Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

POPE JOHN PAUL II AND THE WAR IN IRAQ 329political ends.” But what are these ends? The restoration of anarrowly conceived contractual justice? The protection and promotionof the “American experiment”? Whose ends are they andwho is to judge their moral worthiness? These questions are notanswered by Weigel.Not much help is to be found from the much cited phrasefrom Clausewitz, quoted here by Weigel, that war is an extensionof politics by other means. 42 There is much dispute as to whatprecisely he meant; his concern seems to have been to describethe behaviour of armies at war in order to determine what hasworked and what has not. 43 He does not argue that they shouldbe subject to ethical rules. Indeed, if one attempted to introduceextraneous ethical rules, this would seem to distort Clausewitz’swhole scheme. In fact, questions of morality simply do not enterinto his thinking. When he does mention “moral forces” what hemeans is what we call “morale,” as in the statement “the moraleof the soldiers was high.” 44The purely formal notion of politics, together with the equallyformal notion of “justice, in Weigel’s presentation, makes itpossible to insert, by way of content, the politics of a particularnation into the concept of “political reason” and the politicalends of that nation into “morally worthy political ends.” ThePope’s position, on the other hand, is formulated within a universalframework of a vision of solidarity in peace. Within thisvision, on the level of politics, moral reason requires first of allthat all should seek peace through collaboration in the realizationof that common project aimed at human unity in solidarity.In keeping with this, conflicts should be resolved by recourse toa universal authority, not by the claims of a particular state, noteven where that state claims that its politics are governed by (itsown, particular) conception of justice.Weigel’s account, therefore, seems to belong to that, unfor-42Carl VON CLAUSWITZ, Vom Krieg, (Bonn: Fred. Dümmlers Verlag, 1980)990 (Book 8, chap. 6, B). Morality is clearly not an issue.43See, Carl VON CLAUSEWITZ, Vom Krieg (Bonn: Fred. Dümmlers Verlag,1980) 192 (Book 1, Ch. 1, no. 3).44His phrase is “Die moralischen Hauptpotenzen.” Clausewitz, VomKrieg, 359 (Book 3, chap. 4).