I was just nine when World War II ended. I still have quite vivid memories of that Wednesday in August 1945.

It was the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, so it was a school holiday at St Roch’s, Glen Iris. We were kicking a football in the backyard, imitating our Carlton icons (who were to prevail in the legendary “blood bath” grand final a month or so later) when my mother relayed the radio communiqué that the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, had surrendered. The war in the Pacific was over. We were overjoyed, we were mightily relieved.

My earlier memories of significant events in the war were less vivid. I had virtually no memory of the events that precipitated the global conflict. In Europe, the invasion of Poland, the surrender of France, the Battle for Britain, the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad. But I do remember D-Day, the Anzio landing , the liberation of Rome, the Battle of the Bulge and the relentless advance (with more than a few hiccups) of the Allied forces across Europe that culminated in the German surrender on 8 May 1945. In the Pacific, I have vague memories of Pearl Harbour, the fall of Singapore, reports of Midway and the Coral Sea, the Japanese advances through Malaysia and to our very doorstep in New Guinea, the Japanese submarine in Sydney Harbour.

All of this was impossible to escape. Daily bulletins in newspapers and on the radio were dominated by reports of battles and military developments, of advances and retreats, of victories and defeats. As a small boy, my whole life, memory and experience were in the daily context of the war. Rationing of items like meat, butter, sugar and petrol were a fact of life. We were at war, and the needs of the armed forces took priority.

So, when in the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August), the Japanese surrendered on 15 August, it was as if we were in a whole new era. There was euphoria that the war was at an end and the Allied forces were victorious. There was relief, too, not only for the ending, but also that the war had ended without the land invasion of the Japanese mainland and the terrible loss of life that would have been consequent on it. We had become so acclimatised to war and to indiscriminate bombing that virtually no-one questioned the dropping of the bombs that not only destroyed armies and military installations but also killed more than 70,000 citizens of Hiroshima and 40,000 citizens of Nagasaki. We had not questioned the saturation bombing of Dresden and Hamburg that accompanied the Allied advances across Europe, nor, more recently, the fire bombing that decimated Tokyo. So, why would we have moral qualms about dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? We realised, perhaps dimly, that it was a different sort of bomb, certainly more powerful and destructive, but if it ended the war and obviated the necessity of a land invasion, such hesitations were merely that – moral qualms. The end (literally!) justified the means! It was as if we were now involved in a totally new type of war where the rules of war as formulated by St Augustine at the beginning of the 4th Century AD and tinkered with and edited and adapted by subsequent moralists over the intervening centuries no longer applied. We were now in the era of “total war”, cut loose from the traditional anchors of the just/unjust war distinctions.

One of the traditional anchors that “total war” effectively repudiated was the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. On the one hand, there were the combatants: the military — army, navy and air force — the military strategists, those involved in equipping the army: munitions factories and workers, scientific laboratories, weapons manufacturers, even perhaps the politicians and elected representatives who either initiated the war or responded to it and continued to prosecute it. On the other hand, there were the non-combatants, broadly, the ordinary citizens of the country that was prosecuting the war. These may (or may not) approve and support the decisions and strategies of those who actively prosecute the war, but they do not “take up arms “either literally (as soldiers) or even figuratively (e.g. as propagandists).

In the “just war” tradition, non-combatants should not be the direct targets of enemy action. They may suffer as “collateral damage” that is, as incidental to a direct attack on the armed forces or a military installation, and such an attack can be “justified”, but only if the “collateral damage” to the non-combatants is not so extensive that it is out of proportion to the direct benefit which the attack is aimed at achieving.

This is the second anchor in the traditional “just war theory" the anchor of “proportionality”. It is realist in that it recognises that war is messy and thus it does contemplate “collateral damage” to non-combatants as possible and even likely. But it is also restrictive in that this collateral damage must be proportional to the benefit achieved in the direct target. The collateral damage cannot be such that it becomes in effect and realistically either the main or secondary outcome of the military operation.

In the “total war” scenario, however, the distinction between combatant and non-combatant to all intents and purposes is not admitted or ignored, and the whole question of proportionality between the direct target and the collateral damage to the “non-combatant’ becomes otiose. There are simply no non-combatants.

The “total war” theorists “justify” these departures from the “just war” tradition by elevating in effect the military significance of the “non-combatant” citizenry. Thus, in World War II, this theory submits that it was the whole population of the US, the UK and Australia and Canada that was at war with Germany and Japan. It was not just army versus army, but country/population versus country/population. Then the citizenry becomes a legitimate secondary target for military operations. Insofar as they support the war or the war is conducted through their elected representatives under their auspices, the citizenry are ineluctably involved as participants in the war, and their claim to be “non-combatants” is dissolved.

Indeed, more than this. Once this supposition of “total war’ is granted and the elimination of the traditional distinctions is countenanced, one of the more effective ways of prosecuting a war may be to undermine the morale of the population by inflicting damage on non-military installations – housing, hospitals, community centres, etc. It may even be more effective than the attacks on military installations and munitions factories insofar as it may compromise the continuance of the support which the ordinary citizens offer to those who prosecute the war more directly – the army, their commanders and strategists, and even the political leaders who declared war in the first instance and continue to promote it. In virtually every large-scale war in which indiscriminate saturation bombing of civilian targets has been at least the secondary weapon in the military’s arsenal, this targeting has come to assume ever-increasing significance.

The current war being waged by the Israeli Defence Forces against Hamas in Gaza is a paradigm of the “total war” scenario. Hospitals, educational institutions, community and humanitarian relief centres have been targeted not only because they are suspected of concealing underground Hamas military installations but also, it would seem, because these attacks are calculated to undermine popular support for Hamas whose initial recklessness on 7 October provoked the IDF to seek such comprehensive vengeance. Restrictions on targeting (at least ostensibly) “civilians” and maintaining proportionality in the level of response to 7 October seem to play no part in the Israeli strategy. And even if “justification”, at least according to traditional “just war” criteria, seems remote and has been the subject of extensive international criticism, at least those who prosecute the war on Israel’s behalf can cite precedents in the actions of not a few of their Western critics: saturation bombing at the end of World War II, the dropping of the atomic bombs, perhaps even Agent Orange in Vietnam, to name but a few. The rules of war changed 80 years ago, and it is not surprising that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cohorts seem unaffected by the international criticisms. In “total war”, the end “justifies” the means – a “justification” that is in terms of outcomes rather than by reference to any form of moral consideration.

A succession of Popes over those 80 years has recognised the slide from “just war” theory to “total war” and reacted – total condemnation, “No more war”. If the best moral intentions on entering a war situation inevitably succumb to “total war”, talk of “justification” — at least in even a rudimentary moral sense — becomes obsolete. And the Popes submit: if war can’t be waged morally, then it shouldn’t (a moral “shouldn’t”) be waged at all. Or, more than a little ironically in view of developments in modern weaponry, if it is to be waged contra the current practice in such a way that moral considerations are still operative, then perhaps we must think in terms of precision bombing of exclusively military installations or precisely targeted drone warfare rather than the indiscriminate bombing that has been the typical modus operandi in major scale engagements over the 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Otherwise, instead of Nature’s summit, like base Nature, humanity has become “red in tooth and claw”.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.