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[Expositions 13.2 (2019) 27–44] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 

 

DAVID CARROLL COCHRAN 

Loras College 

 

 

In April 2016, participants in the “Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference” called on the Catholic 

Church to place greater emphasis on nonviolent peacemaking and to no longer recognize the 

possibility of a just war.1 In the exchanges that have followed, one line of objection has been to 

endorse the first goal but reject the second as dangerously unrealistic. 

While supporting more work to promote nonviolent conflict resolution, Mark Allman and 

Tobias Winright point to cases of military aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide where “real-

life challenges” mean nonviolent methods might not be effective enough, leaving armed force as 

the only way to save innocent lives. For them, “Even if the case for just war is rare, such cases still 

occur.”2 

Similarly, Peter Steinfels surveys the world’s war-torn regions and concludes that while “such 

brutal realities” call out for as much “nonviolent peacemaking” as possible, “did the conference 

really imagine that nonviolence alone would stop all this bleeding?”3 

And in his contribution to the special issue of Expositions dedicated to the future of just war 

thinking following the April 2016 conference, Robert Latiff is sympathetic to its call for greater 

peacemaking efforts, but he argues that “officially abandoning just war teaching would be a terrible 

outcome for the Catholic Church.” On his account, such a move, while “well-intentioned,” ignores 

how military force is sometimes “necessary to protect people who need protection” and is therefore 

“extraordinarily naïve and potentially dangerous.” It is “wishful thinking” to reject the need for 

“options to use force” if nonviolent alternatives prove ineffective.4 

This is an important objection. Many people sympathetic to the increasing emphasis on 

nonviolent peacemaking in Catholic teaching on war and peace are nonetheless reluctant to 

completely close the door to the possibility of a just war. They believe that since nonviolent 

alternatives may not always work, sometimes armed force is still necessary to uphold justice and 

protect innocent people from aggression, tyranny, or mass violence such as genocide or ethnic 

cleansing. In such situations, countries or threatened groups are still morally permitted to take up 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 28 
 

arms to defend themselves. And, if they are too weak to do so, members of the international 

community are still morally permitted to do so on their behalf under the traditional principle of 

humanitarian intervention or, more recently, the international legal norm of a “Responsibility to 

Protect.”5 

I believe that ethical and theological reflection on the incompatibility of war with Catholic 

moral principles and their Gospel foundations should ultimately carry the most weight in the case 

for the Catholic Church to, as the conference participants urge, “no longer use or teach ‘just war 

theory.’”6 I also recognize, however, that for many an important obstacle to supporting such a step 

is the sense that it is unrealistic to completely rule out justified war when sometimes it may be the 

only effective tool available. This concern deserves a response.  

 

Effective at What? 

Peace results from that order structured into human society by its divine Founder, 
and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice.  
 –Gaudium et spes7 
 
True peace therefore is the fruit of justice, that moral virtue and legal guarantee 
which ensures full respect for rights and responsibilities, and the just distribution 
of benefits and burdens. 
 –Pope John Paul II8 

 
This is largely a disagreement about means rather than ends. The authors of the “Nonviolence and 

Just Peace Conference” statement identify themselves as “Christians committed to a more just and 

peaceful world.” Believing that “peace requires justice,” they challenge “militarism,” “economic 

injustice,” “dehumanization,” and “persecution, oppression, exploitation, and discrimination,” 

offering instead a gospel-inspired vision of a nonviolent social order marked by “human dignity 

and thriving relationships.”9 

Such an order is also the basis for arguments to keep some room for justified warfare in the 

Catholic tradition. Kenneth Himes, for example, grounds his case for the moral permissibility of 

some humanitarian interventions in a vision of a “political order” that provides “just laws,” protects 

“public safety,” cares “for the poor and infirm,” and upholds “each person’s basic rights.” On his 

account, sometimes protecting the kind of just order that upholds human dignity in these ways 

requires the “armed force” necessary to “depose tyrants, stop genocide, or deter aggression.”10 



29  Cochran 
 

 
 

This, then, is the key question: What is the most effective way to build and maintain this 

common goal of a just and peaceful order—one that upholds human dignity and basic rights, 

promotes human flourishing, and protects persons from aggression, tyranny, and mass violence?  

 

War Is Actually Not Very Effective 

Recourse to violence, in fact, aggravates existing tensions and creates new ones. 
Nothing is resolved by war; on the contrary, everything is placed in jeopardy by 
war. The results of this scourge are the suffering and death of innumerable 
individuals, the disintegration of human relations and the irreparable loss of an 
immense artistic and environmental patrimony. War worsens the sufferings of the 
poor; indeed, it creates new poor by destroying means of subsistence, homes, and 
property, and by eating away at the very fabric of the social environment. […] 
 
Recent history clearly shows the failure of recourse to violence as a means for 
resolving political and social problems. War destroys, it does not build up; it 
weakens the moral foundations of society and creates further divisions and long-
lasting tensions. And yet the news continues to speak of wars and armed conflicts, 
and of their countless victims. How often have my Predecessors and I myself called 
for an end to these horrors! I shall continue to do so until it is understood that war 
is the failure of all true humanism. 
 –Pope John Paul II (italics in original)11 

 
One hallmark of war’s history is the tendency to overestimate its effectiveness, which is why 

leaders, especially of large military powers, routinely get mired in disastrous wars that fail to 

achieve their original aims. This historical trend is also true of domestic armed resistance and 

external interventions over the last century, both of which have proven far more likely to fail than 

succeed, usually just extending violent conflicts and making the emergence of an oppressive 

regime at its conclusion more rather than less likely.12 

This shouldn’t be surprising, since, given its nature, war is a poor candidate to sustain a just and 

peaceful order. War’s original meaning is discord, and Erasmus characterized it as a state of 

disorder where “the laws are compelled to silence, charity is laughed at, justice has no dwelling 

place.”13 As Hugo Slim catalogues in excruciating detail, war zones create spikes in poverty, 

famine, disease, looting, extortion, assault, corruption, and the suppression of human rights. They 

tear families apart and produce streams of refugees vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. For 

people in war zones, fear, humiliation, and hopelessness are constant companions.14 Rape is so 

common that St. Augustine called it a “customary evil” of war.15 As Eileen Egan points out, a good 

definition of war is the corporal works of mercy in reverse.16 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 30 
 

Wars, even ones conducted by professional militaries with clear rules of engagement, kill 

shocking numbers of civilians, primarily because of the lethality of the weapons involved, the low 

threshold for using them, and uncertainty about the status of targets, what Dave Grossman, in his 

study of lethal violence in war, calls “gray-area killings.”17 War’s levels of killing, whether of 

combatants or noncombatants, relies on systematic dehumanization of its targets to justifying their 

slaughter, as well as the dehumanization involved in training soldiers to suppress mercy and their 

resistance to killing in order to do their job.18 And, of course, for soldiers and civilians who do 

survive war, the legacy is often a lifetime of physical and emotional wounds.  

War, then, is the opposite of an order marked by human dignity, security, and flourishing. It is 

itself a disorder of mass violence, suffering, dehumanization, and injustice. This is why while it is 

rare for a war to successfully stop instances of genocide or ethnic cleansing; genocides and ethnic 

cleansings themselves almost always occur only when wars are already underway, creating an 

environment of mass violence that allows them to emerge.19 It is also why even when war appears 

effective in the short-term, its long-term impact is to usually unleash continuing cycles of more 

armed conflict. Warfare, in the words of John Paul II, “leaves behind a trail of resentment and 

hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which 

provoked the war.”20 For example, the culture of violence and resentment caused by World War I 

led directly to World War II, which, in turn, largely produced the Cold War and its many proxy 

wars around the world. To follow just one of these proxy wars, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 

was met by American-backed Mujahideen fighters, fueling a civil war that saw the rise of the 

Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, leading in turn to the attacks of September 11, 2001 

and subsequent U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere across the Middle East, which 

themselves have spun-off new civil wars. Other regions and historical periods reveal similar 

patterns of armed conflict, where even the seemingly successful resolution of one war only sows 

the seeds for ones to follow. Indeed, the vast majority of contemporary wars are actually 

continuations of previous ones, civil wars in which their participants are caught in cycles of chronic 

stop-and-start armed conflict.21 Interventions by outside forces are more likely to exacerbate these 

conflicts rather than end them, as illustrated by the 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya, the 

first authorized by the U.N. under the Responsibility to Protect principle, which seemed a short-

term success when it toppled the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, but only fueled ongoing cycles of 



31  Cochran 
 

 
 

armed conflict that have continued to devastate the country since. Again and again, war proves 

itself an especially unfit tool to fashion an enduring just and peaceful order.22  

 

Nonviolent Alternatives Are Surprisingly Effective  

In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may 
nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our 
actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms. 
 –Pope Francis23 

  
In this way, the solidarity which we propose is the path to peace and at the same 
time to development. For world peace is inconceivable unless the world's leaders 
come to recognize that interdependence in itself demands the abandonment of the 
politics of blocs, the sacrifice of all forms of economic, military or political 
imperialism, and the transformation of mutual distrust into collaboration. This is 
precisely the act proper to solidarity among individuals and nations. 
 –Pope John Paul II24 

 
Fortunately, there are better options. A range of nonviolent tools have a much better track record 

at creating, protecting, and sustaining a just and peaceful order. They can do so in two ways. First, 

they can defend vulnerable persons against aggression, tyranny, and mass violence better than 

armed force. Second, they can reduce the instance of war itself, since, after all, it is in warzones, 

especially those areas of the world with endemic warfare, that human dignity, rights, and 

flourishing are so threatened and that aggression, tyranny, and mass violence are so common. If 

fighting wars is not an especially effective way to uphold a just and peaceful order, fighting war 

actually is.  

One of the most significant political developments of the last century is the emergence of 

nonviolent civil resistance movements as a way to challenge and defeat domestic dictators and 

foreign occupiers. All regimes, even brutal ones, depend on widespread cooperation to function. 

Police and army personnel, government bureaucrats, financial institutions, workers, and everyday 

citizens on the streets all must to do what they are told and contribute to the regime’s ongoing 

operation. This is the vulnerability nonviolent civil resistance exploits. It withdraws the active 

cooperation any regime, whether domestic or occupying, needs to exercise power. When such 

noncooperation becomes organized and widespread enough, the regime’s power collapses as its 

leaders issue orders nobody carries out. From Africa (Tunisia) to Asia (Philippines) to Europe 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 32 
 

(Serbia) to the Americas (Chile), nonviolent civil resistance has proven itself a powerfully 

effective force.25  

The effectiveness of nonviolent alternatives to armed force by people under threat is supported 

by empirical research. Oliver Kaplan details the techniques vulnerable civilians in war zones use 

to successfully protect themselves from armed groups.26 Adrian Katatnycky and Peter Ackerman’s 

study of how dictatorships end concludes that compared to armed rebellion, nonviolent methods 

are far more successful in removing tyrants and establishing lasting democracy.27 And, in their 

landmark study, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan analyze over 300 cases going back to 1900 

of either armed struggle or nonviolent civil resistance to domestic dictatorships or foreign 

occupation. They find that nonviolent campaigns are nearly twice as effective as violent ones, that 

this success does not depend on how brutal a regime’s response is, and that even among the 

increasingly small percentage of armed struggles that do succeed, they are far more likely to slip 

back into dictatorship and civil war in their aftermath.28 Summarizing other findings since their 

study came out in 2011, they report that regimes are less likely to deploy mass violence against 

civilians when facing nonviolent versus violent movements challenging their rule; that even when 

regimes do react with mass violence, the likelihood of a nonviolent resistant movement’s success 

does not go down; that when a largely nonviolent campaign adds a violent “edge” or “flank” in a 

mixed approach, its effectiveness drops; and that while the success rate for nonviolent movements 

has dipped somewhat in the last few years as more and more groups, including some underprepared 

ones, undertake them and regime leaders adjust their responses, the success rate for violent ones 

has dropped even more, meaning that now nonviolent civil resistance is three times as likely to 

succeed as armed struggle.29 

Just as there are effective nonviolent tools for oppressed peoples to deploy themselves, the 

international community has a range of alternatives to warfare when acting to deter aggression, 

prevent mass violence against vulnerable groups, and reduce the frequency of war itself. These 

tools exist as part of an infrastructure of global governance that Catholic teaching has long 

supported.30 Contrary to conventional wisdom, international relations are not a struggle of all 

against all with armed force the only thing countries ultimately respect. While countries do often 

pursue their own interests, political scientists have demonstrated that international institutions and 

norms strongly shape the behavior of individual countries, including how they understand their 

interests and the options available for pursuing them.31 This is what allows countries to cooperate 



33  Cochran 
 

 
 

in regulating a range of issues that cross borders, such as mail delivery, criminal extraditions, free 

trade, or endangered species, and to reform or abolish practices once considered only internal 

matters, such as capital punishment.32 It can also help shift behavior when it comes to armed force. 

For every country that has acquired nuclear weapons in the last half century, another has given 

them up.33 Countries no longer consider war an option for collecting international debts, even 

though it was once a routine justification for going to war.34 And, as the European Union shows, 

closer institutional integration certainly does not eliminate conflicts among countries, but it can 

remove warfare as a plausible way to address such conflicts, even among countries that were once 

chronically at war with each other.35 Indeed, just belonging to intergovernmental organizations, 

even seemingly minor ones such as those regulating fisheries, reduces a country’s risk of engaging 

in war.36  

In this international system, countries have a range of methods to shape each other’s behavior 

and prevent armed conflicts. For shaping behavior, a mix of incentives (integration into regional 

bodies, beneficial trade agreements, debt relief, economic aid, and technology transfers) and 

sanctions, especially those targeting regime leaders and their financial backers (blocking financial 

transactions, asset freezes, travel bans, import/export embargoes, and expulsion from regional 

bodies) can be effective in reducing external aggression and increasing internal democracy and 

respect for human rights, especially if these efforts are multilateral, have clear goals, and are used 

as part of negotiations rather than campaigns for regime change.37 When it comes to preventing 

countries from launching attacks on each other, diplomatic exchanges can successfully construct 

cycles of reciprocal restraint that help adversaries establish lasting peace, and a rising trend toward 

mediation and arbitration efforts, whether by intergovernmental bodies, such as the U.N.’s 

International Court of Justice, or nongovernmental actors, such as the Sant’Egidio community, are 

increasingly effective.38 

Since the majority of wars today are chronic civil wars that go through cycles of stopping and 

restarting, the best way to reduce warfare, and the military aggression and mass violence that it 

unleashes, is to help break this bloody cycle. Fortunately, there are effective tools the international 

community can use to help negotiate a war’s end and prevent it from resuming, tools that, 

compared to military interventions, have a much better success rate at helping a more just and 

peaceful order emerge and endure.39 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 34 
 

Using a mix of incentives and sanctions, it is possible to push parties in a conflict toward a 

ceasefire and eventually a negotiated settlement with the help of a trusted moderator. This is 

important, since wars that end with a formal negotiated settlement have a better chance of 

producing a lasting peace.40 With the end of active combat, the quick presence of third-party 

monitors of the peace agreement’s implementation can quickly help local leaders and civil society 

groups implement steps that studies show significantly reduce the risk of war breaking out again, 

such as resettling refugees or transitional justice mechanisms.41 Crucially, the greater the 

involvement of women in each of these steps, the greater their likelihood of success.42  

In addition to these shorter-term interventions, the data show the potential of a longer-term 

commitment by the international community to work for the kind of economic and political 

development Catholic teaching has long supported.43 Poor countries are at a much higher risk of 

war, so development assistance that helps address poverty, education, health outcomes, and 

infrastructure can not only improve human flourishing in general, but significantly reduce the odds 

of armed conflict as well.44 Similarly, political institutions that are inclusive, accountable, and 

responsive; that protect the rule of law; that guarantee and civil and political rights, especially for 

women; and that make space for a vibrant and pluralist civil society are not only more consistent 

with human dignity, but also significantly lower the risk of war.45 Importantly, trying to impose 

such political institutions by armed force is much less effective than the slower process of 

promoting democratic reform through diplomatic pressure, incentives and sanctions, and support 

for local activists and civil society groups.46 

The evidence, then, is clear. If the goal is a just and peaceful order, one that upholds human 

dignity and basic rights, promotes human flourishing, and protects persons from aggression, 

tyranny, and mass violence, including the mass violence of war itself, then nonviolent alternatives 

are more effective than warfare.47  

 

The Realism of Repudiation and Abolition  

Never again war, never again war!  
 –Pope Paul VI48 

 
War should belong to the tragic past, to history, it should find no place on 
humanity’s agenda for the future. 
 –Pope John Paul II49  

 



35  Cochran 
 

 
 

Unfortunately, war’s nonviolent alternatives are not guaranteed to succeed. Sometimes they do 

fail, at least in the short term, to stop aggression, tyranny, or mass violence. And sometimes armed 

force has stopped these things, at least in the short term. For some people, the fact that we can 

point to apparent cases of nonviolent failure (e.g., Tiananmen Square) or military success (e.g., 

Kosovo) means that we should not put our faith in nonviolent alternatives to war. But, of course, 

it is a rigged comparison to demand perfect success from nonviolence while overlooking war’s 

own poor success rate. When assessing each, it is important to hold them to the same standards of 

overall effectiveness, and when we do so, we have just seen how nonviolence comes out ahead.  

A related mistake is to argue that because nonviolent alternatives do not always work, people 

might suffer and die unless they resort to war or others do so on their behalf. It is true that 

nonviolent alternatives to war cannot guarantee nobody will suffer or die. This will often be the 

case even when they succeed. But, obviously, war cannot make that guarantee either. Even 

effective wars see plenty of suffering and death, and since most wars fail, this suffering and death 

is usually in vain. The sad truth is that suffering and death are common when resisting violent 

attack or injustice no matter the means of resistance. The happy truth is that nonviolent means do 

usually lower the overall levels of suffering and death, while also giving resisters better odds of 

success. 

Those who criticize calls for Catholics to “no longer use or teach just war theory” might 

acknowledge all of this. They might stipulate that a fair comparison shows that war is more likely 

to produce greater suffering and death and end in failure compared to its nonviolent alternatives, 

which is why nonviolence should be the default position and Church teaching should emphasize it 

more. If a physician treating an ill patient knows of drugs that are more effective and have fewer 

side effects, of course she should start with them rather than going right to a drug that is more 

dangerous and less effective. But sometimes patients don’t respond to the usual treatments, and in 

such cases physicians may try a treatment that is normally more dangerous and less likely to 

succeed because it may seem the only thing left with any chance of working at all. In the same 

way, while war is usually a more destructive and less effective option, maybe we should 

nonetheless hold it in reserve for those extraordinary cases where it may be the only option. 

Nonviolent alternatives may be more effective than war, but why not have both in humanity’s 

toolkit just in case? 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 36 
 

The most important reason is that by keeping war on the table, the Church signals that it is a 

legitimate option, which has two harmful effects. The first is to feed the myth of war’s 

righteousness and effectiveness, one that often leads humanity to put too much faith in war while 

systematically overlooking its more effective nonviolent alternatives. Sometimes leaving a 

dangerous and less effective drug on the market, especially if it is one that has long been in wide 

use and thought the only effective treatment for a range of illnesses, can lead physicians to 

overprescribe it and patients to overuse it, causing more harm than good and crowding out safer 

and more effective alternatives. The second is that keeping war open as a legitimate option requires 

building militaries to be ready when the need arises. This means diverting wealth from pressing 

social needs such as education or healthcare, directing scientific knowledge and industrial capacity 

toward armaments, and, most significantly, recruiting people, especially the young, for training in 

how to kill. All of this gives violence a place of privilege in our culture, obscuring the damage that 

it does and normalizing war. As the old saying goes, if you put so much effort into building a 

hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.  

If war is actually ineffective in building, protecting, and sustaining a just and peaceful order, 

and is in fact a primary threat to such an order, then it is a mistake for Catholic teaching to continue 

to legitimize it by carving out room for its moral use. The better, more effective, and, yes, more 

realistic path is to commit to fully delegitimizing war itself as part of the Church’s stated goal of 

eliminating it from the earth.  

If one important strand in Catholic teaching on war and peace over the last century is its growing 

emphasis on nonviolent peacemaking, another related one is its shift away from seeing war as an 

inevitable part of international behavior, where the main moral question is whether or not particular 

armed conflicts meet just war criteria, to developing a powerful moral critique of war itself, leading 

the Church to emerge as an important voice in calls for its abolition.50 The reason delegitimizing 

war as a path toward its abolition is a more realistic way to work for a just and peaceful order is 

that we have seen the process before. The ways humanity abolished other forms of institutional 

violence such as chattel slavery, dueling, or trials by ordeal and combat were complex, but a key 

part of each was a collapse in the institution’s legitimacy following a campaign of consistent and 

total repudiation by abolitionist voices. These voices focused on the wrongness of the institution 

itself, on its being unwarranted for any reason whatsoever, rather than its misuse in particular 

cases. It was the spread of these views that allowed a tipping point towards abolition to emerge 



37  Cochran 
 

 
 

and the institution to become socially untenable. Moral repudiation drove the social 

delegitimization that led to abolition.51  

Of course, abolishing war seems daunting, but so did abolishing chattel slavery, dueling, and 

trials by ordeal and combat in their day. And most people don’t realize the progress humanity has 

already made. News accounts of wars around the world obscure the longer-term trends in the 

decline of armed conflict. While the measurements are complex and the data has short-term 

fluctuations, the overall trend in the last few centuries is toward fewer wars and fewer people per 

capita dying in them. Thanks primarily to the spread of anti-war norms and the effective use of the 

alternatives to war we saw above, progress in the last seventy-five years has been particularly 

dramatic, with interstate wars to capture new territory or colonies and redraw national boundaries 

becoming extraordinarily rare by historical comparison. Much of the world is already essentially 

war-free, areas where there is still plenty of injustice and where countries still may have plenty of 

disputes, but where turning to war to address these things is simply not a conceivable option. There 

is still much to do to extend the elimination of war to the remaining areas of the globe where it is 

still present, but the evidence shows that it is certainly a realistic possibility.52 

A truly realist understanding of war recognizes that the most effective way to secure a just and 

peaceful order is to abolish war itself in favor of its nonviolent alternatives, and that such abolition 

requires consistent and straightforward repudiations of war that deny it any legitimacy. This is a 

role Catholic teaching can, should, and is well-suited to fill. There is even a recent and familiar 

template for doing so. For most of human history, capital punishment was accepted around the 

globe as a widespread, routine, and legitimate punishment for a wide array of ordinary crimes. 

Doing without it seemed unrealistic and naively dangerous. Yet, in just the last century, it has been 

abolished in almost every country on earth and restricted to a rare number of cases in the handful 

of countries that still use it.53 This is a remarkable historical shift in worldwide criminal justice 

practice, and Catholicism has played an important role in making it happen. By turning against 

capital punishment—by gradually shrinking any permissible use to zero while shifting its focus to 

repudiating the institution itself as immoral and ineffective—the Church helped delegitimize its 

use and pave the way for its widespread, though still incomplete, abolition. The same formula is 

possible for war. Repudiation is the realistic path to abolition, and it is one Catholic teaching is 

ready to walk. 

 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 38 
 

Notes 
 

1. Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the 

Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence,” April 2016, https://nonviolencejustpeace.net/final-

statement-an-appeal-to-the-catholic-church-to-re-commit-to-the-centrality-of-gospel-

nonviolence/.  

2. Mark Allman and Tobias Winright, “Protect Thy Neighbor: Why the Just War Tradition is 

Still Indispensable,” Commonweal June 17, 2016,  

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/protect-thy-neighbor.  

3. Peter Steinfels, “The War Against Just War: Enough Already,” Commonweal June 16, 

2017, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/war-against-just-war. 

4. Robert Latiff, “Jumping into Combat without a Parachute—on Purpose?” Expositions: 

Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 12.2 (2018): 72–73, 76,  

https://expositions.journals.villanova.edu/article/view/2321/2225.  

5. Terry Nardin, “The Moral Basis of Humanitarian Intervention,” in The Morality of War: A 

Reader, eds. David Kinsella and Craig Carr (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007), 196–

205; Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and 

for All (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008).  

6. Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “An Appeal.”  

7. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, The Holy See, 1965, §78,  

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-

ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. 

8. Pope John Paul II, “No Peace without Justice, No Justice without Forgiveness,” The Holy 

See, January 1, 2002, §3,  

http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-

ii_mes_20011211_xxxv-world-day-for-peace.html.  

9. Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, “An Appeal.” 

10. Kenneth R Himes, “Humanitarian Intervention and the Just War Tradition,” in Can War 

Be Just in the 21st Century?: Ethicists Engage the Tradition, eds. Tobias Winright and 

Laurie Johnston (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 51–53. 

11. Pope John Paul II, “If You Want Peace, Reach out to the Poor,” The Holy See, January 1, 

1993, §§4, 11,  



39  Cochran 
 

 
 

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-

ii_mes_08121992_xxvi-world-day-for-peace.html. 

12. John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations Go to War, 9th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2005); 

Jens Ringsmose, “When Great Powers Lose Small Wars,” Global Security 22.3 (2008): 

411–418; Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The 

Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); 

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, “How the World Is Proving Martin Luther King 

Right about Nonviolence,” The Washington Post January 18, 2016, 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/01/18/how-the-world-is-

proving-mlk-right-about-nonviolence/; Adrian Katatnycky and Peter Ackerman, How 

Freedom is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy (Washington, DC: 

Freedom House, 2005); Patrick M Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside 

Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000). 

13. Desiderius Erasmus, “An Essay on War,” in Bellum: Two Statements on the Nature of War, 

ed. William Royall Tyler (Barre, MA: Imprint Society, 1972), 20–21.  

14. Hugo Slim, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness, and Morality in War (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2008). 

15. Quoted in Slim, Killing Civilians 60–61.  

16. Eileen Egan, “The Beatitudes, the Works of Mercy, and Pacifism,” in War or Peace?: The 

Search for New Answers, ed. Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980), 173–175.  

17. John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2011); Joshua S. Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The 

Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide (New York: Dutton, 2011), chapters 9–10; Dave 

Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, rev. 

ed. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), 199–201.  

18. Grossman, On Killing; Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing 

in 20th Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999).  

19. Slim, Killing Civilians chapter 3.  

20. Pope John Paul II, Centesimus annus, The Holy See, 1991, §52,  

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-

ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html. 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 40 
 

21. Joseph J. Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2010 

(Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010); Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the 

Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It (Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 2007); Paul Collier, “Postconflict Economic Policy,” in Building States to Build 

Peace, eds. Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 

2008), 103–117. 

22. I develop the case against war’s ability to uphold a just and peaceful order in more detail 

in David Carroll Cochran, Catholic Realism and the Abolition of War (Maryknoll, NY: 

Orbis, 2014), Section II.  

23. Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” The Holy See, January 1, 2017,  

https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/papa-

francesco_20161208_messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html. 

24. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, The Holy See, 1987, §39,  

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-

ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html.  

25. For the theory and tactics of nonviolence, see the classic Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent 

Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential (Boston: Extending Horizons 

Books, 2005) and the more recent Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution (New York: 

Spiegel, 2015). For case studies of it in action, see Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A 

Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Palgrave, 2000).  

26. Oliver Kaplan, Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves (Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2017). 

27. Katatnycky and Ackerman, How Freedom is Won.  

28. Chenoweth and Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works.  

29. Chenoweth and Stephan, “How the World:” Erica Chenoweth and Evan Perkoski, 

Preventing Mass Atrocities (Denver, CO: Sie Cheou-Kang Center for International 

Security and Diplomacy, 2017). 

30. See, for example, Pope John XXIII, Pacem in terris, The Holy See, 1963, §§137–141 and 

144, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_ 

11041963_pacem.html; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium §82; Pope Paul VI, Populorum 

Progressio, The Holy See, 1967, §78, https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/ 



41  Cochran 
 

 
 

documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html; World Synod of Catholic Bishops, 

Justice in the World, 1971, §65, https://www1.villanova.edu/content/dam/villanova/ 

mission/JusticeIntheWorld1971.pdf; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The 

Challenge of Peace, 1983, §§96 and 241–242, http://www.usccb.org/upload/challenge-

peace-gods-promise-our-response-1983.pdf; United States Conference of Catholic 

Bishops, The Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace, 1993, http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-

teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/the-harvest-of-justice-is-sown-in-

peace.cfm; Pope John Paul II, “Pacem in terris: A Permanent Commitment,” The Holy 

See, 2003, §6, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/ 

hf_jp-ii_mes_20021217_xxxvi-world-day-for-peace.html; Pope John Paul II, “An Ever 

Timely Commitment: Teaching Peace,” The Holy See, 2004, §5, http://www.vatican.va/ 

content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20031216_xxxvii-

world-day-for-peace.html; and Pope Benedict XVI, “The Human Family: A Community 

of Peace,” The Holy See, 2008, §§11 and 13, http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/ 

en/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20071208_xli-world-day-peace.html.  

31. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1990; Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms 

and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). 

32. Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in 

International Society,” International Organization 44.4 (1990): 479–526; Peter Andreas 

and Ethan Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in 

International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Sangmin Bae, When the 

State No Longer Kills: International Human Rights Norms and the Abolition of Capital 

Punishment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007).  

33. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: 

Viking, 2011), 272–273.  

34. Goldstein, Winning the War 225.  

35. James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern 

Europe (Boston: Mariner Books, 2008).  

36. Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and 

International Organizations (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001). 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 42 
 

37. David Cortright, “Sanctions and Stability Pacts: The Economic Tools of Peacemaking,” in 

Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques, rev. ed., ed. I. William 

Zartman (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007): 385–418; George A. 

Lopez, “Don’t Just Do Something: Getting Sanctions Right,” Commonweal June 6, 2008, 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/dont-just-do-something; Goldstein, Winning the 

War; Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan 

to Outlaw War Remade the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).  

38. Charles A. Kupchan, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace 

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Jacob Bercovitch, “Mediation in 

International Conflicts: Theory, Practice, and Developments,” in Peacemaking in 

International Conflict, 163–194; Richard D. Bilder, “Adjudication: International Abritral 

Tribunals and Courts,” in Peacemaking in International Conflict, 195–226; Goldstein, 

Winning the War; Cynthia Sampson, “Religion and Peacebuilding,” in Peacemaking in 

International Conflict, 273–323; Mario Marazziti, “Lessons in Peace: The Relevance of 

Mozambique’s Peace Agreement 20 Years Later,” America, November 19, 2012, 

https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/5159/article/lessons-peace.  

39. James Dobbins, et al., The U.N.’s Role in Nation Building: From the Congo to Iraq (Santa 

Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2005); James Dobbins, Testimony: A Comparative 

Evaluation of United Nations Peacekeeping (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 

2007). 

40. Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United 

Nations Peace Operations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Peter 

Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution: War, Peace and the Global System, 2nd 

ed. (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2007), chapter 2.  

41. Goldstein, Winning the War; Collier, “Postconflict Economic Polity”; Barnett R. Rubin, 

“The Politics of Security in Postconflict Statebuilding,” in Building States to Build Peace, 

25–47; Doyle and Sambanis, Making War; Dobbins, et al., The U.N.’s Role; Dobbins, 

Testimony; Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, and Andrew G. Reiter, Transnational Justice 

in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington, DC: United States 

Institute of Peace Press, 2010); Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict chapter 7.  



43  Cochran 
 

 
 

42. Marie O’Reilly, Why Women?: Inclusive Security and Peaceful Societies (Washington, 

DC: Inclusive Security, 2015). 

43. See, for example, Pope John XXIII, Pacem §§122–123; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium 

§60; Pope Paul VI, Populorum §§10, 14–17, 20, 34–35 and 47; World Synod of Catholic 

Bishops, Justice §15; Pope Paul VI, Octogesima adveniens, The Holy See, 1971, §41, 

http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-

vi_apl_19710514_octogesima-adveniens.html; Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo §§1, 15–16, 

29–30, 32–33, and 35; Pope John Paul II, Centesimus §29; and Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas 

in Veritate, The Holy See, 2009, §§11, 18, and 23, http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-

xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html.  

44. Collier, The Bottom Billion; Charles Kenny, Getting Better: Why Global Development Is 

Succeeding—and How We Can Improve the World even More (New York: Basic Books, 

2011); Joseph K. Young and Michael G. Findley, “Can Peace Be Purchased? A Sectoral-

Level Analysis of Aid’s Influence on Transnational Terrorism,” Public Choice 149.3–4 

(2011): 365–381; Roger C. Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 2007); Goldstein, Winning the War.  

45. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, 

Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown, 2012); G. Shabbir Cheema, Building 

Democratic Institutions: Governance Reform in Developing Countries (Bloomfield, CT: 

Kumarian Press, 2005); O’Reilly, Why Women?; Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros, The 

Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 2014); Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict chapter 6.  

46. Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can 

(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010); Tamara Cofman Wittes, Freedom’s 

Unsteady March: America’s Role in Building Arab Democracy (Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “The Myth of 

the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracies Will Prevail,” Foreign Affairs 88.1 

(2009): 77–93; Steven W. Hook, Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice (Kent, OH: 

Kent State University Press, 2010); Thomas Carothers, ed., Promoting the Rule of Law 

Abroad: In Search of Knowledge (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International 

Peace, 2006). 



The Realism Objection to Setting Aside Just War Theory: A Response 44 
 

47. I develop the case for the effectiveness of war’s nonviolent alternatives in more detail in 

Cochran, Catholic Realism section IV; and David Carroll Cochran, “War and the 

Surprising Realism of Catholicism’s Peacemaking Agenda,” The Journal of Catholic 

Social Thought 11.1 (2014): 105–125. 

48. Pope Paul VI, “Address of Pope Paul VI to the U.N. General Assembly,” The Pope Speaks 

11.1 (1966): 54. 

49. Quoted in United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Challenge of Peace §219.  

50. Cochran, Catholic Realism chapter 4.  

51. I develop the case for war’s abolition and its parallels to other forms of institutionalized 

violence in more detail in Cochran, Catholic Realism sections III and IV; David Carroll 

Cochran, “What Slavery, Ordeals, Duels, and Lynching Can Teach Us About Abolishing 

War,” Waging Nonviolence, May 8, 2015, https://wagingnonviolence.org/2015/06/slavery-

ordeals-duels-lynching-can-teach-us-abolishing-war/; and David Carroll Cochran, “A 

World Without War: Why It’s No Fantasy,” Commonweal January 8, 2016,  

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/world-without-war.  

52. Hathaway and Shapiro, Internationalists; Goldstein, Winning the War; Pinker, Better 

Angels chapters 5–6; John Mueller, The Remnants of War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 

Press, 2004); Robert Jervis, “Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace,” 

American Political Science Review 96.1 (2002): 1–14. 

53. Bae, When the State.  

 


