REPARATIONS. – Reparations consist in that complex of financial burdens, economic costs and various services which the victor customarily imposes upon the vanquished by way of compensation for the damages suffered and the expenses incurred during the war campaign. They may also be called war indemnities. They must not be confused with the restitution of territory or of contested goods held by one of the belligerent parties, nor, at least conceptually, with sanctions, which rest upon different moral and juridical norms. Reparations go beyond restitution and are in themselves more limited than sanctions, although in practice no distinction is made between the latter and the former in peace settlements. Their amount and the modalities of their performance are usually determined in the peace treaties, which ordinarily contain a separate title expressly devoted to this matter.
More improperly, the same term is used to designate compensation for any damages that may have been caused by the war to foreign citizens, subjects and neutral States. It is commonly held that a foreigner residing in another State is bound to bear the burdensome consequences of the war along with the other citizens and therefore cannot legally claim preferential treatment. Whoever has settled in a country remains fully subject to its laws and shares in its fortunes: he can only demand to be treated on an equal footing with the citizens. Derogations from this norm have not been lacking in peace stipulations, but they must be regarded as illegal. With regard to damages suffered by private citizens, justice and equity require that they be compensated as far as possible, so that the burdens of war may be equally distributed and its liabilities fall upon the internal community. Should the belligerent have committed acts contrary to the rights of neutrals, it is bound to make good the damages thereby caused.
Modern war law almost entirely neglects the question of reparations. This attitude stems from the positivist principle applied to law, according to which reparations imposed by a peace treaty have no juridical foundation outside the conventional norm contained in the treaty and accepted by the vanquished. The theory thus reduces so important an aspect of war law to an arbitrary manifestation of the victor’s will, removing the imposition of reparations from any binding or limiting rule. Moreover, with the distinction between just and unjust war abolished, it grants full freedom to the victorious force, which may legally impose burdens even when used against the certain right of the defeated party. A more integral view of international relations, however, cannot accept this opinion.
Catholic doctrine on war and its conclusion through a peace treaty takes a quite different direction. From its very origins, its leading exponents have built the edifice of international law upon the principle of the equality of the subjects of the society of nations and have established as the fundamental rule governing their relations the norm deriving from commutative justice, which requires a balance between giving and receiving, between reparation and damage. This norm has been applied to the particular case of reparations; it, together with the more general principle that war is just only when waged in defence of a certain and grave right, has led to the conclusion that only the victor in a just war has the faculty of imposing upon the vanquished burdens in the form of reparations for the damages suffered and the expenses incurred in the defence and vindication of his right. Consequently, in the peace settlement he may impose upon the vanquished a certain amount of contributions which, in abstract terms, equal the damages suffered in the defence and vindication of his right. His faculty, however, finds a moral and juridical limit in the principle of commutative justice, which commands the maintenance of equality between damage and its compensation.
Among the major Catholic theorists this conclusion is rigorously maintained and leads to other practical conclusions which cannot but appear excessive to a modern reader. Suárez, for instance, maintains that if reparations were insufficient, it would be lawful to kill some guilty enemies or those deprived of their liberty; moreover, if the goods of the guilty could not suffice for the reparation of damages, he admits it as lawful to take recourse upon the goods of the innocent and reduce them to servitude. Vitoria is more restrained in his views, while Molina, grounding the right to reparations in the equality of commutative justice, arrives at conclusions not very far removed from those of Suárez. To the same tradition belongs Taparelli, in whom, however, there begins to be felt a tempering of the rigour of his predecessors (cf. A. Vanderpol, La doctrine scolastique du droit de guerre, Paris 1918, passim).
Their theoretical attitude, logically unimpeachable if referred to the norm of commutative justice, in its substance lends itself to the legitimation of a summa iniuria through the observance of a summum ius. When confronted with the damages caused by modern war, it proves unsustainable, since the pure and simple application of the principle would lead to the suffocation and extermination of the vanquished people. The ancient doctrine must therefore be revised, by introducing other principles likewise established by the ancient theorists. Taparelli, indeed, maintains that in determining the right of the victor in a just war, compensation for damages cannot extend to the point of depriving individuals of that happiness to which they are called by the very nature of social being. Here is an important limit to the egalitarian rule of commutative justice, deriving from a natural source, which imposes that reparations must never reach such a weight as to stifle the life of the vanquished, absorbing all their economy and subordinating it to the demands of the victor, which in such a case would be unjust.
This limitation is corroborated by the requirements of collective life within the international community, whose purpose, as the de Vitoria, Suárez, and their successors clearly recognized, lies in the common good. Today, states are more interdependent than in the past, so that the common welfare demands a certain economic and social equilibrium, which would be undermined by the vacuum created in any sector by excessively onerous peace impositions. These must consequently remain subordinate to the more universal end of the international community and be contained within the limits of its pressing demands.
Moreover, according to the common Catholic conception, a state waging a just war does not merely exercise a private right of self-defense but simultaneously fulfills a public function, insofar as it acts in place of that *auctoritas totius mundi* explicitly mentioned by de Vitoria. From this public character of its action, it follows that the state cannot merely pursue private advantage but must also keep in view the general good of the community when determining the amount of reparations. Thus, the principle of commutative justice is joined by that of distributive justice, so that both, without canceling each other out, must be balanced in such a way as to provide equitable satisfaction to the victor without prejudicing the public good.
Furthermore, if states are to resume peaceful relations and maintain them as far as possible unchanged once hostilities have ceased, it is easy to see how difficult this becomes when a people is burdened by excessively onerous reparations. Driven by necessity, it will soon violate treaties and foster a spirit of hatred and rebellion against the existing order, as occurred in Germany after the harsh reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Peace, the ultimate goal of war according to St. Augustine, demands indispensable moderation.
Catholic theorists, particularly the more recent ones, have contented themselves with appealing to political prudence. Yet this remedy is too mild if it does not invoke principles of true justice. More realistically, Vattel believed that if peace treaties were to observe the rules of exact and rigorous justice, so that each party received precisely what was due, peace would be impossible; it can only be achieved through a compromise that results in a settlement satisfactory to both victor and vanquished. In this regard, the rule enunciated by de Vitoria retains perennial value: *“Oportet moderate victoria uti, cum minima calamitate et malo Reipublicae nocentis.”*
This criterion inspired Benedict XV, who, in his letter to the belligerents of the First World War (1 Sept. 1917: AAS, 9 [1917], pp. 417 ff.), suggested total and reciprocal remission as the solution to the problem of reparations. Pius XI, in his autograph letter to Cardinal Gaspari of 24 June 1923 (AAS, 15 [1923], pp. 353–355), regarding the reparations imposed on Germany, affirmed that justice and social charity, as well as the very interest of creditors and all nations, required that the debtor not be exacted what it could not give without exhausting its own resources and productivity. The same doctrine is contained in the allocutions and radio messages of Pius XII delivered during the Second World War (see especially the Christmas Eve Sermon of 1945: AAS, 38 [1946], p. 22 ff.; and that of 1946: AAS, 39 [1947], p. 11 ff.), in which, as prerequisites for an international order founded on morality and justice, he advocated overcoming the seeds of conflict arising from glaring disparities in the global economy and the spirit of cold egoism.
For other types of reparations, see DANNO; RESTITUZIONE; RISARCIMENTO.