Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (18 page)

11.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #45 (October 1967), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 2
(2000).

12.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #46 (November 1967), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 2
.

13.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #75 (April 1970), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 4
(2005).

14.
Thunderbolts
#1 (April 1997), reprinted in
Thunderbolts Classic Vol. 1
(2011).

15.
Avengers
, vol. 3, #8 (September 1998), reprinted in
Avengers Assemble Vol. 1
(2004).

16.
Thunderbolts
#144 (July 2010), reprinted in
Thunderbolts: Cage
(2011).

17.
Thunderbolts
#21 (December 1998).

18.
Ibid.

19.
For more on the philosophy of punishment, see Antony Duff, “Legal Punishment,”
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-punishment
.

20.
As revealed in
Avengers Academy
#1 (August 2010), reprinted in
Avengers Academy: Permanent Record
(2011).

21.
Avengers Academy
#8 (March 2011), reprinted in
Avengers Academy: Will We Use This in the Real World?
(2011).

22.
Avengers Academy #
9 (April 2011), reprinted in
Avengers Academy: Will We Use This in the Real World?

23.
Young Avengers: Sidekicks
(2006).

24.
For more on the paradoxes of time travel (and Kang), see the chapter by Andrew Zimmerman Jones titled “Can Kang Kill His Past Self? The Paradox of Time Travel” in this volume.

25.
Young Avengers: Family Matters
(2007); the entire run of
Young Avengers
has since been reprinted in a single hardcover collection,
Young Avengers
(2008).

26.
The oddity of Hawkeye’s application for Avengers membership was retconned recently (
Hawkeye: Blindspot
, 2011). Jarvis let Hawkeye into the mansion and was a willing participant in this strange job application because Hawkeye had risked his life to save Jarvis’s mother from muggers. This retcon shows how important it is that the offer of rehabilitation go to someone who has evidenced the right kind of regional traits.

PART FOUR

DO THE AVENGERS EVER GO TOO FAR?

Chapter 10

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT: MILITARY ETHICS AND THE KREE-SKRULL WAR

Christopher Robichaud

One of the most famous episodes in the ongoing exploits of the Avengers is their involvement in the Kree-Skrull War, an intergalactic conflict between two advanced alien civilizations that spanned galaxies and lasted millennia.
¹
When the mighty Avengers confront Ronan the Accuser, the Supreme Intelligence, the Skrull shape-shifters, and the Kree Sentry 459, they appear outmatched and out of their league. When they uncover a plan by Ronan, a Kree, to reverse the evolution of humans, or when they encounter a plot by the government (strongly influenced by the Skrulls) to impugn the Avengers with conspiracy charges, they seem ill-prepared to overcome the vast forces aligning against them and the rest of us. Of course, at the end of the day the Avengers prevail, with the help of their friend Rick Jones’s love of 1940s superhero characters. While it may seem obvious that the Avengers were justified in their involvement, some challenging questions arise when we step back to take a hard look at the Kree-Skrull conflict in terms of military ethics.

Entry Point to the Kree-Skrull War

The Avengers weren’t aware of the Kree-Skrull War until they were unwittingly thrust into it by a run-in with Captain Marvel, who was once a renowned Kree soldier called Mar-Vell. Mar-Vell was sent to Earth at the start of our space age as a spy for the Kree. His goal was to observe the emergence of superheroes and the explosion of our technological advances, which concerned the Kree. But Mar-Vell had a change of heart after arriving here and refused to follow his orders, instead becoming Captain Marvel, defender of Earth (and becoming seen, inaccurately, as a traitor to the Kree).

At the start of the Kree-Skrull story line in
Avengers
, a true Kree traitor, Ronan the Accuser, has succeeded in temporarily overthrowing the reign of the Kree leader, the organic computer known as the Supreme Intelligence. Part of his effort was motivated simply by a thirst for power, but he also thought that the Kree ought to be governed by themselves, not a machine.
²
Recognizing the strategic importance of Earth, and embracing the worry that humans are advancing too quickly, Ronan decides to make the conquest of Earth a central part of his strategy of maintaining Kree dominance. The opportunity to take down Captain Marvel along the way is an added bonus for him.

So at the very beginning of the Avengers’ involvement in the Kree-Skrull War, they find themselves dealing with one Kree who wants to protect Earth and another who wants to conquer it—and the Skrulls haven’t even entered the picture yet! If things seem a bit complicated already, don’t worry. The story line of the Kree-Skrull War is notorious for making even the most die-hard fans scratch their heads. But whatever their narrative flaws, from the standpoint of military ethics these complications lend an important degree of authenticity to a fantasy war story. When it comes to actual military conflicts, nothing is ever simple and rarely is anything straightforward, especially in terms of ethics.

Nations often go to war using moral language that is black and white. We’re the good guys fighting the bad guys; our soldiers are the heroes and theirs are the villains; and on and on. This tends to make everything seem simple, straightforward, and tidy; the story of the Kree-Skrull War, however, is anything but. Seeing that war, even as portrayed in a superhero comic book, is complicated can make us appreciate the moral complexity of war in the real world. If nothing else, we learn that our moral assessments of governments, individuals, and specific actions in wartime need to be more nuanced, careful—and, yes, more complicated—than we might initially expect.

There’s an Intergalactic War Going On and You’re Invited

Ronan the Accuser is leading the Kree in a war against the Skrulls, and his plan includes “devolving” humans so Earth can be used as a base in his efforts. If successful, this will kill two birds with one stone: it will eliminate the threat that humans will supposedly pose to the Kree one day, and it will provide a strategic location to use against the Skrulls. With that said, the Avengers find themselves smack dab in the middle of a cosmic conflict. Which side, if any, should they join? To answer that question, the Avengers must first determine whether either side is morally justified in fighting the war, which is often not as easy to determine as we might hope. But in the case of the Kree-Skrull War, the Avengers don’t need to decide who’s justified right away, because their primary role in the conflict is clear: protect Earth. In
just war theory
, this is the strongest justification for entering a conflict: self-defense.

One of the most important topics discussed in just war theory is determining the conditions that justify one nation in waging war upon another. Contemporary philosopher Michael Walzer argues that a morally permissible war must have a just
cause.
³
Scholars disagree on what exactly this means, but for our purposes “cause” can be understood as what someone cares about or fights for: it’s the
reason
for waging a war.
⁴
And for Walzer, among others, the strongest moral reason a nation can have for going to war is to defend itself against an act of aggression.

An act of aggression violates a nation’s political sovereignty and often its territorial integrity as well. Nations have a right to both these things, which according to Walzer stem from the rights of individual citizens. An act of aggression by one nation against another, then, is a violation of the rights of citizens, who in turn have a right to defend themselves against such violations. More important, though, we don’t have an absolute right to self-defense. For instance, we aren’t allowed to defend ourselves against a military incursion into Alaska by completely annihilating Russia; the response wouldn’t be proportional to the attack. We also aren’t allowed to use military force if we haven’t exhausted all other options, including diplomacy. Some just war theorists go so far as to argue that we aren’t allowed to defend ourselves militarily if we have good reason to believe that war won’t stop the aggression, because more harm will be caused without much good coming from it.

In considering the Avengers’ initial involvement in the Kree-Skrull War, we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Most obviously, nations aren’t involved so much as entire peoples: the Kree, the Skrulls, and humanity. Walzer’s account is based on the idea of a nation performing an aggressive act that violates another nation’s right to political sovereignty or territorial integrity. The problem is that Earth as a whole has no such rights, since it isn’t a political entity. All the same, we can consider an unjustified attack against humanity as simultaneous acts of aggression against each nation of Earth by the Kree “nation,” led by Ronan. Admittedly, Ronan’s efforts to devolve the human race start on a remote base in the Arctic Circle, but his “Plan Atavus” is intended to be leveled against the entire human race.

When the Avengers arrive on the scene, the plan has begun. An attack is under way against the human race, and thus a defensive war—starting with a counterattack by the Avengers—is morally justified, as long as the other conditions hold. Does taking out Ronan meet the proportionality requirement? It seems to; after all, they don’t aim to destroy the entire Kree Empire. Is an Avengers strike the last resort? Admittedly, not much time is spent trying to reason with Ronan; but then, as with so many comic book villains, he doesn’t present himself as open to rational discussion. Will the Avengers’ strike reduce the overall harm from the conflict? They face quite a fight, but the stakes for humanity are extremely high and they have no compelling reason to believe they will fail.
⁵

Was Ronan in the Right?

We’ve been assuming that Ronan’s effort to devolve us is indeed an act of aggression, an unjustified act of war against the people of Earth, which itself justifies a defensive response on the part of the Avengers. But that’s not how the Kree see it, of course: Ronan hopes to prevent us from becoming a threat to the Kree down the road.

Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is the only reason Ronan is initiating his Plan Atavus. Is he morally justified in starting a preventive war? A preventive war is a war fought against a nation that isn’t an immediate threat but is considered likely to become one down the road. Some just war theorists think that such wars are morally justifiable on consequentialist grounds, because fewer lives will be lost if a war of aggression can be stopped before it starts.

One obvious problem with preventive wars is that it is often difficult to determine what a nation’s intentions are. Without strong and compelling evidence on that count, it seems that initiating a preventive war would be wholly unjustifiable. Wars would be waged all the time on nothing but informed hunches (or claims of such) that one country might have it in for another country at some time in the future. We’d be in a never-ending state of war, hardly a world anyone would want to live in. That is not to say that there could never be a scenario in which rock-solid evidence came to light regarding a nation’s nefarious long-term plans. But we have to imagine that those situations will be extremely rare.

When it comes to the Kree, it’s clear that they don’t have enough evidence to conclude that we intend to be a threat to them down the road, if and when we ever develop the necessary technology to be a threat. Until the Avengers arrived on the scene, the people of Earth weren’t aware the Kree even existed! Furthermore, it seems that the Kree’s fears were influenced by their own history, not ours. Eons ago, the Skrulls traveled to other planets looking for trading partners. When they came to the planet Hala, they encountered two races, the Cotati and the Kree, who competed to determine which the Skrulls would trade with. The Cotati won, but the Kree turned on them and the Skrulls, stealing the latter’s technology, which they used to develop technology of their own to launch an offensive against the Skrulls. Hence the Kree-Skrull War began.

Based on their own behavior, the Kree must suspect that once our planet develops sufficient technology, we will act just as belligerently toward the other races we encounter in our exploration of the galaxy. Given that humans have demonstrated little ability or inclination to live in peace with each other, this isn’t entirely unreasonable. All the same, such speculation is still not enough to launch an annihilating strike against an entire species as the Kree under Ronan try to do. Even preventive wars are supposed to be a last-ditch action when diplomacy has failed, not an opening salvo.

Those Sneaky Skrulls

So much for the Kree’s role in all of this—what about the Skrulls? Were they simply the victims of the aggressive Kree? In the beginning perhaps they were, but by the time the Avengers enter the fray, the Skrulls have been fighting the Kree for thousands of years. Furthermore, being shape-shifters, they have also infiltrated Earth, posing at various times as superheroes, government agents, and even cows.
⁶
Like the Kree, they recognize Earth’s strategic potential in their ongoing conflict. Unlike the Kree—in particular, unlike Ronan—they did not launch a direct attack against us. Instead, their immediate goal in the story we’re focusing on is to capture Mar-Vell and force him to make a device, the Omni-Wave Projector, that they can use as a weapon against the Kree.

Let’s suppose that the Skrulls are fighting a just war against the Kree at this point, defending themselves against an aggressive enemy that has built an empire upon violence and stolen technology. Mar-Vell is no longer a soldier of the Kree, but neither is he willing to put a weapon of mass destruction into the hands of the Skrulls to use against his people. It is very unlikely that we could justify the Skrulls’ using such a weapon against the Kree, even though the war between them has already lasted for centuries upon centuries and had cost countless lives. All the same, assuming that merely possessing the weapon and threatening to use it would bring the war to a close, what means can the Skrulls legitimately use to get Captain Marvel to put this weapon into their hands? In terms of military ethics, this is not a question about when it is morally permissible to
start
a war but rather about what it is morally permissible to
do
during a war.

The Skrulls’ first strategy is to trick Captain Marvel, using their shape-shifting abilities to pretend to be Carol Danvers (an ally of Mar-Vell and the future Ms. Marvel) and convince him to build the Omni-Wave Projector. He does build it, but soon catches on to their ruse and immediately destroys it, which is good news for the Kree. Still, was the Skrulls’ deception itself permissible? Most of us don’t maintain a strict prohibition against lying or other forms of deception, especially if lives are at stake. Supposing the device, when in the hands of the Skrulls, could bring about the war’s end (whether it had to be used or not), then the deception may be justified because it resulted in a smaller cost in terms of lives lost.
⁷