When we think of war, we usually think of weapons: bombs, guns, drones. But as Fratelli tutti reminds us, modern wars are also fought with something else: information. Or rather, with the manipulation of it. As Pope Francis writes:
“War can easily be chosen by invoking all sorts of allegedly humanitarian, defensive or precautionary excuses, and even resorting to the manipulation of information. In recent decades, every single war has been ostensibly ‘justified’”. (Fratelli tutti, 258).
That’s a sobering thought. It means that today, the question of whether a war is “just” can be decided not by truth or justice, but by who controls the narrative. This makes moral judgment—already difficult in matters of war—even harder.
When rulers and nations are constantly exposed to politicized media, misinformation, and pressure from ideological camps, it becomes nearly impossible to make decisions untouched by bias or manipulation.
And yet, the just war tradition places great responsibility on rulers. They must weigh the causes of war with sober judgment. But what happens when that judgment is clouded—not just by human frailty, but by a whole culture of spin and propaganda?
Why We Need More Than Moral Intuition
This problem isn’t new. In the medieval roots of just war theory, figures like Augustine and Aquinas assumed that one side in a conflict was clearly in the right and the other in the wrong. That’s understandable in their historical context, but it also made it easy to equate victory with justice. Whoever ends up winning is supposed to be on the right side!
The result, as modern scholars have pointed out, is a tendency to collapse moral discernment into political interest. If the winning side claims to be just, and there's no one to hold them accountable, then justice becomes whatever the victor says it is.
This is why today’s Church calls for strong, impartial institutions that can help determine when starting a war is truly justified (ius ad bellum) and ensure that it is fought justly and as humanely as possible (ius in bello).
Without such institutions, every nation becomes its own judge, jury, and executioner. In this kind of world, almost any war can be declared “just”, and any act in war can be rationalized. That’s a recipe for endless violence, cloaked in moral language and distorting propaganda.
The Need for Global Accountability
Institutions like the United Nations Security Council or the International Court of Justice may not be perfect, but their existence reflects an important truth: justice in war can’t come from within the conflict. It must come from outside.
If the Church has learned anything from the history of the last century, it is that might does not make right. And in a globalized world, where every war affects more than just the countries involved, this becomes even more urgent.
When international law is ignored or undermined, war becomes a matter of power—not of justice and truth. But when law is respected and applied consistently, we take a step toward a world where peace is more than wishful thinking.
No War Is Local Anymore
Pope Francis makes a key point that often gets overlooked: war today is never just “local”.
Increased globalization means that even when a war seems confined to a specific region, it can still have devastating effects on the whole world—economic collapse, refugee crises, environmental damage, and more (Fratelli tutti, 259).
We’re living, as he puts it, in a “world war fought piecemeal.” That phrase captures what we see in our headlines: not one giant global war, but a chain of more or less small ones, each with ripple effects far beyond their borders.
This interconnectedness makes some of the traditional just war criteria—like “reasonable chance of success” or “proportional response”—much harder to apply. How do we measure the proportionality of a strike that destabilizes a region for generations? How do we claim success if that “victory” leaves behind a humanitarian disaster?
What This Means for Us
All of this leads us to a simple, but difficult truth: we can’t judge wars the way we used to. Our moral frameworks must take into account not only weapons and motives, but also truth, communication, and global consequences.
Catholic teaching doesn’t tell us that every war is wrong. But it does warn us, more urgently than ever, that the path to a just war is narrow—and that we can’t walk it alone, blinded by propaganda and unchecked by higher authority.
In our world, peace requires more than good intentions. It requires the courage to confront lies, to strengthen institutions that protect the weak and to recognize that every war fought today is a war fought in our shared human home.
This is the second piece of a series of three articles on contemporary Church teaching on armed conflicts and just war.