The End of Just Wars

Leon Aron is Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.  Blogging for CNN World, he has a gloomy view of the Gaza and Ukraine conflicts. See what he writes about the outcomes and why those will occur:

Two wars – one in Gaza the other in eastern Ukraine – are unfolding simultaneously. They have nothing in common except this: both should be being seen as unambiguous in terms of which side is right and which wrong.

And second, both are likely to end in a strategic (i.e. long-term) defeat for the right side because of the attitudes that shape the approach of Western leaders to both wars.

Two reasons in the post-modern canon could provide an explanation. First, while someone's victory implies someone's defeat, "peace" – no matter how fraudulent or short-lived – superficially has no losers, and for that reason is vastly preferable.

Second, the "right" and "wrong," the "just" and "unjust," the "good and evil" are inherently suspect because values themselves are suspect.

The coverage by the elite media of the West of both wars as "conflicts" in which the word "just" or its synonyms never once appear, both sides are somehow equally at fault, and therefore a victory by one side is not more morally agreeable than by the other.

Aron is certainly correct that the "just" side in both conflicts is being pressured by the West to agree to a cease-fire which will leave the aggressor in possession of ill-gotten gains, positioned to resume fighting later.