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And that is my point (and I'm afraid gherkin's too ). The problem is not with the principle--it's with the application.

Just so you know I'm not making this up:

CCC wrote:2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

CCC wrote: - the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain

This implies that a military response is warranted by the attacked nation, even or especially if success seems out of reach. That's my take, anyway.

Any idea who might have composed this particular item in the CCC?

Riverboat wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:04 am

CCC wrote: - the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain

This implies that a military response is warranted by the attacked nation, even or especially if success seems out of reach. That's my take, anyway.

Consider the Reconquesta of Spain. The Moors over ran Spain in 711 AD, and Christians fought the "Little War" (Guerreta or guerilla warfare) until the Moors were expelled in 1492. How could a Christain guerilla fighter in, say 1,000 AD know that victory was coming in 500 years?

Does that make the Reconquesta illegitimate? Should Spain surrender herself to Morocco?

Doom wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 3:50 pm This principle literally makes no sense when it is a defensive war. By this principle, the Poles had a moral obligation to surrender to the Nazis without even attempting to resist and the Chinese had no moral right to resist the aggression of Japan.

I don't think there's a moral obligation to surrender in a defensive war but there might be one to stop active resistance. But I'm also not sure what you mean by "makes no sense".

Riverboat wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:04 am

CCC wrote: - the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain

This implies that a military response is warranted by the attacked nation, even or especially if success seems out of reach. That's my take, anyway.

Any idea who might have composed this particular item in the CCC?

You have to fulfill all the conditions, not just one of them.

I don't know who wrote that, but it's not a novel teaching.

Doom wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 3:50 pm This principle literally makes no sense when it is a defensive war. By this principle, the Poles had a moral obligation to surrender to the Nazis without even attempting to resist and the Chinese had no moral right to resist the aggression of Japan.

As above, the factual questions--along with deeper epistemic questions--are relevant to the application of the principle. For example, when the Germans invaded Poland, (a) the Poles expected help from their "allies" the English and French, (b) they did not immediately look for an additional invation on their eastern fronteir, and (c) they had no reason to expect the German assault to be quite as fully competent as in fact it was, based on what I understand to have been a brand new style of motorized warfare. When the Poles began their defense against Germany, did they have a reasonable expectation of success? It certainly seems plausible. That raises a question of when they "should" have surrendered, according to just war theory, but that's a different matter.

I don't know enough about the Japanese attacks on China to offer comparable replies.

Not in response to Doom, but to an earlier question, the American war was also very complicated in fact. Many people buy the line that it was fought due to resistance to taxation without representation, in which case it would have been a manifestly unjust war on the part of the colonists. A serious analysis of the events of April 19, 1775 will show that when the shooting began, the colonists were clearly justified in defending themselves; and by bottling up the British in Boston, including their valiant attempt to prevent the British breakout at Bunker Hill, and the eventual procurement of cannon from Ticonderoga, leading to the departure of the Boston garrison, the colonists simply followed through on the logical consequences of that day in April. Once the massive British invasion landed in New York on July 4, 1776, there was no question, I think, of the justice of the colonial cause.

That leaves aside the question of the possibility of success, which was discussed earlier. For a variety of reasons, the colonists did indeed have some reasonable expectation of success, depending in part on their hopes for French help. It wasn't quite the David vs Goliath kind of situation that we might naturally think of it as being.

Vern Humphrey wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 5:30 pm What goes up must come down is a principle. How does that apply to Electric Vehicles?

I dunno. Get yourself a trebuchet and you can tell me.

If I were a troll, I would ask gherkin about the War of Northern Aggression.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2023 3:37 pm If I were a troll, I would ask gherkin about the War of Northern Aggression.

I appreciate the gesture, but it's OK if you want to refer to Lincoln's war of aggression as "the war between the states."

I am also grateful that so far nobody has mentioned 'fronteir'.

Fronteir (sp?)

Initially I thought that the Ukrainians had no chance of winning. I no longer think that. Either they are far better shape than I originally thought they were, or the Russians are in far worse shape than I previously thought.

'Course the Ukrainians were really foolish to give up their nuclear weapons.

It depends on what you mean by "winning". They won't win back all the territory that Russia has captured and occupied.

peregrinator wrote: ↑Sat Sep 16, 2023 5:29 pm It depends on what you mean by "winning". They won't win back all the territory that Russia has captured and occupied.

I'm inclined to think they have a pretty good chance. As I said, I'd give 50-50 odds on them taking back the Crimea as well.