Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Part I

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Classic Just War Theory and Exploding Pagers – Did Israel Violate Just War Principles and Break International Law With Exploding Pagers and Walkie-Talkies?

Over the weekend, Israel and Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, mostly located in Lebanon, came closer and closer to something like a total war. And this is a big and ominous development in the Middle East, and particularly ominous for Israel. Now, the very first thing we need to recognize, that this underlines Israel’s unique predicament in the world.Israel’s surrounded by enemies, in one sense. That doesn’t mean that every nation around it is an enemy in terms of direct threat. Think, for example, of Egypt. But Egypt has been a military opponent of Israel, and Egypt had joined in the effort to try to eliminate Israel shortly after the nation was declared. But it is surrounded by nations that want to bring about its non-existence. The one exception to this might well be Jordan, but Jordan also has a very large Palestinian population that tends, understandably, to take the Palestinian side on so many of these issues.

But as you’re looking at terrorist groups, just consider the fact that Israel has been at war with Hamas, after the brutal surprise attack by Hamas that was so murderous back in October 7 of 2023. But then, you look also at Hezbollah. Now, Hezbollah is Shiite, whereas Hamas is Sunni, in terms of Muslim identity. Hezbollah is, however, a patron of Iran, and so in another sense is Hamas. But we’re also looking at the fact that, when you look at Hezbollah, you are looking at an organization which is an organized militia and is, if anything, far better armed than Hamas. It is estimated that Hezbollah has an arsenal of literally thousands of missiles that could be launched against the United States. Now, missile in this case would include smaller rockets, including shoulder-fired weapons, but the point is they can be very, very deadly.
And you’re also looking at the fact that thousands of Israelis have already had to evacuate their homes and move to safer areas, simply because of the threat of Hezbollah. But you’re looking at the warning now coming from just about all sides, that we could be looking at a slide towards full-scale war, this after the very intense night, Sunday night, in terms of attacks both ways. Now, Israel is one of our most key allies there in the Middle East, and of course, we’re allied for several very important reasons. But looking at this, you recognize that this particular ally is isolated in a way that most other allies are not, and it is threatened in a way that no other ally is threatened. It is surrounded by groups, not all of them nations of course, but groups, organizations, militias, terrorist organizations that want to bring about the non-existence of Israel, and Hezbollah is right in that mix.

Now, it is unlikely, in one sense, that Hezbollah is ready to take on Israel in a protracted war, because it does not have a way of assuring any kind of likely victory, but it can do vast damage, and maybe that is the point. That’s one of the reasons why these proxy organizations serving the cause of Iran, a declared enemy of Israel and of the Jewish state, you come to understand that it is not always a rational decision-making process that leads to the outbreak of war. Human history is littered with wars that did not begin because of a sane, rational process, but began because something got out of hand. And Israel is not going to allow the attacks coming from Hezbollah or Hamas, but in this case of Hezbollah, to go without response. That is one of the hard lessons that Israel has learned, it is a hard lesson in terms of retaliation that Israel intends to teach.
But even as we’re watching this with grave concern, we need to shift to another big headline news story that’s very much about Hezbollah and Israel. But in this case, we’re talking about the exploding pagers. Just a matter of about a week ago, Israel launched a massive deadly attack by using hundreds upon hundreds of pagers. Brilliantly, ingeniously, in one sense, they were programmed to explode with the right code, the right message being sent on those pagers. It turns out to be a spectacularly successful effort by the intelligence agencies. By the way, Israel has not acknowledged its role publicly in this, but just about all sides and all observers recognize that this basically had to be Israel as the force behind the attack, and the exploding pagers killed several, and that death toll is still rising, wounded more. And then, the next day, there were exploding walkie-talkies.

And since then, things are getting downright nervous, not only when you look at Hezbollah, but also when you look at other of the proxy organizations used by Iran and funded by Iran in its efforts against Israel. So there are a lot of big questions here, but the big headline question that many are considering is this, did Israel do something immoral in terms of the use of these pagers as deadly weapons? Or to put it another way, did Israel break international law? Has Israel become a criminal state because of its use of this technology and by the utilization of this plan? Well, an interesting debate has broken out among American specialists, and this is broken out also in the mainstream media here in the United States, especially in the more rarefied sectors, where you have people making pretty in-depth legal and political moral arguments about whether Israel did something allowable or illegal in this case.

Now, in the context of modern debates about the morality of war, one name stands out, that’s the name of Michael Walzer. He’s a major academic, and he had written the book entitled Just and Unjust Wars. And that goes back, of course, to long-standing Christian moral teaching that has become known to us as just war theory. When is a war just? Just war theory is a very serious effort. You might put it this way, to bring our understanding of war and the morality of war into an analysis that is based in the Christian worldview. How should Christians understand these things? The consensus of theologians and moral thinkers among Christians has come down to the fact that the war has to be, first of all, basically defensive. It can’t be offensive. When you are looking at launching an attack in order to, say, gain the territory of another nation, that is morally wrong, but fighting back against an invading force, that’s morally right.

And then, you have issues of course that come down to who has the authority to declare war? And that’s why, in just war theory, that legitimate authority becomes a very key issue. And there are other criteria about when and when not a war is morally legitimate. But then, there’s a second aspect, and that is how, if a war is legitimate, is it legitimately fought? And that’s where you have to come down to issues such as the use of rightful force. So you don’t use disproportionate force and you also discriminate. Now, that is often considered a bad word among us, but in this case it’s a very positive word, because it means identifying, discriminating, between civilians and combatants, in order to protect the lives of civilians. That’s an important principle of how a war is to be fought.

But when it comes to something like exploding pagers, where does that come down? Well, Christian just worth theory is something that is argued these days, but you also have a secular conversation about the morality of war. And honestly, in a far more secular age, the secular conversation becomes more and more the main conversation. So in this argument, Michael Walzer argues that Israel was wrong, that it likely committed something like a war crime by use of these booby traps, the exploding pagers. The word booby trap, by the way, is actually a key to understanding, in the 20th century, how some of these issues were thought out in terms of moral ethics and the ethics of war.
And the issue here is that Michael Walzer says that the attacks of these exploding pagers came, “When the operatives were not operating.” Very interesting argument. He’s saying these were not people who were, right then, attacking Israel, so it’s illegitimate. Of course, Israel’s response to that is absolutely clear, and that is they are operating as operatives of this terrorist organization, because the very use of these pagers means they’re merely waiting for a command about how to attack Israel. We’re not going to have to wait until that happens. So you’re looking here at a very contested argument, but it’s really clear, Michael Walzer says there was no legitimacy here.

Now, he goes on to say that the war itself is legitimate. He writes, “Condemning an act of war is not the same as condemning the war itself. Hamas and Hezbollah,” he writes, “are fighting against Israel for an immoral and unjust purpose, the elimination of the Jewish state.” So Michael Walzer says the war is legitimate as fought by Israel, but this particular weapon, not allowed. But then, you have, as response, an article from an official at a think-tank connected to West Point, the US military academy, Air Commodore, William H. Boothby, who’s retired, by the way, as deputy director of the Royal Air Force Legal Services in the United Kingdom. He serves as honorary professor at the Australian National University, teaches at the University of Southern Denmark and at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. In other words, he gets around on these arguments.

He comes back with a major, very substantial article on the morality of war and the use of these exploding pagers. And he takes on, in particular, at least I want to draw attention to the fact, that he is saying that there was an intention on the part of Israel to ensure that those who were killed or injured by these exploding pagers were combatants rather than civilians. He says, near the conclusion of his article, “It was probably reasonable for those planning and conducting the operation to assume that pagers issued for military purposes would be in the possession of their military users at the time of detonation.” I think most people would look at that and say that is pretty much common sense. In other words, they didn’t send exploding pagers into the general population. They were distributed by Hezbollah to its militants. That’s an important point.

Another team of writers, including the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, raised the very same issue. They were responding to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who argued that Israel had committed a war crime, unquestionably, by the use of these exploding pagers. The article that appeared in Newsweek responded with the title “Sorry, AOC. Israel’s Precision Attack Against Hezbollah Was Humane and Legal,” even we would add, if it was lethal. This is a very interesting sentence, “Although the attacks were immediately attributed to Israel, the Jewish state has so far not claimed responsibility. In the event that Israel did carry out the operation, it could only be understood as the most audacious and unprecedented counterterrorism precision attack in military history, and one that was entirely justified and in full accordance with international law.”

So rarely do you see academics write a paragraph quite that clear. In other words, they say, “This might well go down as the most audacious and unprecedented counterterrorism precision attack in all of military history,” and they send the unqualified judgment that it’s in full accordance with international law. So again, there’s a debate here, and it is at least somewhat predictable how this debate is going to come down. John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies there at the Modern War Institute at West Point, he’s the one who said, “The operation passes all fundamental laws of war, necessity, proportionality, and distinction. It was a very precise sabotage of an enemy piece of equipment used for military purposes.” But there are those who come back and make the other argument that the use of booby traps is something that after World War I has been considered illegal, a breach of international law.

But then again, in terms of technicalities, what nation signed what agreement, this gets really detailed, but the point is, I don’t think Israel cares much the determination that other nations, or for that matter, the United Nations would reach about this. They’re facing an existential threat, they know it. It is a threat to the very existence of Israel, and so they’re not likely to be very sympathetic to many of these arguments. Furthermore, this is where we recognize that, in the context of war, these exploding pagers are going to go down in history somewhat like, say, the ancient Trojan horse. It becomes a metaphor. People talk about a Trojan horse the way you talk about other cultural and historic references. Well, exploding pagers may be somewhere on that list for generations to come.

An official United Nations human rights organization put out a statement, “Exploding pagers and radios, a terrifying violation of international law, say UN experts.” Some representing this United Nations body put out a statement that said, “These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time. Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder. We express our deepest solidarity with the victims of these attacks.”

Now, let’s just state something honestly, a part of Israel’s intention here is to make anyone connected with its enemies, certainly terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, be very, very scared all the time. They want to create a situation in which there is a fear of Israel and of Israel’s retaliation, and there are few ways of getting that attention more clearly than the kind of attack that was undertaken here. Now, remember, as I said before, at least in terms of the pagers, this was a targeted attack, even in terms of the pagers being often carried in the pocket to do maximum damage. And so you are really looking at a very clear signal. No one in the Middle East fails to understand exactly what signal was being sent, and that signal was the words or the letters that appeared on the pager screen.

It’s also clear that other nations, even some nations that would condemn Israel, well, on the one hand, you could put them in the column of nations that always condemn Israel, but you also have some who might be elsewhere in terms of the political spectrum who might criticize Israel, but their own militaries are saying, “Wow, this is really impressive.” Now, in terms of Christian just war theory, I want to say that I don’t think the particular statute here invoking an illegal judgment on booby traps is particularly convincing, not when it is really something as targeted as passing out pagers for a terrorist organization. If a booby trap is something left in a field that a child might accidentally trigger, that’s a very different thing. If there’s a danger to the civilian population, that’s a very different thing.

If indeed these pagers might’ve been used customarily, and by intention by persons who aren’t even connected to the terrorist organization, that’d a very different thing. But we do know what we’re facing here, and I think by Christian just war theory and by a rightful reading of international law, Israel was justified here. I also want to point to one other simple matter of what is called realpolitik. That means political realism, and that is that, in a similar situation, the United States and our allies would almost assuredly do something similar if we had the opportunity. I’m just going to state that as what I believe to be a fact. You know, one of the differences is, and this is also cultural, and so let me just state this out loud, one of the differences is that it might be in the national interest of the United States not to take any kind of public attribution for such an act. It might well be in the interest of Israel to make certain that attribution is not missed. Israel is in a very dangerous neighborhood. Sending certain kinds of messages is essential for its own national survival.

Part II

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Does the U.S. Face a Danger of Technology Attack? As Biden Administration Proposes Ban on Chinese Software, the Answer Might Hit Closer to Home Than You Think

But all right, now let’s bring this closer to home. It’s one thing to talk about exploding walkie-talkies and pagers in the Middle East, but what about in the United States? Do we face any kind of danger like this? We’l, just consider yesterday’s breaking news headline in The New York Times, “Biden Administration Proposes Ban on Chinese Software and Vehicles.” This is a very big story. The Biden administration has decided that it is a violation of our own national security and national interest to allow Chinese software, which after all, could be eventually controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, to operate on vehicles in the United States.

Just a few weeks ago, there was controversy about the Chinese manufacture of shipping cranes at major ports, and the fact that it isn’t known just what kind of surveillance these cranes might actually be undertaking for the Communist Party there in China, and whether or not, for instance, machines might shut themselves off, or be activated for use other than what the buyers in the United States intend. And surveillance, is there surveillance going on? Is the very geolocator that says where you are on a map and helps you to know your directions, could it tell and be very revealing and significant to the Chinese Communist Party? Could it tell others where you are when you don’t want them to know where you are?

It’s also interesting to note that one of the public comments made about this was made by the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, Jake Sullivan, who said, “Many of these technologies collect large volumes of information on drivers.” And he went on to say, that is something very dangerous, “and for that reason, connected vehicles and the technology they use bring new vulnerabilities and threats, especially in the case of vehicles or components developed in the People’s Republic of China and other countries of concern.”

Now, let’s just state the obvious, no previous generation had to worry about this, but it’s also perhaps less obvious that a lot of people alive today haven’t been considering any of these vulnerabilities, but now, all of a sudden, they’re being brought to our attention. It’s not just in the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal’s report, headline, Biden Administration Proposes Ban on Chinese and Russian Components in Connected Vehicles. So now, you see Chinese and Russian sources being rethought. The very same day, this is yesterday’s print edition of The Wall Street Journal headline, “Electronic Warfare Spooks Airlines, Pilots and Air Safety Officials.” In this case, it’s talking about such things as GPS systems, autopilot on planes and air traffic control. What if an enemy were to gain control of these things? And what if the use of so many foreign chips, so many Chinese-made computer chips, what if so much of that technology, what if the internet has back doors we don’t even know about?

What if foreign actors have actually encoded things within the American mapping system, the American air traffic control system, the American autopilot system? What if someone who is an enemy could take these things over? What kind of mayhem could they create? Well, the fact is just about everyone understands that even if they just shut things off, that could bring the United States to a standstill, and perhaps with even deadly effect. The risk for most Americans is not that their electronic device might explode, certainly by the initiative of a foreign source, but the greater danger is that it might be tracking you and collecting information it is sending to someone you don’t want to have that information. It might even be sending that information to an enemy of the United States. We simply don’t know, and that is the point. And that’s why there is now urgent concern, national Security, national defense concern about the dependence of the United States on so many foreign technologies, including the manufacture of computer chips.

But it also has to do with the vulnerabilities that come by being connected to everyone, everywhere by means of the internet. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand just how disastrous that could be. Of course, this has direct relevance for us as we think about the 2024 elections, because what if some of those foreign chips and foreign influence in software, which has been derived from foreign software sources, what if some of that is used to crash the 2024 American presidential election? If not to crash it, then to distort it or to make it suspect? Just imagine the political and moral mayhem that would cause in the United States of America, and this is no longer science fiction. This is something we can actually contemplate. And then, you have the documented cases in which China, and North Korea, and Russia, and other sources are believed to be actively engaged with disinformation about the 2024 American election. How’s that for good news on a Tuesday?

Part III

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There’s Always a Moral Dimension to Technology: The Need for Careful Christian Thinking is Urgent as Stakes of Technology Continue to Grow

But as we have to close, this should serve to remind Christians that there’s a moral dimension to every technology. There always has been. There’s a moral dimension to the wheel. You can do good things with a wheel, you can do dangerous things with a wheel, but we’re not here talking about wheels. We’re talking about massively developed, sophisticated electronic digital technologies. And of course, we’re even talking about something that is rightly called artificial intelligence. And you understand that the stakes just get higher as the technologies become more powerful and more sophisticated. This is also where we have to understand another Biblical principle, and that is that we are responsible for what we create. We are responsible for what we build. We are responsible for the consequences if those consequences are morally positive or if those consequences are morally negative, and sometimes, the consequences are mixed.

And you have to think about it for a moment. Someone can use a car to kill someone. Someone can use a car to take someone who is having a heart attack to a hospital. Well, the reality is that the good use of the automobile vastly outstrips the evil use of the automobile. That’s a pretty easy calculation to make. But when it comes to other technologies, guess what? The calculation is not so easy. But this reminds Christians of something else, and that is that there are so many of these looming issues that you don’t have to think about every day. I doubt there are many American Christians who’ve been too worried about the use of these foreign chips and the vulnerability that comes by foreign actors on the internet, the use of this kind of digital sabotage and all the rest. I’m just going to guess that there aren’t too many American Christians who’ve been thinking too much about these things, and Christians in other nations probably are pretty much in the same boat.

But all of a sudden, you have a story that comes about exploding pagers in the Middle East, and then people say, “Well, you know, there are similar dangers elsewhere. If not exploding pagers, then perhaps shutting down a GPS system, shutting down an air traffic control system.” Well, now, guess what? You’ve got our attention. This is where Christians also have to understand that we live in a very dangerous world, and it is extremely dangerous to forget for a moment that we live in a very dangerous world, and this is why we have national defense. This is why we have national intelligence. It is why Israel has the Mossad and its intelligence capability. That’s why Israel has a very active army. It is because, otherwise, Israel would not exist. And let’s be honest, the same thing is true for the United States of America and our allies.

But it is also true that those who are fighting for good have a purpose for which they are fighting. Those who are inventing for good have a purpose for which they are inventing. Those who are working hard, standing on the wall, so to speak, in order to protect others, they’re doing a very good work, and this is just a reminder of the fact that they can’t get much sleep in such a dangerous world. They work to be very good at their jobs so the rest of us can sleep more soundly at night.
But as is the case right now, sometimes these issues, these questions just burst upon our national conversation. That’s not a bad thing in this case, but it is humbling to recognize how little we, as individuals, can do about this entire question.