Assuming that the robber is prepared to kill, we allow the behavior of his victim to determine his guilt. In domestic society, a robber who gets what he wants without killing anyone is obviously less guilty, that is, guilty of a lesser crime, than if he commits murder. At the same time, aggression unresisted is aggression still, though there is no "fall of blood" at all. Shakespeare's Henry V makes the point exactly: 1 For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint 'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords That makes such waste in brief mortality. Whatever limits we place on the means and range of warfare, fighting a limited war is not like hitting somebody. All aggressive acts have one thing in common: they justify forceful resistance, and force cannot be used between nations, as it often can between persons, without putting life itself at risk. This refusal of differentiation makes it difficult to mark off the relative seriousness of aggressive acts-to distinguish, for example, the seizure of a piece of land or the imposition of a satellite regime from conquest itself, the destruction of a state's independence (a crime for which Abba Eban, Israel's foreign minister in 1967, suggested the name "policide"), But there is a reason for the refusal. It is as if we were to brand as murder all attacks on a man's person, all attempts to coerce him, all invasions of his home. Every violation of the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of an independent state is called aggression. The equivalents of domestic assault, armed robbery, extortion, assault with intent to kill, murder in all its degrees, have but one name. There is a strange poverty in the language of international law.
Aggression is remarkable because it is the only crime that states can commit against other states: everything else is, as it were, a misdemeanor. The justification and the preference are very important: they account for the most remarkable features of the concept of aggression and for the special place it has in the theory of war. But they are always justified in fighting and in most cases, given that harsh choice, fighting is the morally preferred response. It is to confront them with the choice: your rights or (some of) your lives! Groups of citizens respond in different ways to that choice, sometimes surrendering, sometimes fighting, depending on the moral and material condition of their state and army. The wrong the aggressor commits is to force men and women to risk their lives for the sake of their rights. We know the crime because of our knowledge of the peace it interrupts-not the mere absence of fighting, but peace-with-rights, a condition of liberty and security that can exist only in the absence of aggression itself. 4, Law and Order in International Society Aggression Aggression is the name we give to the crime of war. Just and Unjust Wars, Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (excerpts) Michael Walzer Ch.
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