Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We are continuing today with our discussion on the incoherence of just war theory. And today, we are going to talk about the tenant of not reasonable success. That's what we just talked about. We are going to talk about the tenant of last resort.

Derek: 00:27

War must be a last resort. It has to be something that is sought absolutely last and all other avenues of opportunity pursued before we engage in warfare. Once again, I'm gonna remind you that the audio quality of this episode might be a little bit off, and if it is, please excuse it. And we hope to return to normalcy soon. This episode is going to be a bit shorter just because there isn't all that much that I've I've thought about with last resort that I'm I'm gonna have to say.

Derek: 01:00

So I really only have kind of two points to make here, and I'm sure as I think about it over the next few years that I'll I'll probably be able to add to this. But I think with all of the the other ones that are more more obvious and have a lot more points, I I think I can deal with last resort having a little bit less for it. So the two things that I would say would be first, it seems to me that the idea of of last resort, stifles creativity when violence is an option on the table because violence is much much easier to employ than nonviolence. And so I'm gonna argue that I don't think you've maybe I shouldn't say ever, but I wanna say almost never have we actually gotten to a case where violence in war was a true last resort. As long as violence is an option, it's going to be easy for it to not be the last resort.

Derek: 02:12

So it's going to be instead of me compromising, I'm gonna say I'm not gonna compromise, I'm willing to get to the level of violence because this is so important to me, I'll kill them over it if if they're not gonna move. And it's it's easy to have that as a a resort, not a last resort. It it fails to force compromise and it fails to force working together so long as it's on the table. If violence were off the table, then we would have we would be a lot more creative in our in our actions. And I think you can see this on a small scale, on the individuals who've been willing to enact non violence.

Derek: 02:57

There are two great books on this, one by John Howard Yoder which is, called What Would You Do? And then another which is a book of a lot more stories called Victories Without Violence. And in both of those books they will talk about specific instances of people enacting non violence in violent potentially violent and violent situations. And after reading through it, there there are quite a number of connections that you can make, of patterns that you can find, but one of the ones that you see a lot is that when when somebody enacts something non violently, you're like, I would have never thought of that. And it it's funny because, you know, when I was when I was growing up, when I was a kid, I would love like, would be at at my school and I'm either hopefully, I'm not telling you something that makes me super weird, or creepy, but it might be.

Derek: 03:54

But I think this is probably something that has gone through a lot of boys heads. But I would, while I was at school, I would like imagine a school shooter coming through and I would imagine like being the brave person who somehow snuck behind them and grabbed their gun and took them out. Right? Got them got them all taken care of and saved everybody, saved the day. That was that was what I imagined.

Derek: 04:20

And I would love to fantasize about warfare and being a hero and and just resolving things violently. But recently, after reading these two books I mentioned, I've actually started, and and this is probably weird for a 34 year old, you can probably understand more from my middle school perspective imagining shooting bad guys, but as a 34 year old, I've started to think about, okay, what would I do if right now somebody came in with a knife or right now this happened? How would I act non violently? And I've started to to play scenarios out in my head. You know, it's amazing when you steep yourself in the stories of non violence and when you think that violence is not an option, there are actually a lot of things that you can do to attempt to subvert violence.

Derek: 05:17

Now of course it won't always work and it may not even work most of the time, but I guarantee you that, I'm not a big guy so most of the time my attempt at violence against an intruder is not going to work either. But if violence is my option against an intruder, I've got maybe a few objects in the room at any at any time that I'd be able to use against an intruder, if there's only one, and I'm probably not gonna win that fight. But as far as non violence goes, there are many avenues that you can pursue in terms of conversation and observations and and other sorts of things. And that might sound crazy to you if you've never thought about nonviolent resistance, but if you take a look at those two books and read through them, you'll start to see what I mean about this idea of creativity. When violence is not an option and when the preservation of your well-being is not your ultimate goal, when love is your ultimate goal and violence isn't an option, you get a whole lot more creative with the ways that you can attempt to handle things.

Derek: 06:33

It doesn't mean you'll always be successful at handling those situations, it doesn't mean you won't ever resort to violence in the heat of the moment, but your options are so much greater when violence is not an option. And I think that one of my main problems with this idea of last resort is that it never really is the last resort. It's the last resort amongst selfish people, selfish nations, selfish individuals who are unwilling to compromise. So that's that's really what last resort means. It means the last resort amongst selfish people who are unwilling to compromise.

Derek: 07:11

It doesn't mean the last resort amongst rational people who get to a point where no further compromises can be made and they just have to go out and kill each other. That's what last resort should mean and does mean in people's heads, but that's not what it actually means in in the real world. And that's going to run into our second point. And the second point is really just kind of an extension of the first, and my main question is why isn't Christ's example our last resort? Why don't we draw the line of what a last resort is at a different place?

Derek: 07:50

And to kind of highlight that, I want to read an extended excerpt from one of the stories in Yoder's What Would You Do? Book, and this is the one by Henry Hodgkin entitled No Revolver as a Last Resort. So here's Hodgkin's extended quotation. And be it noted, he not only defends the defenseless woman, but he avoids the danger of still further infuriating a drunken man and perhaps doing him serious harm. He also is the means of permanently solving the problem.

Derek: 08:26

His act creates a good husband out of the violent drunkard. How many of our so called insoluble problems could be handled in a similar way? I have no means of knowing. But it is clear that given a real interest in the offender and a passionate desire to change his evil mind into a right one, there are many situations that can be dealt with quietly, which seem, on the face of it, to demand that we should call more vigorous methods. The fact is that the resort to force in most cases implies a disbelief in God and in man.

Derek: 08:59

It is a surrender of the higher method for a lower, easier, and be it noted, a less ultimately effective way of meeting evil. I remember discussing a similar problem with a friend during the recent war, and he said to me, yes, I should wish to use all the spiritual force which I could command, but I should like to have a revolver in my pocket to use if the worst came to worst. Now the view of the place of coercion that I am here maintaining is emphatically not that of my friend. It is not a case of turning to coercion as a last resort, but using it, if at all, as part of the method of love. The last resort in the mind of Jesus seems to have been the supreme appeal of forgiving love.

Derek: 09:42

If that failed, nothing else would succeed for the NT Haddon view. With the revolver in our pocket, so to speak, we missed the power to make the final appeal of goodwill. So what was Hodgkin saying? He was saying that Jesus shows us what the last resort is and the last resort is not violence. The last resort is being willing to lay down our lives for others in love.

Derek: 10:10

When we're willing to use violence, we fail to tap into the power of God. We fail to trust him with our lives, we fail to trust him with the heart of our of the aggressor who is attacking us. We fail to trust that he can bring good out of evil. We just fail to trust him through all of it and and being willing to have the same last resort that he himself had and he himself had in Jesus Christ. And that's a problem for us Christians, and that's a big problem for Just War Theory.

Derek: 10:46

So that's all for now. Peace. And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.