Defining “War of Necessity” Down

By Daniel Larison • January 22, 2013, 2:49 PM

Richard Cohen doesn’t know the meaning of the word necessity:

Wars can change over time. The one in Syria certainly has. It has gone from a war of choice to a war of necessity that President Obama did not choose to fight.

What distinguishes the two kinds of wars is whether or not a state must fight in order to preserve its security and/or independence. Any war that is not forced on a state is by definition a war that the government of that state has chosen to wage. A war of choice is one that a government could afford not to fight without risking anything important, but it is a war that it still decides to fight in spite of this. We all know this distinction because advocates of wars of choice go out of their way to describe these wars as conflicts that the other party has “forced” our government to fight (sometimes by refusing an excessive ultimatum designed to trigger war). Intervening in the Syrian conflict has not become a necessity for the United States, because the U.S. still has nothing at stake in the conflict. It hasn’t even become a necessity for Turkey, and it’s hard to imagine how any war in Syria could be more necessary for America than it is for Turkey. Cohen has been agitating for military action in Syria for over a year, so it’s not surprising that his definition of what is “necessary” in Syria has absolutely nothing to do with American or allied security. If we used this definition to determine where and how often the U.S. goes to war, it truly would be war without end.

10 Responses to Defining “War of Necessity” Down

collin says:

January 22, 2013 at 3:23 pm

How many wars of necessity have the United States really had? Revolutionary, War of 1812 and WW2. If you called the Cold War was sort one as well.

A guess WWI was a stretch as Germany did release the Zimmerman telegram and said the seas were open for submarine warfare.

JB says:

January 22, 2013 at 5:06 pm

“World War II” was not necessary to preserve American security or independence. Please.

James Canning says:

January 22, 2013 at 5:11 pm

What utter nonsense, to argue that intervening in Syrian civil war is “necessary”.

collin says:

January 22, 2013 at 5:15 pm

OK, I know WW2 had minimal immediate security risk (one time bombing of what was a territory) but in 1941 The Axis was winning the war. I would say it wise that FDR was preparing for the war and indeed WW2 was at our doorstep.

Noah172 says:

January 22, 2013 at 5:21 pm

So, Mr. Cohen, how many of your military-aged male loved ones would you care to see put in harm’s way in Syria? How much extra in taxes are you willing to pay so that this “necessary” war does not add to the already overwhelming national debt?

…..

I thought so.

Caliman says:

January 22, 2013 at 5:52 pm

There are no wars of necessity or choice any more … if you have to ask at all, it’s a war of choice. Per UN treaty, the only permissible wars are in self defense if one is attacked by another party or if authorized by the UNSC. All other wars are by definition wars of choice and illegal. That DC insiders like Cohen agitate for such unnecessary and illegal wars, of course, is normal and customery.

J.D. says:

January 22, 2013 at 11:45 pm

The Revolution doesn’t quite belong in the category of a “war of necessity” — it may have been justified but the colonists deliberately chose to rebel rather than continue to submit to British rule. It was a war of choice, if a just one.

The War of 1812 probably could have been avoided. Britain actually repealed the Orders in Council (trade blockades) that had, in part, sparked the war two days before Madison declared war. The real reason for the war, of course, lay elsewhere — Congress was dominated by “war hawks” who wanted to conquer Canada.

The Civil War was unavoidable once the Confederates attacked Sumter, and World War II was unavoidable once Japan and Germany declared war on the U.S.

James Canning says:

January 23, 2013 at 6:20 pm

collin – - War of 1812 was an optional military adventure. Idea was to try to take Canada from Britain while the British were busy with Napoleonic France.

James Canning says:

January 23, 2013 at 6:23 pm

J. D. – - You are quite right about the War of 1812.

JB – - If Germany had conquered Britain and the Soviet Union, surely US national security would have been gravely threatened.

Noah172 says:

January 23, 2013 at 9:10 pm

If Germany had conquered Britain and the Soviet Union, surely US national security would have been gravely threatened.

Nobody since the Mongols (who were used to frozen wastelands) has conquered Russia. Germany was not going to do so in World War II. The likely outcome, absent US intervention, was a grinding stalemate that would have caused either: a collapse from within of both totalitarian regimes, the best outcome for all humanity; or an alternate cold war standoff between fascists and communists, with the former controlling most of the non-USSR nations that in real history went communist after 1945, and the two blocs fighting on and off over eastern Europe. Whatever one thinks of the consequences of the latter scenario for Europeans, the US could have lived peacefully with this state of affairs across the ocean just as the US had, prior to Wilson’s messianism in the first war, kept aloof for the most part from Europe’s age-old imperial struggles.

As for Germany conquering Britain, Germany had not even managed air superiority over the Isles (Battle of Britain) before US intervention; with the eastern front and occupation garrisons on the Continent voraciously consuming German manpower and resources, a land invasion or effective naval blockade of the UK were not feasible options either (and the Royal Navy and merchant marine outclassed the Kriegsmarine in every category except submarines). On top of that, the Brits had managed to crack the various German Enigma codes before the US entry into the war, or by the first half of 1942 at the latest.

Nazi ideology, in sharp contrast with communist ideology, lacked universalist appeal: non-Aryans were not going to buy all that Herrenvolk business (and even many Aryans didn’t care for it), but people the world over did indeed buy into anti-nationalist, anti-religious Marxism. Moreover, Nazism was too much an unstable, Hitler-centric personality cult, while communism in one land after another survived and even thrived after the death of its founding revolutionary. The Nazis were not going to be able to count on the loyalties of many if not most of Europe’s non-Nordic masses.

Daniel Larison

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