Interesting article by the Bishop of Oxford about Christian "Just War" doctrine (used by the Church to oppose the war on Iraq) and how the US appears to be moving away from the rest of the world on this matter.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1514165,00.htmlA recent seminar in London drew together Christian just-war theorists from the United States and Britain to discuss the international scene in the light of Christian principles. It worked well because the participants shared a common intellectual framework and the view that, whatever moral judgments may be made about particular wars, the analysis provided by traditional just-war thinking was an indispensable intellectual tool.
Nevertheless, there were strong differences of opinion between the dominant US perspective and the dominant European one, nowhere more marked than in attitudes towards the United Nations.
The first criterion for a war to be regarded as morally justifiable is that it must be declared by a legitimate authority. For most of history, this has been the supreme sovereign. Until 1945, there was no higher sovereignty than the government of a nation state, though, since then, the UN has, in principle, offered such an authority. Article 51 reserves to states the right of self-defence, but wars of intervention must be authorised by the security council.
(snip)
The Christian just-war tradition, however misused, has much accumulated wisdom, not least in reminding us that relationships between states are just as much a matter of morality as relationships between individuals - and that strengthening the UN, and the role of international laws that reflect that moral dimension, is a continuing imperative.