The Vatican’s case against military intervention by the US-led ‘coalition’ in the Persian Gulf was forcefully argued on the following grounds: 1) the destruction likely to be caused in the war would be entirely disproportionate to the not insignificant evil caused by Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 2) there was every likelihood that noncombatant death and injury would be enormous, 3) there was from the start every likelihood that Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait could be secured through diplomatic activity and negotiations without resort to the application of military force. The ‘just war’ case for the Gulf War was therefore not met, as far as the Vatican was concerned, because the case for the war failed to meet the criteria of proportionate response, discrimination, and last resort. It is true that, in framing his own objections to the war, Pope John Paul II was chary of referring directly to the so-called ‘just-war theory’. But Peter Hebblethwaite’s comment that ‘John Paul is not much interested in the pros and cons of just-war theology’ fails to account for the extent to which the Pope’s arguments against the war fell within the traditional criteria.

From the outset, the Vatican’s position was shaped by a few principles which, though broadly stated, remained constants in its attitude during the Gulf Crisis. A statement appearing in the Vatican’s official daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (9 August) along with the first papal statement on the crisis (26 August) contained the seeds of Vatican policy as it developed over the following months.

Right intention is but one of the requirements that must be met for a war to be just, according to the Just War tradition. To treat it in isolation, as a basis for analysing the motives of the multi-national coalition which confronted Iraq in the Gulf war, requires isolating and dissecting certain elements of a complex whole, which may distort more than it reveals. That said, the exercise does provide a way of exploring one aspect of the war which was, and remains, the subject of speculation in the Middle East, if not elsewhere.

Both before and during the Gulf war there was much discussion, some of it covered in the Western media, on the war aims of the coalition. Speculation focused on the possibility that the members of the coalition had certain objectives in addition to those publicly professed by the various governments concerned. Any evaluation of the intentions of the coalition members must thus take into account not only what they said their aims were, but also the objectives implied by the strategy they adopted and the terms on which they were prepared to end hostilities. Actions, presumably, reveal as much as words.

Here the emphasis will be on defining the war aims of the coalition, both implicit and explicit, short and long term, so that they may be examined in the light of the requirement, of the Just War tradition, that the intentions of the combatants be just. As a reference point, some assumptions about the meaning of ‘right intention’ will be offered at the outset.

The last resort criterion was employed by many critics of the war who believed that sanctions ought to have been given more time. Because sanctions were not given the chance to work fully, but were in effect preempted by the November 8th decision to double the American forces in the Gulf in preparation for a military solution, many people—including myself—held and still hold that claims for the overall justice of the war were seriously compromised. But we must consider a counter-argument to this, powerfully put by Oliver O’Donovan among others, which says that comprehensive sanctions such as were approved against Iraq are themselves a form of war: indeed of indiscriminate warfare, particularly aimed at the weakest and most defenceless members of the opposing nation. According to this view, morally speaking, there was little to choose between on the one hand bombing Iraqi civilians and destroying their essential life-support systems (water, electricity etc.), not to mention the wretched conscripted victims of Saddam’s military machine; and on the other hand starving them to death by sanctions. This case has force and we must not suppose that sanctions are anything other than ferocious and indiscriminate. The Ahtisaari report to the UN in March makes this perfectly clear. Nevertheless, distinctions do have to be drawn. Comprehensive economic sanctions first of all are clearly a legal means of pressure: the UN Charter says so in Article 41. Use of them is a case of upholding, not undermining, the rule of law. Furthermore the UN charter makes it plain in Article 42 that sanctions are clearly to be used first, before the use of force is permitted. To this extent, international law gives an obvious priority to sanctions over military operations.

Theories of just war have been elaborated to reduce the incidence of war and to render more human/humane the conduct of war. They tend to group four principles or considerations: the requirement of a just cause which reduces reasons for going to war and which in our times has tended to be interpreted mainly in terms of the right of defence against an unjust aggressor; the judgment of proportion which hinges on the sensible question of whether the gains of war will balance its losses; the principle of discrimination that accepts the common humanity of those in war and for that reason distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants; and the practical elimination of other alternatives before having recourse to the scourge of war.

The principles of proportionality and discrimination move easily enough into one another since the harm done to noncombatants needs to figure in the calculations of the war’s foreseeable losses. Discrimination adds however something to proportionality: it seeks to employ military acts of war against those only who are committed to combat and to offer noncombatants the safeguard of immunity from attack. For such reasons discrimination deals with ius in bello rather than ius ad bellum There is however a conceivable case where discrimination might condition the ius ad bellum, namely, in the use of nuclear weapons where in counter city policies it seems impossible to differentiate noncombatants from combatants. Moreover, as conventional weapons, developed within the computer and electronic revolution, continue to grow more powerful, issues akin to those already raised by nuclear weapons will be posed.

It is often claimed that high technology won the Gulf War for the allies. However, a careful analysis of the ways in which the mass media was controlled after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would clearly indicate that it was not just technology which gave the allies their victory, but also the skillful media manipulationmedia. At the very outset of this article I would like to make it clear that not only the allies but the Iraqis themselves were guilty of media manipulation. Saddam Hussein used the media first of all to convince the predominantly Islamic Iraqi people that they were waging a Holy War’ against the western infidel. He attempted to portray the war as a religious affair, a cause of Allah’, hoping both to tap the resources of religious feeling throughout the Islamic world and to draw on the political capital of Muslims in the Middle East. Throughout the crisis he did not hesitate to match the tone of his rhetoric with that of President Bush.

When the allies began their air attacks on Iraq on January 17, Saddam informed the nation that the enemy had declared war, by using the phrase: ‘the mother of all battles has begun !’ He assured his people, in graphic terms, that the enemy would be burned alive and buried in the desert sands. Throughout the war the Iraqi people were never given an accurate picture of events at the front.