Cicero and The Universal Law of War

Alexander Moseley's Philosophy of War Pages

"Veni, Vidi, Vici - honorabiliter"

Cicero and The Universal Laws of War

"Rather St. Augustine than Cicero, when it comes to the laws of war", wrote Peter Jones in a recent column in the Spectator (Ancient & modern 3^rd May). But there is more to Cicero than a few phrases that allegedly have him supporting the stab and thrust of the gladius: Cicero was by far one of the greatest proponents of a universal law of conduct and an unrelenting campaigner for honour and truth in domestic and foreign policy that make his writings worth reconsidering.

“Most men consider that military affairs are of greater significance than civic,” he wrote in De Officiis: “I must deflate that opinion.” He was all too aware that Rome often conducted wars in the name of naked ambition and also that he was not in a position to change the cultural milieu in which he ambitiously strove to rise to the highest offices of the land. As a ‘new man’ whose family had never held a Senatorial post, Cicero earned his promotion through graft, intelligence, and wit; yet his audience was the old aristocratic class of patricians, whose boisterous ancestors and arrant relatives made their fame and fortune mainly on the battlefield. An out and out pacifist would not have been given a second hearing in Rome – on the fringes of Empire in the Middle East, perhaps.

Cicero was no pacifist – indeed he disdained cowardice and he himself lost his life because of his outspoken defence of the Republic. In the 19^th Century John Stuart Mill quipped, “some things are uglier than war,” and in Cicero, we read that “it is worthwhile to fight for freedom at the peril of one’s life. For life does not consist wholly in breathing; there is literally no life at all for one who is a slave.”

Cicero generally despised military action. There are two forms of conflict, he noted: debate and war. Debate is morally and politically appropriate for man because he was born with reason and language that unite us into the important fellowship of humanity. This fellowship did not end at boundaries of the Empire. Thus he helped set the philosophical argument that Christians employed in promoting their ideal of the brotherhood of man.

The logical opposite of reasoned debate – violence – was only truly appropriate for the beasts of the world. It was not for the virtuous man.

From this he forms his first and most important justification of war: we should only take up arms when debate is barred. The ramifications of this position echo in all modern discussions on military and humanitarian intervention: freeing the people of Iraq being the latest example.

Tyrants should be overthrown, Cicero advises, for there can be no fellowship between citizens and a tyrant who removes their freedom to proceed peacefully. Of course, Cicero was referring to cases in his lifetime in which Rome was usurped by dictators (notably Sulla and Caesar), but the thrust of his Stoical philosophy lifts his arguments above any self-seeking foreign policy and beyond imperial borders. Tyrants are morally beyond the pale of human morality and “indeed the whole pestilential and irreverent class ought to be expelled from the community of mankind.”

The Stoics, from whom Cicero drew most of his political and moral thought, were not supporters of what we now call political realism. They were aware of such machinations and the myopic greed that motivated people, but they insisted that the proper statesman rose above such base desires to become a role model for higher, morally objective and universal codes of conduct, epitomised in living honourably.

To live honourably meant abiding by the natural law that is the basis of human fellowship. Seeking benefit is always to be rejected in favour of doing what is honourable – that is, what is just.

The Empire was a fact of life for Cicero and one to which he had to adapt, just as the pax Americana is becoming a way for the world today. Power had to be welded to morality to give it authority. Otherwise it was merely an exercise in tyranny.

The rule of the sword meant ruling through fear but “fear is a poor guardian over any length of time.” Again, only trust and honourable dealing will attract people to staying in the pax Romana. “There is no military power so great,” he warned, “that it can last for a long time under the weight of fear.”

In catching the ear of his patrician audience, Cicero had to remind them not only of Rome’s great military victories but that those expeditions were glorious because they had been governed by honour. Indeed, Cicero portrayed a fond image of the Republic – one that we see again at the heyday of the British Empire – that “we were more a protectorate than an Empire.” Certainly there’s arrogance in his thinking, but what was the alternative – tribes whose bellicosity would have destroyed the very fabric of civilisation, its rule of law and peaceful means of resolving conflict?

In pertinent comments for the reconstruction of Iraq, Cicero urged that in defeating foreign peoples, Rome ought to be tolerant, liberal, and most importantly honest. Hatred of Rome was born from the dishonourable and treacherous acts against the vanquished: after forty years of inconsistent foreign policy, this something America is learning too. “Justice has more power to win faith [in us],” Cicero taught, and that can only come from honourable and honest actions.

But there were real threats to local and Roman peace that justified self-defence: traditional enemies along the borders, but also brigands and pirates, whose activities, like those of terrorists today, took them beyond morality.

In dealing with Rome’s usual enemies, Cicero advised abiding by strict rules, and it is these guidelines that have seeped into the Western tradition of just war theory. An offence must have taken place for the war to be justifiable. That offence required compensation, which if not forthcoming would involve a warning followed by a declaration of war by the festial college: the patrician priestly class who oversaw the laws of war.

Of course, what is defined as offensive and requiring restoration was subject to the vagaries of Roman politics, but the guiding principle attracted intellectuals to debate what ought to be universally offensive and thus satisfy universal laws of war. Cicero knew that the Senate bent the meaning of ‘offence’ to promote the ambitions of its favourite generals and to ply the masses with triumphant parties and games; but trying to turn the ears of politicians enamoured with military exploits, he warned them that if glory were to be sought, “then away with the crime!”

Thus in fighting traditional, nominally honourable enemies, strict rules of conduct ought to apply; hence in his writings we find the formation of the jus in bello codes that eventually formed the criteria on how wars ought to be fought that are now enshrined in the Hague and Geneva conventions, which Anglo-American forces in Iraq attempted to obey assiduously in what shall become a textbook case for just war theorists.

Theorists argue that wars ought to be fought according to the principles of discrimination and responsibility. Soldiers ought to discriminate between morally legitimate and illegitimate targets, and their violence ought to remain proportional to the ends sought – prescriptions we find in Cicero.

All dishonesty, he intoned, ought to be removed from Rome’s policies; no traps should be set for its enemies; no assassins or poisoners should be deployed in war. Combatants should be clearly identified as soldiers and civilians ought not to fight. Temples should never be attacked, but if the troops do plunder them in the heat of battle, then their treasures should be displayed publicly. He also pointed to the justifying of war on behalf of Roman merchants and seafarers attacked abroad, laws that resurfaced in Hugo Grotius’s famous tome on the Rights of War and Peace and its descendants which formed the international laws of the sea in modern times.

In summary: all deceit and low blows should be avoided in war. Cicero offered numerous examples to remind the Roman people of the honour of its great military and political leaders, constantly teaching them of the virtues that made Rome: of gravitas, pietas, and iustia: responsibility, filial devotion, and a sense of a natural order.

But it was different with pirates, tyrants, and traitors. Pirates should be treated by one principle only: extermination. “For a pirate is not counted as an enemy proper, but the common foe of all.” Herein we find the driving policy of America’s war on the ‘axis of evil’ and rogue states, whose policies define them as enemies to humanity; but so too do the UN proscriptions on ‘crimes against humanity’ recall Cicero’s challenge to deal with those who seek to undermine the foundations of civilisation. “If he thinks that acting violently against other men involves doing nothing to contrary to nature – then how can you argue with him? For he takes all the ‘human’ out of a human.”Such figures have put themselves beyond law and honour and may be treated in any manner required.

In his orations on those who would stir up civil war, Cicero’s invective was at its best – to destroy their intellectual base through debate and applying the full weight of the law.

In outlining the rule of conduct in war, Cicero often repeated traditional customs that were familiar to the Mediterranean peoples, but he also gave an explicit voice to the codes, which permitted their philosophical and legal development

We leave him with the parting thought that certainly distances him from martial minds: “one must hold fast to reason” and “act in such a way that we attempt nothing contrary to universal nature.”

Author of A Philosophy of War.