“The world could not exist unless some men had the power and authority to deter the wicked by force from doing harm to the good and the innocent,” confirms Francisco de Vitoria. Approaching five centuries ago, Vitoria, a Catholic Spanish theologian, addressed today’s conflicts. In a world replete with war, of mounting complexity and connectivity, Vitoria remains vital yet undervalued due to modernity molding him into a proto-international relations lawyer rather than a theological-centered strategist. An unsurprising supposition in a world governed by rights rather than virtues with presidents, policymakers, and pundits propagating democracy as paragon. But Vitoria cautions against hubristic assumptions in imposing beliefs upon foreign lands and peoples. In addition, he reminds us that security requires dirty hands, just war exists, and that ethics, not politics, should guide both leaders and citizens alike in military matters. Vitoria does not reduce war to a formula or rigid ruleset, he aspires to a higher yet more malleable, divine law defined standard. Ethics administers every step. He accepts, however, the limits of ethics when confronting conflict…knowing it is idealistic to assume war will ever subside—it is part of the human condition. War is inevitable. Thus, Vitoria deferred to history, both sacred and secular, for guidance.
He lectured his magnum opuses on warfare in 1539 to students (published in 1557): De Indis (On the Indians) and De iure belli (On the Law of War)—a compiler of Vitoria’s papers renamed the former De bello contra Indos (On the War against the Indians), which better reflects the work’s content. Vitoria lived in the sixteenth century when New World encounters and Reformation fissures bore their full fruit. His was a dichotomous world of discovery and fragmentation paralleling our own, yet he advocated a shared humanity.
Current applicability of On the War against the Indians hits the reader three lines deep when Vitoria asks: “whether it is lawful to baptize the children of unbelievers against the wishes of their parents?” Replace “baptize” with “democratize” and concede Vitoria’s value. He questions Christianity’s pertinency to foreign populations, in particular, when applied with military force. When defining dominion, Vitoria employs his foundational principle of ius gentium (law of nations). His unifying vision also includes interventionism emphasizing not gain but resolution. He explains that God commands us to take care of each other and foreigners, who “are all our neighbours.” Vitoria adds the state may also justify war if “allies and friends” require our aid and enable them to defeat their foes. This is the core of Vitoria’s ius gentium and an equivalent to NATO’s collective defense (Article Five). Nonetheless, Vitoria warns that intervention produces unpredictable scenarios. As a realist he knows national leadership and military command require dirty hands. Vitoria reminds the reader that humility serves us well in understanding foreign cultures, war’s cost, and employing a practical strategy when projecting temporal power beyond our own borders.
Vitoria provides a deeper examination of his subject within On the Law of War by establishing war’s three phases paralleling modern military historian parlance: causes, conduct, and consequences. Vitoria calls them his three canons. First, “strive above all to avoid all provocations and causes of war” and “the sole and only just cause for waging war is when harm has been inflicted,” declares Vitoria. Second, he asserts that man conducts war “for the pursuit of the justice for which he fights and the defense of his homeland.” Vitoria accepts that acts of total war (e.g., destruction of property and noncombatants) occur in just war, but it is essential to note, he always makes clear war never succumbs to malum in se (evil in itself). Third, a leader will “use his victory with moderation and Christian humility,” concludes Vitoria. Peppering his text with leadership analysis, Vitoria describes the victorious commander-in-chief in the cast of King Solomon—a humble sovereign directed by wisdom and faith. Vitoria provides strategic level discernment from a perspective that balances resolute theological ethics tempered with their limits in defeating an enemy in war. He also unpacks the responsibility to protect (R2P), inadvertent civilian casualties, reparations, judicial punishment of defeated enemies, and POW treatment. It is all there. And done centuries ago.
Vitoria was one of the last theologians, in a just war tradition begun by St. Augustine, to combine the realist ancient worldview of war with the theological virtues. Vitoria aids in comprehending war’s permanence and where the moral threshold resides. He understands that war, like human nature, remains static…technology only alters war for the uninitiated. Thus, he believes wisdom gleaned from history guides one in war because it is timeless and unchanging. Vitoria therefore challenges the modern reader to pause and ponder what we have lost—rather than gained—with the West’s subservience to politics instead of ethics.
Reader’s Guide
- Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, eds. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Pagden and Lawrance provide the definitive edition of On the War against the Indians and On the Law of War, which they supplement with an accessible introduction, additional works by Vitoria, as well as insightful footnotes, biographical sketches of historical figures, and a glossary.
- Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). A superb volume featuring an elite cadre of military historians dissecting the laws of war throughout the ages; see Geoffrey Parker’s chapter, “Early Modern Europe,” to contextualize Vitoria within the historical intersection of warfare and morality.
