Time for a really good war?

Time for a Remedial Global Nuclear War? (Part #6)

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Framing war as "good" The traditional phrase "having a good war" may be understood as behaving in a way that is successful and admired during a war, or during a difficult time period that can be seen as similar to a war. This may be framed as having made the most of the opportunities presented during wartime. It is curiously acknowledged in the rituals by which medals are accorded and disported by military personnel and their leaders (Wampum and its modern variants, 2014).

There is a strange and persistent myth of a "good war". World War II may be framed and challenged from that perspective:

• Ken Gewertz, introduces his review of that understanding by the statement: World War II has been called â-"e;The Good War,â-" often in contrast to later conflicts whose moral justification is seen as more ambivalent (A new look at the 'Good War', The Harvard Gazette, 22 March  2007).
• For Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Our year of remembrance has exaggerated the tragic futility of the first world war and preserved the dangerous idea that the second was noble and heroic (The Myth of the Good War, The Guardian, 9 December 2014).
• For Mark Weber: This global clash -- with the United States and the other "Allies" on one side, and Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and the other "Axis" countries on the other -- is routinely portrayed in the US as the "good war," a morally clear-cut conflict between Good and Evil. (The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two, Institute for Historical Review, May 2008)
• For Tim Kelly: ... that description comes from the war's popular portrayal as a necessary Manichean struggle between the good Allied powers and the evil Axis powers. And indeed, the regimes the Allied forces ultimately vanquished were truly evil (Was the â-"e;Good Warâ-" Really Good? The Future of Freedom Foundation, 5 December 2012)

For Mohammad Rafi Saad:

The perception that WWII was nobler and finer than WWI is highly dubious, since such concept sanitizes so much, from the massacre of civilians by Allied bombings to the gang rape of millions of women by the Red Army at the time of victory. The sanctification of the later war has had more dangerous consequences than anathematizing the former. Worse than that is the glorification of the WWII and the assumption that the west is alone qualified and virtuous in distinguishing the political right from wrong. It is also not right to have the belief that our apparent virtuous ends must justify any means we apply, lighting up bomber flare paths in Dresden, Tripoli, Baghdad, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The 'Good War' Myth of the Second World War, War History Online, 23 February 2015 ,

More recently the relevance of this framing has been explored with respect to Iraq and its aftermath, given that it was justified as "humanitarian intervention":

• Jonathan Masters: Was the Iraq War Worth It? (Council on Foreign Relations, 15 December 2011)
• Ben Doherty: How the 'good war' went bad (The Guardian, 2 June 2021)
• Ben Voth: Iraq: The Good War (American Thinker, 2 September 2010)
• Was the Iraq War good or bad, why and why not? (Reddit, 2021)

For Jacob G. Hornberger:

Some interventionists came to refer to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 as the "good war," implying that the 2002 invasion of Iraq was the bad war. Even today, interventionists continue to justify their invasion of Afghanistan, which, like Iraq, killed countless people and ended up destroying the entire country (Colin Powell, Iraq and the "Good War", Counter Punch, 22 October 2021)

The myth of any goodness to war is simply presented by Luke Andreski, arguing: There is no such thing as a good war, because nothing which incorporates immoral killing is good. (10 Reasons Why War Is Wrong, Critical  Mass, 1 March 2022).

Framed by such controversial considerations, the focus may be placed on why Why War Is Good  -- the title of Robert D. Kaplan's review of the extensive study by Ian Morris (War! What Is It Good For? The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots, 2015). As noted by Kaplan:

Morris, both an archaeologist and a historian, surveys thousands of years of history and comes away with the seemingly startling thesis that human progress has been helped, rather than hindered, by war. As he writes, "by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have reduced the risk that their members will die violently". (Real Clear World, 2 October 2014)

Opponents as essentially "evil": The deceptive ease with which those opposed and vanquished in any "good war" are necessarily to be understood as "evil" is called into question by the remarkable tendency of competing countries, political parties, and religions to explicitly frame each other as unquestionably "evil" -- and especially their leadership (Existence of evil as authoritatively claimed to be an overriding strategic concern, 2016). Ironically the framing tends to be reciprocated (Framing by others of claimants of evil as evil, 2016). Which leaders have not been held to be "evil" by opponents. The Australian Leader of the Opposition has now celebrated the UN resolution condemning Russia in such terms (Zelensky rallies world to keep up fight against evil, The Australian, 25 February 2023).

"Good versus Evil": Curiously the nature of a "good war" follows from continuing reference to the traditional archetypal framing of the war "between Good and Evil" -- one long imagined and anticipated by religions and theology in the light of their scriptures (J. S. Exell, The Final Battle Between Good and Evil, BibleHub). Such a battle necessarily frames the engagement as a "Holy War" -- as understood by the religions supporting either side. Thus the war against terrorism is readily held to be a "holy war" -- although this reference may be similarly applied to socialism, communism, atheism and capitalism, for example, as to other "virtual wars (Review of the Range of Virtual Wars, 2005).

From that perspective the engagement of the primarily Christian countries of NATO in Iraq was famously framed as a "crusade" by George Bush in instigating it (Peter Ford, Europe cringes at Bush 'crusade' against terrorists, The Christian Science Monitor, 19 September  2001; Peter Waldman and Hugh Pope, 'Crusade' Reference Reinforces Fears War on Terrorism Is Against Muslims, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2001)

Such considerations imply the controversial possibility that the time may have come for a "really good war" -- a war to end all wars? One indication is offered by Brian Molinari (10 Reasons Why A Nuclear War Could Be Good For Everyone, Listverse, 22 August 2018).

Redemptive nuclear war? Redemptive violence is defined as the belief that violence is a useful mechanism for control and order (Francisco Wills, The Myth of Redemptive Violence in Prison, Atlantic Journal of Communication, 22, 2014, 1) or alternately as using violence to rid and save the world from evil (Maggie Campbell, et al, Fighting the Good Fight: the relationship between belief in evil and support for violent policies, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 2014,1). The French Revolution involved violence that was depicted as redemptive by revolutionaries, while decolonization theorist Frantz Fanon was an advocate of redemptive violence (Peter Hallward, Fanon and Political Will, Cosmos and History, 7, 2011, 1). Pacifism rejects the idea that violence can be redemptive.

Wars, including World War I and II, have been presented as redemptive wars -- although variously challenged (Robert L. Ivie, Fighting Terror by Right of Redemption and Reconciliation, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 10, 2007, 2). There is little effort to explore the possibility that nuclear war might itself be understood as redemptive. The assumption that nuclear power has a redeeming role has however been appropriately noted by Columba Peoples (Redemption and Nutopia: the scope of nuclear critique in international studies, Millennium, 44, 2016, 2):

... political programmes of international nuclear order are crucially underpinned by what is termed here as 'nutopianism': a mode of understanding nuclear power that is imbued with a spirit of technological optimism in relation to 'peaceful' nuclear power, but simultaneously qualified by an awareness of the destructive uses and catastrophic potentialities of nuclear weapons. Second, that such nutopianism is in turn predicated on the 'saving power' of 'the atom': the assumption that nuclear power has redeeming features crucial to human progress and economic prosperity, the development of which should be facilitated within the structures of international order.

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