PEACE. — According to the well-known definition of St. Augustine, peace consists in the tranquillity of order, *tranquillitas ordinis* (De civ. Dei, 19, 13), and since order presupposes a rational criterion by which objects or persons are harmoniously arranged, peace likewise postulates certain social principles from which may derive the tranquil collaboration of individuals within the societies in which their lives unfold, and of nations within the broader community that unites them. These principles, since the matter to be ordered is composed of rational beings, cannot—by their very nature—be physical, mechanical, or biological (nor can economic equilibrium or the balance of political interests, or force, be invoked as principles), but must necessarily belong to the moral and juridical order, the only order capable of exerting influence upon the spiritual faculties of man.
Social peace may be internal or external. It is internal when, within a given society, family, nation, or state, all members live in harmony of purpose and assist one another through common collaboration in the attainment of collective well-being, in observance of the natural and positive norms of civil coexistence. Opposed to it are the continual violation of laws, sedition, revolt, and internal strife, which are wont to be the causes of the decline of peoples. It is external when nations, in observance of the rules of justice that govern and guide their relations in a normative manner, cooperate for collective well-being through cultural and economic exchanges and mutual understanding. Opposed to this are political rivalries, disputes over clashing interests, misunderstandings, national hatreds, and bellicose hostilities.
Peace is the normal condition of the life of individuals and peoples, who, by virtue of the deepest law of nature that impels them to seek their own well-being, tend toward tranquillity in order. All theories that, inspired by a certain social and political Darwinism, maintain that the normal condition of men and peoples is the struggle for existence, the survival of the stronger over the weaker, and the universal law of life that drives individuals and states to seek advantage, must therefore be rejected as contrary to the exigencies of human nature. Peace would consequently be nothing more than a period of rest between one conflict and the next, during which forces are gathered for a new assault. This is the law of the jungle applied to man, against which the instinct of solidarity rises up, inclining men to see in their fellow a companion to be loved and aided. War itself, as Augustine taught, has as its ultimate purpose peace, with the punishment of the wicked and the restoration of right.
Setting aside facile apologies for war, it is appropriate to raise a question whose solution is necessary for the completion of Catholic doctrine on just war. Peace treaties bring hostilities between nations to an end and mark the beginning of ordinary relations, in which common law regains its force. In this regard, it is important to determine the conditions of their morality and validity.
Scholars of international law are agreed in affirming the juridical validity of peace treaties, considering them as bilateral agreements that establish stable relations, despite the presence of external coercion, which in domestic law is usually regarded as sufficient to vitiate consent. However, in determining the grounds upon which the asserted juridical value of peace treaties rests, they divide into three currents. The first attributes to them an unconditional value, basing this on the observation that war in the international order is always a lawful procedure; from this it deduces that even its concluding phase, with peace treaties, is always and without condition a juridical act valid in all respects. The second denies their contractual character, conceiving them as a law dictated by the victor to the vanquished, and grounds their unconditional validity in the influence of victorious force, which transforms a factual situation into a legal one. The third admits only a conditional validity, dependent both on the causes that led to the outbreak of hostilities and on the content of the treaties themselves.
The starting point for an objective evaluation of peace treaties is the distinction between just and unjust war. Assuming what has already been set forth under the heading WAR, the consequences may be deduced here. If war, as physical force, must be subject to law and serve to uphold justice, in order for it to be considered lawful, victory—which is its favorable outcome—does not, as Le Fur rightly observes (*Guerre juste et juste paix*, Paris 1920), of itself generate any special right, but presupposes a right already in existence, in support of which it was undertaken. What is usually called the right of the victor must therefore be understood in its proper sense. It does not mean, nor can it mean, that the victorious state has the faculty to impose upon the vanquished peace conditions dictated by its own selfish interest. The right of the victor is identified, rather, with that same right for whose defense or vindication arms were taken up, albeit no longer in its pristine purity, since it has been augmented and expanded by enemy offense and the damages suffered in the campaign. It follows, therefore, that the title by virtue of which the victor acquires the faculty to impose conditions upon the vanquished is not properly the victory itself, as a fact, but the right that he may have possessed at the beginning of hostilities.
Just as there can be just or unjust war, so too can there be just or unjust, moral or immoral peace impositions, depending on whether they are founded upon a juridical title or lack one. If the cause that led the victorious belligerent to open hostilities was just, then the imposition of peace conditions is likewise fundamentally just; if, however, the cause was unjust, then these conditions will also be unjust. It should be noted, however, that, assuming a just war, the faculty of the victor remains always strictly delimited by the right that he has succeeded in vindicating, so that the content of the impositions must in every case correspond to the egalitarian demands of justice—that is, to the scope of the original right that justified armed intervention, together with the additional damage suffered in the hostilities.
Granted these principles, it remains to determine more specifically what conditions of peace 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, the third refers to the purpose of war, which, being directed toward the attainment of peace through the triumph of right unjustly violated and the restoration of order, must secure it for as long as possible.
From the supreme norm of commutative justice, *unicuique suum tribuere*, there first derives the faculty of the victor to demand from the vanquished in a just war the restitution of what is his, the full restoration of that right for whose protection or vindication it was licit to resort to arms. Victory, although in itself—as the prevalence of force—does not generate any right, permits the victor to achieve his purpose by enforcing to the full the right already in existence before the outbreak of hostilities. It remains, therefore, within his faculty to take possession of what is due to him. From the same principle
It also deduces an equal faculty to demand from the defeated a certain amount of contributions, which, in abstract terms, equal the damages suffered in vindicating one’s right, so as to extinguish the new debt contracted by the adversary through his illicit resistance (v. RIPARAZIONI).
The punitive character of a just war, by virtue of which the belligerent has the faculty to exercise repressive justice against the adversary, renders legitimate the imposition of sanctions proportionate to the crime committed. Among the conditions of a just peace, therefore, are not only restitution and reparation, but also an additional penalty as punishment. For those who accept these principles, the consequence is legitimate; yet it lends to peace the aspect of a repressive act, which significantly impacts the psychology of the defeated peoples. Without denying its logical consistency, it is more advisable, for the sake of a full and real return to ordinary conditions, that the victor refrain from exercising this faculty, incorporating whatever he might impose on the defeated as a sanction into the conditions he may legitimately dictate by way of restitution and reparation.
The applicability of sanctions against the defeated is further complicated when other aspects are considered. Sanctions may be collective or individual. They are collective if they strike the entire people, regarded as an organic unity; individual if they fall upon certain subjects more directly responsible for the war or for atrocious acts, in violation of the laws of humanity. In this regard, the ancient concept of the collective responsibility of subjects along with the sovereign—which for some time was accepted by Catholic theorists, who based upon it the faculty to exact reprisals on private property and to punish even innocent individuals as integral parts of the community and solidarily responsible with the authority—must be considered obsolete. Contemporary doctrine has undergone a salutary evolution, regarding the State as an *universitas*, that is, a collectivity of all citizens as a unitary subject, and formally excluding that individuals *ut singuli* may be the direct object of sanctions.
It cannot, however, be excluded, in purely theoretical terms, that the principal responsible for the war or those guilty of atrocious acts and heinous crimes may receive fitting punishment from the victor. For an unjustly provoked war, in Catholic doctrine, has the specific character of a crime against justice and the common good of the society of nations. If an unjust war is a crime, then all acts in which the abuse of force is manifest—through the adoption of bellicose procedures and repressive measures of particular savagery and barbarity—will also be crimes, since war, under any supposition, does not place the belligerent outside the law. The observation that such crimes in the international order lack a juridical qualification, due to the absence of a norm that configures the action as illicit and criminal, might have some—albeit limited—sense if grounded in positive law, but none at all if referred to the objective order of justice, whose norms possess obligatory force even if not codified within a system. According to these norms, hostile acts contrary to them would be liable to sanction.
Nevertheless, in translating this conclusion into the practical sphere, insurmountable difficulties are encountered. In the first place, the order of natural justice does not determine either the gravity or the extent of the sanction, which is always established by the human legislator. From it, one can only deduce the most general principle of punitive justice, which prescribes that there be a proportion between crime and punishment. But this most general norm is insufficient for a judge who must pronounce sentence in a case in which he is a party, whence the danger of abandoning the administration of justice to a criterion largely subjective in the imposition of punishment. To avoid this, it is better to use individual sanctions against so-called war criminals with extreme parsimony. Moreover, the judge is not always the best qualified to pronounce a sentence of condemnation, having perhaps himself committed similar crimes during hostilities, for which he too might sit in the defendant’s chair. The absence, therefore, of norms that objectively determine the measure of punishment and the ease with which impartiality may be lacking in the judge render the abstract conclusion scarcely acceptable in the practical sphere.
There remains to consider the third criterion adopted by Catholic theorists for establishing the conditions of a just peace. To achieve a stable peace, the victor in a just war possesses the right to ensure his own security. Yet the problem of security presents itself today somewhat differently from how it was viewed by ancient theorists. In their time, the problem was resolved with neighbors, had no immediate interference with the political arrangement of the continent of which the State was a part, and much less with the political arrangement of the entire world. Taking this situation as a point of reference, security appeared as a restricted issue, to be resolved solely between the contending parties, through the imposition of certain guarantees. The concessions made to the victor on this basis cannot therefore be a cause for surprise. Today, however, security cannot be achieved except on a collective basis, owing to the profound changes in the life of nations, their close interdependence, and the vastness of offensive means.
These observations do not intend to diminish the validity of the principle established by ancient Catholic theorists regarding the victor’s faculty to demand sufficient guarantees from the defeated. But, granted this power, the question of its extent and the criterion governing the imposition of peace conditions resurfaces. No clear answer is to be found in the older works, in which the exemplifications of the asserted right betray a lack of an equilibrating concept, so excessive do the deductions appear. Even for Taparelli—who is not so distant from our own times—a victor in a just war «may either destroy the existence of a society by removing its independence—which is called conquest—or diminish its population and military force by obliging it to serve under the victor on even onerous terms; or invade its territory and fortresses; or subject it to tribute and restrict its commerce. And since the person of the ruler is the prime mover of peoples, so the change, now of the form of government, now of the dynasty in power, is likewise a just and effective means in certain cases» (cf. L. Taparelli, *Saggio di diritto naturale*, 4th ed., II, Rome 1928, p. 186, no. 1344). Few today are prepared to admit, without significant restrictions, the doctrine expounded in the cited passage, not only because its too meager enunciations appear contrary to certain principles now part of the common patrimony of civilized peoples, but chiefly because it must be supplemented by some criterion that restrains the victor’s subjectivism.
Such a criterion may be found in certain universal principles of justice. Both the State and the international society possess certain fundamental rights against which no right of the victor may be asserted. On the one hand, the State possesses an inalienable right to its own existence and to all the means indispensable for maintaining and defending II. The international society, on the other,