PEACE. — According to the well-known definition of St. Augustine, p. consists in the tranquility of order, tranquillitas ordinis (De civ. Dei, 19, 13), and since order presupposes a rational criterion by which objects or persons are harmoniously arranged, p. likewise postulates certain social principles from which can arise the peaceful cooperation of individuals within the societies in which their lives unfold, and of nations within the broader community that unites them. Since the matter to be ordered consists of rational beings, these principles cannot, as is self-evident, be physical, mechanical, or biological (nor can economic equilibrium, the balance of political interests, or force be invoked as principles); they must necessarily belong to the moral and juridical order, which alone is capable of exerting its influence upon the spiritual faculties of man.
Social p. may be internal or external. It is internal when, within one and the same society, family, nation, or State, all members live together in harmony of purpose and, through common cooperation, assist one another in achieving the collective welfare, in observance of the natural and positive norms of civil coexistence. Opposed to it are the continual violation of laws, sedition, revolt, and internal conflicts, which are commonly the causes of the decline of peoples. It is external when nations, observing the rules of justice that normatively govern and guide their relations, cooperate for the collective welfare through cultural and economic exchanges and mutual understanding. Opposed to this are political settlements, disputes arising from conflicting interests, misunderstandings, national hatreds, and warlike hostilities.
P. is the normal condition of the life of individuals and peoples, who, by virtue of the deepest law of nature, which moves them to seek their welfare, tend toward tranquility in order. All theories must therefore be rejected as contrary to the demands of human nature which, inspired by a certain social and political Darwinism, maintain that the normal condition of men and peoples is the struggle for existence, the triumph of the stronger over the weaker, a universal law of life that would move individuals and States in search of the inimicus. Consequently, p. would be nothing more than a period of rest between one conflict and another, during which forces would be gathered for a new assault. This is the law of the jungle applied to man, against which the instinct of solidarity rises, inclining him to see in his fellow man a companion to love and assist. War itself, as St. Augustine taught, has p. as its ultimate purpose, through the punishment of the wicked and the restoration of right.
Leaving aside its facile apologetics, it is appropriate to begin with a question whose solution is necessary for completing Catholic doctrine concerning just war. Peace stipulations put an end to the state of belligerence between nations and mark the beginning of ordinary relations, in which the common law once again comes into force. In this regard, it is important to determine the conditions of their morality and validity.
Scholars of international law agree in maintaining the juridical validity of peace stipulations, considering them bilateral legal transactions producing stable relations, notwithstanding the presence of external coercion, which in domestic law is usually regarded as sufficient cause for vitiating consent. Nevertheless, in determining the grounds on which the asserted juridical value of peace stipulations rests, they divide into three currents. The first attributes to them unconditional validity, relying on the observation that war in the international order is always a lawful procedure; from this it concludes that its resolving phase, through peace stipulations, is likewise always and unconditionally a valid legal transaction in every respect. The second excludes their contractual character, conceiving them as a law dictated by the victor to the vanquished, and bases their unconditional validity on the influence of victorious force, which would transform a situation of fact into a situation of law. The third admits only conditional validity, determined both by the causes that led to the outbreak of hostilities and by the content of the stipulations themselves.
The point of departure for an objective evaluation of peace stipulations is the distinction between just and unjust war. Assuming what was already set out under the heading GUERRA, the consequences may be deduced here. If war, as physical force, must be subject to law and serve justice, so that it may be considered lawful, victory, which is its favorable outcome, does not in itself generate any special right, as Le Fur rightly observes (Guerre juste et juste fais, Paris 1920), but presupposes that the right in support of which it was begun already existed. What is customarily called the right of the victor must consequently be properly understood. It does not mean, nor can it mean, that the victorious State has the power to impose upon the vanquished peace conditions that may be dictated by its own selfish interest. Rather, the right of the victor is identified with that same right for whose defense or vindication he took up arms, unquestionably no longer in its original purity, because it has been increased and expanded by the enemy’s offense and by the damage suffered during the campaign. It follows, therefore, that the title by virtue of which the victor acquires the power to impose conditions upon the defeated party is not properly victory, a mere fact, but the right that he may have possessed at the beginning of hostilities.
Just as, therefore, there may be a just or unjust war, so there may be just or unjust, moral or immoral, peace impositions, according as they rest upon a juridical title or lack one. If the cause that led the victorious belligerent to initiate hostilities was just, the imposition of peace conditions is likewise radically just; if, on the other hand, the cause was unjust, these conditions too will be unjust. It should be noted, however, that, on the assumption of a just war, the victor’s power always remains strictly delimited by the right that he has succeeded in making triumph, so that the content of the impositions must in every case correspond to the equalizing demands of justice—that is, to the scope of the original right that justified armed intervention, together with the additional damage suffered during hostilities.
Once these principles have been admitted, it remains to determine more particularly what peace conditions the victor in a just war may lawfully impose upon the vanquished. The criterion from which Catholic authors have derived their conclusions is threefold. The first is derived from commutative justice, the second from punitive or repressive justice, and the third refers to the purpose of war, which, being directed toward the conquest of p. through the triumph of the right unjustly violated and the restoration of order, must secure it for as long a time as possible.
From the supreme norm of commutative justice, unicuique suum tribuere, there derives, first of all, the victor’s power to demand from the vanquished in a just war the restitution of what belongs to him, the complete restoration of that right for whose protection or vindication he was permitted to resort to arms. Victory, although in itself, as the predominance of force, it generates no right, permits the victor to attain his purpose by asserting in its fullness the right that already existed before the beginning of hostilities. It remains, therefore, within his power to take possession of whatever is owed to him. From the same principle there follows ...
It also follows that there is an equal right to demand from the vanquished a certain amount of contributions which, in the abstract, would equal the losses suffered in vindicating one’s own right, so as to extinguish the new debt contracted toward him by the adversary through his unlawful resistance (v. RIPARAZIONI).
The punitive character of just war, by virtue of which the belligerent has the right to exercise repressive justice against the adversary, renders legitimate the imposition of sanctions proportionate to the crime committed. The conditions of p. therefore include not only restitution and reparation, but also an additional penalty by way of punishment. For one who accepts the principles, the consequence is legitimate; but it gives p. the character of a repressive action, which strikes deeply at the psychology of conquered peoples. Without therefore denying its logical validity, it is more appropriate, for the purposes of a complete and genuine return to ordinary conditions, that the victor refrain from exercising this right, incorporating whatever he might impose upon the vanquished by way of sanction into the conditions which he is entitled to dictate by way of restitution and reparation.
The applicability of sanctions against the vanquished becomes more complicated when their other aspects are considered. Sanctions may be collective or individual. They are collective when they affect the entire people, regarded as an organic unity; individual when they fall upon certain persons more directly responsible for the war or for atrocious acts against the laws of humanity. In this regard, the ancient concept of the collective responsibility of subjects together with their sovereign must be regarded as superseded. For some time it was admitted by Catholic theorists, who based upon it the right to seize private property and to strike even innocent individuals, as integral parts of the community and jointly responsible with the authority. Contemporary doctrine has undergone a salutary evolution, considering the State as an universitas, that is, the collectivity of all citizens as a unitary subject, and formally excluding the possibility that individuals ut singuli may be the direct objects of sanctions.
Nevertheless, in purely theoretical terms, it cannot be excluded that those chiefly responsible for the war, or those guilty of atrocious acts and heinous crimes, might receive a suitable punishment from the victor. An unjustly provoked war has, in fact, in Catholic doctrine, the specific character of a crime against justice and the common good of the society of nations. If unjust war is a crime, then all acts in which an abuse of force manifestly appears will also be crimes, when accompanied by the adoption of methods of warfare and repressive measures displaying a particular degree of savagery and barbarity, since war, under any circumstances, does not place the belligerent beyond the law. The observation that such crimes, in the international order, lack a legal classification, because that order lacks a rule defining the action as unlawful and criminal, might have some meaning—and a fairly limited one—if based on positive law; but it has none if referred to the objective order of justice, whose norms possess binding force even when they have not been codified in a system. On the basis of these norms, hostile acts contrary to them would be liable to sanction.
Nevertheless, in translating this conclusion into practical terms, one encounters difficulties that are hardly capable of being overcome. In the first place, the order of natural justice determines neither the gravity nor the extent of the sanction, which is always established by the human legislator. From it one can deduce only the most general principle of punitive justice, which prescribes that proportionality be observed between crime and punishment. But this extremely general rule is insufficient for a judge who must pronounce judgment in a case in which he is an interested party; hence there is a danger of leaving the administration of justice to the guidance of a criterion that is largely subjective in the imposition of punishment. To avoid this danger, it is better to use individual sanctions against so-called war criminals with the utmost restraint. Moreover, the judge is not always the person best qualified to pronounce a sentence of condemnation, since he may perhaps have stained himself with equal crimes during the hostilities, for which he too ought to sit in the dock. The absence, therefore, of rules objectively determining the extent of the punishment, together with the judge’s easy lack of impartiality, makes the abstract conclusion scarcely acceptable in practical terms.
The third criterion adopted by Catholic theorists for establishing the conditions of a just p. remains to be considered. To achieve a stable p., the victor in a just war possesses the right to provide for his own security. Nevertheless, the problem of security presents itself today in a somewhat different manner from that in which the ancient theorists could have considered II. At that time the problem was resolved with regard to one’s neighbors; it had no immediate interference with the political structure of the continent of which the State formed part, and still less with the political structure of the entire world. Taking that situation as the point of reference, security appeared as a limited question, to be settled solely between the contenders through the imposition of certain guarantees. It is therefore not surprising that the concessions thought permissible to the victor on this account were so extensive. Today, by contrast, security cannot be achieved except on collective foundations, owing to the profound operational changes in the life of nations, their extremely close interdependence, and the vast scale of the means of offense.
These observations are not intended to undermine the validity of the principle established by the ancient Catholic theorists concerning the victor’s right to demand sufficient guarantees from the vanquished. But, once this power is admitted, the question of its extent and of the criterion to which the imposition of the conditions of p. must conform arises once again. One would search in vain for a clear answer in the more ancient works, in which the examples offered in support of the asserted right betray the absence of a balancing concept, so excessive do the deductions appear. Even for Taparelli, who is by no means so distant from our own times, a victor in a just war «potrà o togliere l'esistenza alla società, col toglierle l'indipendenza, il che si dice conquista, o scemarle popolazione e milizia obbligandola a militare sotto il vincitore a condizioni anche gravose; o invaderne il territorio e le fortezze; o assoggettarla a tributo e legarne il commercio. Siccome poi la persona di chi governa è il primo motore dei popoli, così la mutazione ora di forma di governo, ora di dinastia nei governanti è mezzo esso pure giusto ed efficace in certi casi» (cf. L. Taparelli, Saggio di diritto naturale, 4ª ed., II, Roma 1928, p. 186, n. 1344). Few today are prepared to admit, without significant restrictions, the doctrine set forth in the quoted passage, not only because, in its excessively terse propositions, it appears contrary to certain principles that have by now become the common patrimony of civilized peoples, but chiefly because it must be supplemented by some criterion capable of curbing the victor’s subjectivism.
Such a criterion may be found in certain universal principles of justice. Both the State and international society possess certain fundamental rights, against which no right of the victor can prevail. The State, on the one hand, possesses an inalienable right to its own existence and to all the means indispensable for maintaining and defending II. International society, so that peoples pos-
may coexist peacefully, requires a certain equilibrium among its subjects, so as to exclude every disparity induced by violence. An equilibrium disrupted by harsh peace impositions tends to re-establish itself imperceptibly and more often violently, through adjustments that can overturn in an instant the arduous work of entire generations. The needs of the life of the State and the common good of international society therefore significantly limit the powers of the victor in a just war, toward whom the ancient theorists have been overly generous with concessions. The doctrine they set forth concerning the conditions of a just peace requires profound revision and reworking. It is not that the law has changed with the times: in its essential part it still remains the same, and the supreme principles upon which relations among peoples have been founded retain their intrinsic value; what has changed, rather, is reality, by which practical conclusions are always conditioned, and the interpretation of the principles themselves has become deeper and more humane. - Vedi tav. XXXIII.