CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

This is the context against which Kant considers the relations between nations. Kant
considers that society is not just necessary between men, but also between states,
because individuals – whether men or states – cannot meet all their needs alone. This
association brings with it competing needs and hence conflict. Far from diminishing
those existing needs, the conflict exacerbates them. Thus is created a dialectic, which
must be resolved not by simple expedient compromises but by establishing a genuine
accommodation. This takes the form of recognizing that all parties enjoy certain rights
‘because they, like oneself, are ends in themselves, who cannot rightfully be used as
means to one’s own ends.’ 45 This is, for Kant, as applicable to states as it is to
individual men.
Individuals recognize that their rights are best served, in totality, through the voluntary
limiting of those rights that is implicit in binding together in societies, through a ‘social
contract.’ Only after the foundation of a universal cosmopolitan state can man’s rights
be optimised. Kant does not underestimate the difficulty of this; individuals within a
state have to submit to an authority which can enforce the law and the same will be
necessary to maintain a society of states. Not only does Kant recognize the difficulty
of this – because states are even more jealous of their sovereignty than are individuals –
but he recognizes the dangers, too, in seeking to construct this ultimate authority –
which, all too easily, could result in despotism.
In the first section of his definitive work To Perpetual Peace Kant lays down the
practical rules, by following which peace among nations is to be maintained. It includes
such portents of the UN Charter as that ‘No nation shall forcibly interfere with the
constitution and government of another.’ Whilst in the case of civil war an external
power’s siding with one party
could not be regarded as interference by the other in its constitution. So long,
however, as this internal conflict remains undecided, a foreign power’s
interference would violate the rights of an independent people struggling with its
internal ills. Doing this would be an obvious offense (sic) and would render the
autonomy of every nation insecure. 46
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