Missiles Without Warning Are Not Government but War

I begin from the scene reported: five ballistic missiles strike civilian infrastructure in Kyiv; a drone wounds people at an educational institution in Rivne; merchant ships in the Black Sea are hit by drones, one of them sinking with crew missing. The Russian Defense Ministry, speaking in its own cause, says it targets “military-industrial facilities, logistics centers, railway and port infrastructure, as well as vessels involved in delivering military cargo.” At the same time, the Ukrainian president declares that his country received no early warning from its partners about those missiles headed to the capital. Here are men, cities, ships, and promises, all under fire at once. The question is what authority, if any, stands behind these acts of force.

In the Second Treatise of Government, when I laboured to understand political power aright, I began not with armies and ministries, but with men considered in a state of nature: free, equal, independent, under the government of reason, which teaches that no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. From this baseline it follows that any power which pretends to rule others must show, first, that it better secures those goods than their naked liberty would; and secondly, that it is exercised by common rules known beforehand, with an impartial judge to decide controversies. Where there is only force, guided by will alone, there is no government, but a continued state of war. Missiles falling without warning on a town are not arguments; they are verdicts delivered without trial.

Grant, for the sake of argument, that one belligerent may lawfully strike the military means of another; the law of nature does not forbid all force, but only that which is unnecessary or disproportionate to the preservation of mankind. Yet the facts here set before me speak of “civilian infrastructure” in Kyiv and an “educational institution” in Rivne struck and people wounded, of merchant ships near Bulgaria attacked, one of them sinking. The Russian ministry insists that even vessels are “involved in delivering military cargo,” but offers no impartial judge to examine that plea, no common court where evidence might be weighed by both sides. When the same hand that fires the missile pronounces the target lawful, each man is again judge in his own case. That is the very essence of arbitrary power.

Nor is this all. We are told that Ukraine, though joined in common cause with powerful partners, received no early warning before five ballistic missiles fell upon its capital. I do not know what intelligence those partners possessed, or what technical reasons might be alleged; the report only records that such warning was not given, and that tensions now rise over this omission. Still, where men have professed alliance for the defence of a people’s lives and estates, the trust placed in them is of a fiduciary kind. They hold certain powers and informations not for themselves, but for the public good. If, having the ability to reduce danger to their ally’s civilians at little cost to themselves, they nevertheless withhold it without just cause, they fail, not in courtesy, but in the very duty that gave them any moral authority in the affair.

Matters are further darkened when a political leader in another country, asked about Russia’s continued strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure after speaking of some “energy ceasefire,” appears to defend these renewed attacks by saying only that “Ukraine hit many sites the day before.” I cannot here know what sites those were, nor by what rules they were chosen. Yet to answer the deliberate disabling of a people’s basic means of life with such balancing of blows, as if all were equal provided each side strikes in turn, is to lose sight of the first measure of all hostilities: are they necessary to the defence of our own right, and ordered by standing rules, or are they reprisals governed by passion and convenience? To say merely, "they hit, therefore we may hit" is not a justification but a confession that right has given way to retaliation.

In the Second Treatise, when I treated of the dissolution of government, I argued that when those who wield power “endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power,” they thereby put themselves in a state of war with the people, who are absolved from any further obedience and left to the common refuge God has provided against force. I meant by property not narrow possessions only, but lives, liberties, and estates together. If a government, outwardly clothed with all the forms of a modern state, proceeds by unexplained missiles against civilians, by secret designations of merchant ships as lawful spoil, and by doctrines that any target it names is thereby just, it has already renounced government and chosen war. Those who resist such power do not rebel; they answer a rebellion against right that began above them.

I do not pretend that international alliances and wars between states fit neatly into the compact I described among individuals leaving a state of nature; there are great inequalities of strength, entanglements of interest, and much tacit consent whose bounds are hard to trace. Yet even amidst these obscurities, certain lines remain bright. No ruler may claim a right to visit blind and unannounced destruction on civilians; no ally may treat the safety of another’s people as a bargaining chip, to be withheld for leverage; no belligerent may excuse present devastation by pointing only to the wounds of yesterday. Wherever we see a long train of abuses tending the same way—toward power answerable only to itself—we may be sure that whatever names are used, the appeal to heaven has already begun.