is sacrificed so something of greater moral weight can avoid destruction. In all of these situations the loss of the sacrificed is regrettable indeed, however, it is the best choice those contexts.

So then, can we not now apply the above principles to wars between states? It seems to follow it as least possible to have an immoral defensive war. The prime objective may be to defend and survive, but if it results in horrific numbers of civilian loses on both sides you are still morally implicated those deaths. Though it is a somewhat troubling thought, I have argued for and shown situations where it is a moral obligation to commit suicide. Likewise, I have worked around the issue of compelling another to suicide by illustrating certain cases were it is acceptable. Thusly, if fighting a defensive war results in greater loss, destruction, and erosion of quality of life, both long term and short term, than nonresistance resulting in suicide leads to, the apparent moral obligation under utilitarianism is to indeed not wage the war and wait for death should it come. For clarity’s sake, I am not suggesting that all defensive wars are immoral. Indeed, I imagine the overwhelming majority of defensive wars are in fact moral. However, I am arguing that being on the side of defense in war alone is NOT a sufficient condition for being moral right in waging the war, but rather simply a necessary condition instead.