Wars of Aggression

War between states is the largest organised harm human beings commit, and it is defended in a language we would never accept from an individual.

Strip away the flag and the anthem and ask what is actually happening: a small number of people decide to send other people to kill and be killed over a dispute those killed were never asked about and have no part in settling. If a private citizen did this, we would call it mass murder and be right. Nothing about a majority vote, a border, or a budget changes what the act is.

The realist objection is that aggression sometimes prevents something worse. But that argument is available to every aggressor in history; every war was sold as defensive. A standard that can justify anything justifies nothing. The only coherent rule is the one that survives being turned on yourself: force is permitted against someone who has already used force, and only in proportion to the threat.

None of this makes defence immoral. It makes the initiation of violence against people who have done nothing a crime regardless of who signed the order — and it requires that we count our own dead and theirs with the same arithmetic.

No flag turns murder into policy.