A Buddhist view on warfare?

Prince Siddhattha is shown travelling (WMS Burmese 22, nr: L0026534)

"[The Āryasatyaka-parivarta] offers sophisticated practical thought on violence, arguing that compassionate internal governance and benevolent international relations enhance political security and prosperity. The goodwill, trust, and economic well being of international neighbors are vital political assets. Just as domestic poverty leads to violence and moral degeneration domestically, international insecurity and exploitation are seeds of violent conflict. Exploitive international relations create conditions of hostility that engender the arising of dangerous enemies and undermine support from potential allies. Exploitive internal governance undermines the economy and creates a culture of tax evasion, rather than generosity. Rapacious greed ultimately diminishes the treasury. Failure to exhaust all other possibilities, such as negotiation, intimidation and bribes, leads to unnecessary warfare, which is generally regarded in Indian political ethics as a dangerous mistake entailing great risk even for a superior military force."

"When warfare is conducted, casualties should be avoided, particularly enemy casualties; destruction of infrastructure and the natural environment should be minimized; and prisoners should be treated with humanity. Before dismissing such concerns as politically naïve, we might consider, with some shock and awe, how ignoring each of these has been an enormously costly mistake for the victor in recent wars."

"Along with protecting his people and attempting to capture his enemies alive, the third chief concern of a Buddhist king going to war should be to win. Rather than arguing that political pragmatism must yield to ascetic ideals of compassionate pacifism, the scripture maintains that a measured and principled use of violence, governed by compassionate intentions, enhances security and serves the purposes of acquiring and retaining power, while maintaining moral integrity. Just as in personal ethics, where Buddhist texts argue that compassion is selfinterested, the sūtra claims that compassionate state policy is ultimately self-beneficial and rejects the idea that absolutizing national or personal interest is actually in the national or personal interest."

Extracts from The Range of the Bodhisattva: A Mahāyāna Sūtra Reviewed by Stephen L. Jenkins  The reviewed book: The Range of the Bodhisattva: A Mahāyāna Sūtra. Trans. Lozang Jamspal. New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2011, ISBN 978-1935011071

"Although the [Āryasatyaka-parivarta] allows for war, it does so only under special conditions and with special restrictions on its conduct. In a graded series of skillful means, a king must first try to befriend, then to help, and then to intimidate his potential enemy before resorting to war. This set of four stratagems diverges from an ancient and pervasive set only by substituting 'intimidation' for 'fomenting dissension.' "

"Should attempts to succeed without armed conflict fail, the king is then instructed in how to assemble and deploy the various divisions of an army. He is to go to war with three intentions: to care for life, to win, and to capture the enemy alive."

"The concern to care for life in the sūtra also includes the well-being of all innocents, including animals and the spirits that dwell in trees and water. In contrast to most Hindu dharmaśāstras, the sūtra forbids burning homes or cities, destroying reservoirs or orchards, or confiscating the harvest. This condition is extended to what might be called infrastructure in general, i.e., “all things well developed and constructed.”

Extracts from Making Merit through Warfare and Torture According to the Ārya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upāyaviṣaya-vikurvaṇa-nirdeśa Sūtra by Stephen Jenkins, published in Jerryson, Michael and Mark Juergensmeyer. Buddhist Warfare. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.