..............................................................................................101 I. The Idea of a Noncombatant ........................................................104 II. The Moral Shield Protecting Noncombatants.............................106 A. Accommodation.......................................................................107 B. Guilty Past ...............................................................................107 C. Guilty Bystander Trying to Inflict Harm .................................109 D. Guilty Bystander Disposed to Inflict Harm .............................109 E. Guilty Bystander Exulting in Anticipated Evil ........................109 F. Fault Forfeits First Doctrine in Just Warfare ...........................110 III. Noncombatants as Wrongful Trespassers ...................................110 IV. The Noncombatant Status of Captured Soldiers ........................111 V. Guerrilla Combat ..........................................................................116 VI. Morally Innocent Unjust Combatants.........................................118 VII. Should Rights Reflect What (...) We Can Know? ............................121 VIII. Absolute and Moderate Construction of the Revised Right.. (shrink)

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction -- Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism' -- 2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq -- 3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today? -- The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002 -- 5. The law on the Islamic headscarf -- 6. Daily humiliation -- (...) Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France -- 8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art -- Notes to part one -- PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction -- 1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews? -- 2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward) -- 3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus -- 4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier) -- 5. Against negationism -- 6. Local angel -- 7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz -- 8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter) -- 9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant -- Notes to part two -- PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics -- 2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution? -- A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels) -- Notes to part three. (shrink)

It is inherent in the concept of a terrorist act that it aims at an effect very much larger than the direct physical destruction it causes. Proponents of what used to be called the 'propaganda of the deed' also believed that in the illuminating glare of terror the vulnerability of a corrupt ...

Alexander James Dallas' An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the War was written as part of an effort by the then US government to explain and justify its declaration of war in 1812. However publication coincided with the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War. The Exposition is especially interesting for the insight it provides into the self-constraint of American foreign policy and of the conduct of a war. The focus is on the foreign policy (...) of the early republic and the related philosophy of law and war. A central idea is that international law should chiefly benefit those remaining at peace. -/- Dallas was a Philadelphian who settled there in 1783, the year of the Peace of Paris which ended the War of Independence, arriving from Jamaica after a British education. He wrote much on law, becoming the first recorder of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He later served as Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and federal district attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, appointed by President Jefferson. He was appointed Secretary of Treasury by President Madison. -/- In this edition the original text is presented with annotations to help identify persons and events of interest. The editor has also added an Introduction, a Bibliography, a short Chronology of Dallas' life and the events of the War, and an analytical Index. As such this annotated edition presents a key primary source in a manner helpful to research for students of the early Republic. (shrink)

Non-uniformed combat morally infringes on civilians’ fundamental right to immunity and exacts an impermissible form of unofficial conscription that is morally prohibited even if the civilians knowingly consent to it. It is often argued that revolutionary groups burdened by resource disparities relative to the state or who claim alternative sources of political legitimacy (such as national self-determination or the constitution of a political collective) are justified in using unconventional tactics such as non-uniformed combat. Neither those reasons nor the provision of (...) public goods, however, are sufficient to justify such rights violations and this form of conscription, and it calls into question the suitability of current international legal protections for the non-uniformed. (shrink)

What is war, and how should it be waged? Are there restraints on its conduct? What can philosophers contribute to the study of warfare? Arguing that the practice of war requires a sound philosophical understanding, Ian Clark writes a fascinating synthesis of the philosophy, history, political theory, and contemporary strategy of warfare. Examining the traditional doctrines of the "just" and the "limited" war with fresh insight, Clark also addresses the applicability of these ideas to the modern issues of war crimes, (...) choice of targets, guerrilla warfare, and nuclear strategy and deterrence. (shrink)

Preface 1. Fighting Terrorism 1:1. A new Discourse on War? 1:2. Richard Rorty and the Ethics of War 2. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:1. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:2. Discourses on War 2:3. Keeping the discourse: the United States and Vietnam 2.4. Carl Schmitt and the theory of the Partisan 3. Changing the Discourse 3:1 Germany and the Eastern Front 1941-5 3:2 France and Algeria 1955-8 3:3 Israel and the Intifada 3:4 Conclusion 4. A New Discourse? 4:1. The War on Terror -- (...) Is it a War? 4:2. Excluding Unlawful Combatants 4:3. Network Warfare 4:4. Networked Ethics 5. Grammars of Killing 5:1 Grammars of Killing 5:2 Respecting our enemies 5: 3 Non-Lethal Weapons 6. The Unconditional Imperative 6:1 Jaspers and the Warrior Ethos 6:2 The Micromanagement of the Battlefield 6:3 Corporate Warriors? 6:4 Asimov's Children 7. Back to the Greeks 7:1 Back to the Greeks? 7:2 Simone Weil and The Iliad 7:3 Thucydides and the Melian Dialogue 7:4 What's he to Hecuba? 8 The Heuristics of Fear. (shrink)

[1] From December 1994 to August 1996, Russia was engaged in the Chechen War, a Vietnam-style quagmire that exemplified, on the one hand, the end of Russia as a great military and imperial power, and, on the other hand, "one of the greatest epics of colonial resistance in the past century.'' No analysis can hope to understand the totality of forces that lend to the stability (or instability) of nations with large minority populations unless it first examines the conditions that (...) led to the Russian defeat in Chechnya. At the center of that problem lies an interesting issue. What aspects of the Russian state, Russian society, and the Russian psyche in the 1990s played a part in the Russian defeat, and what aspects of Chechen history, society, and culture played a part in the Chechen victory? Lieven uses the Chechen War as a keyhole into the wider debate concerning the nature and course of Russian nationalism. (shrink)

Just War Theory (JWT) is sometimes seen to have replaced an older “warrior code,” an approach to war which remains poorly understood and dismissively treated in the philosophical literature. This paper builds on recent work on honor in order to address both of these deficiencies. By providing a clear, systematic exposition of what might be termed “Honor War Theory” (HWT), we can make sense of paradigm instances of warrior psychology and behavior, and see that in fact the warrior code is (...) nothing but the martial expression of a much more general honor-based ethos that conceives of rightness in terms of fair competition for prestige. Far from being a “romantic” and “outmoded” approach to war, HWT predicts and illuminates current conflicts and recalcitrant moral intuitions that JWT either rejects or cannot comfortably accommodate. So although it is not recommended as a replacement for JWT, there is good reason think that a fully mature, realistic, and yet properly normative theory of war ethics will incorporate a variety of insights from HWT. (shrink)

What is kitsch? The varieties of phenomena which can fall under the name are bewildering. Here, I focus on what has been called “traditional kitsch,” and argue that it often turns on the emotional effect specifically captured by Edmund Burke’s concept of “beauty” from his 1757 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful.' Burkean beauty also serves to distinguish “traditional kitsch” from other phenomena also often called “kitsch”—namely, entertainment. Although I argue that Burkean beauty in domestic decoration allows for (...) us to see “traditional kitsch” as resting on natural and even healthy impulses, I also argue that an all-too-common political function of traditional kitsch directs it to dangerous ends. (shrink)

Military affairs have been affected by major changes in the 19902. The bipolar world of two superpowers has gone. The Cold War and the global military confrontation that accompanied it have ended. A new military and political order has emerged, but the world has not become more stable, indeed, wars and armed conflict have become much more common. Forecasting the contours of future armed conflict is the primary object of this work. Focusing on the impact of new technologies, General Gareev (...) considers whether war is still a "continuation of politics by other means" or whether political, ideological and technical transformations have broken that connection. He explores the linkage beween threats to Russian national interests and war as an instrument of policy, and concludes that there is very little prospect either of nuclear war or widespread conventional war. However, he does see local armed conflicts and local wars increasing, with greater emphasis on subversion. He argues that coming decades wil see a shift toward reliance upon indirect means to accomplish limited political ends, and analyzes both information warfare and the revolution in military affairs from this perspective. (shrink)

To provide a way to understand warfare and debate military conduct, Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars tries to show that civilians and soldiers are not separated by a barrier of violence as we might think, but rather inhabit the same moral world. While this view enables us to question and criticize our leaders during times of war instead of simply claiming ignorance, its success is gained by obscuring certain fundamental boundaries that exist between combatants and noncombatants. By comparing Walzer's (...) just war theory with the existential theories of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, we can therefore find a more complete picture of what it means to declare war and what it means to engage in combat. This will allow us to see that what separates the soldier from the civilian is our everyday avoidance of death and anything associated with it. Through an investigation into the relationship between death and killing we can then ask, from an existential standpoint, whether we can call any war just so long as our evasion of death also results in our evasion of what soldiers must go through to protect us, thus preventing the soldier from being able to truly return home. (shrink)

Abstract One of the traditional requirements of jus in bello is that military action should be proportionate in the loss and injury caused to troops to the military objectives it secures. However, the ?overwhelming force? applied in two Gulf Wars has been criticised as disproportionate. This article suggests a criterion for judging whether force is proportionate by considering what those who enter the profession of arms might be expected to tolerate or to undertake. A tacit agreement between troops on each (...) side is postulated, breaches of which count as unfair conduct, including cases of the disproportionate use of force. (shrink)

Abstract In the last 20 years the ruthless competition for natural resources, political instability, armed conflicts, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have paved the way for private military and security companies (PMSCs) to operate in areas which were until recently the preserve of the state. PMSCs, less regulated than the toy industry, commit grave human rights violations with impunity. The United Nations has elaborated an international binding instrument to regulate their activities but the opposition of the U.S., U.K., and (...) other Western governments?and from PMSCs, which prefer self-regulation?have prevented any advancement. (shrink)

Just war theory is a difficult, even paradoxical, philosophical topic. It is not just that warfare involves large-scale, organised, deliberate killing, and hence might seem the very paradigm of immorality. The just war tradition sharply divorces the question of whether or not it is permissible to resort to war – the question of jus ad bellum – from the question of how and against whom one may inflict harm once at war – the question of jus in bello. As Michael (...) Walzer notes,1 this separation of jus in bello from jus ad bellum means that we can meaningfully talk of an unjust war being fought justly, and vice versa: soldiers defending against aggression might nevertheless be criminals for the way in which they do it; while soldiers prosecuting an aggressive war, provided they fight it in the right way, are without culpability. This paper will draw upon the morality of individual self-defence to explain certain important features of the traditional jus in bello: the permissibility of killing, even by soldiers who lack justice on their side; the principles that govern surrender and the taking of prisoners of war; and the principle of discrimination between soldiers and civilians. Our explanation will not leave all aspects of the jus in bello undisturbed: it has consequences that are revisionary in at least some respects, this being the upshot of trying to explain the jus in bello in individualist terms. Partly because of such consequences, approaching the morality of war in individualist terms is neither straightforward nor uncontroversial.2 But we are prepared to accept.. (shrink)

For millennia, war was viewed as a supreme test. In the period 1750-1850 war became much more than a test: it became a secular revelation. This new understanding of war as revelation completely transformed Western war culture, revolutionizing politics, the personal experience of war, the status of common soldiers, and the tenets of military theory.

The is a brief response to Matthew Bruenig's "Rethinking Noncombatant Immunity." I argue, contra Bruenig, that political liberalism does not raise any special problems for the view that non-combatants should not be directly targeted by another country's military.

The usefulness of Just War Theory (JWT) has been called into question in recent years for two key reasons. First, military conflicts today less frequently fit the model traditionally assumed by JWT of interstate wars between regular armies. Second, there is a perception that JWT has lost its critical edge after its categories and principles have been co-opted by bellicose political leaders. This paper critically examines two responses to these concerns which shift the locus of responsibility for wars towards either (...) individual citizens or soldiers. Both attempts to revitalize JWT rely upon idealized conditions which preclude their pragmatic employment. I propose that, in order to arrive at a non-idealized JWT that individuals can apply in a critical fashion, an alternative focus upon a more basic question of political philosophy is required: Under what conditions, if any, are individual soldiers or citizens politically obligated to fight for their state? (shrink)

The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...) as a practical concern, a pragmatic worry about implementation, which while germane to debates over the laws of war, need not undermine our convictions in the fundamental principles the revisionists advocate. This response is inadequate. Revisionists have not shown that soldiers should obey the laws of war, in practice, when they conflict with their other moral reasons – our worries about application remain intact. Moreover, a theory of war that offers only an account of the laws of war, and a set of fundamental principles developed in abstraction from feasibility constraints, is radically incomplete. We need to know how to apply those fundamental principles, and whether, when applied, they lead to defensible conclusions. Only two options seem to remain. Perhaps the revisionists’ arguments for their chosen fundamental principles are sufficiently compelling that we should stick with them, and accept their troubling conclusions – in other words, accept pacifism. Alternatively, we need to revise our fundamental principles, so that when applied they yield conclusions that we can more confidently endorse. Though it does not save the revisionist view from the responsibility dilemma and cognate objections, the appeal to law does raise an important, and previously inadequately theorized, question – or, rather, resurrects a neglected topic, discussed in depth by historical just war theorists such as Grotius and Vattel. There are good grounds for distinguishing the laws of war from the morality of war, and for adjusting the former to accommodate predictable noncompliance, that should not impact on our account of the latter. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some profound moral insights underlying both combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity: specifically, we cannot infer from a combatant’s side having not satisfied jus ad bellum that he may not justifiably use lethal force; and other things equal, it is more wrongful to harm a nonliable noncombatant than to harm a nonliable combatant. (shrink)

Having learned my just war theory at Michael Walzer’s figurative knee, for many years I accepted the independence of jus in bello from jus ad bellum unthinkingly. Just war theory consists of two separate parts, one concerning the legitimate grounds for going to war and the other the rules of engagement once war had begun. This two-part view, the “independence thesis,” went hand in hand with the “symmetry thesis,” or “the moral equality of soldiers”: soldiers whose cause is unjust have (...) the same rights to fight and to kill as those whose cause is just. But troubling questions sometimes crowded in. Doesn’t the justice of a country’s cause affect what actions it can legitimately take? Can’t victims of aggression legitimately do things aggressors cannot? Most fundamentally, “how can there be permissibly violent means of pursuing impermissible ends?”[1] Walzer casts glances at these problems when he proposes the idea of a “sliding scale,” in which the rules of war yield “slowly to the moral urgency of the cause: the rights of the righteous are enhanced, and those of their enemies devalued.”[2] He rejects the sliding scale in favor of the weaker qualification, “supreme emergency,” in which the rules of war are overridden “only in the face of an imminent catastrophe.”. (shrink)

Although the use of military force for humanitarian ends seems utterly divorced from the use of such force to combat terrorism, both uses answer to similar descriptions. Both appear to encourage nations that are not necessarily themselves under attack to set aside the reigning conventions of national sovereignty and territorial integrity for the overriding purposes of international law enforcement and protection of vulnerable noncombatants. Both involve offensive rather than purely defensive uses of military force. Both answer to criteria of justification (...) that can be derived more readily from the normative moral principles of the classical just war tradition than from purely descriptive revisions of the 'legalist paradigm' in international relations, because the latter is deeply wedded by precedent to notions of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and a purely defensive use of military force. Most significantly, the justification for both kinds of military action depends essentially upon a notion of 'the international community' that is inchoate and urgently in need of rigorous reformulation. In this paper, I attempt to formulate criteria for the justifiable use of military force for these non-defensive purposes, with attention to the nuances of internationalism that several of the resulting criteria entail. Challenges to the de facto role of the United Nations as the sole authoritative representative of this community, and alternatives to its authority in legitimating the use of military force for purposes of international law enforcement, are considered. (shrink)

Introduction: Western modernity and the paradigm of war -- Searching for ethics in a violent world : a Jewish response to the paradigm of war -- From liberalism to Hitlerism : tracing the origins of violence and war -- From fraternity to altericity, or reason in the service of love -- Of masters and slaves, or Frantz Fanon and the ethico-political struggle for non-sexist human fraternity -- God and the other in the self-recognition of imperial man -- Recognition from below (...) : the meaning of the cry and the gift of the self in the struggle for recognition -- From the ethical to the geopolitical : a Latin American response to coloniality, neoliberal globalization, and war -- Enrique Dussel's ethics and philosophy of liberation -- Enrique Dussel's contribution to the de-colonial turn : from the critique of modernity to transmodernity -- Conclusion: Beyond the paradigm of war. (shrink)

In combating international terrorism, it is important to observe some basic principles, such as that international law must be complied with, care should be taken that one does not proceed in such a way that future terrorists are recruited, and one does not oneself become a terrorist. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism.

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: normative principles of jus post bellum; Part I. Retribution: 2. Grotius, sovereignty, and the indictment of Al Bashir; 3. Transitional justice and the Just War tradition; 4. War crimes trials during and after war; Part II. Reconciliation: 5. Reconciliation of warring parties; 6. Reconciliation and the rule of law; 7. Conflicting responsibilities to protect human rights; Part III. Rebuilding: 8. Responsibility to rebuild and collective responsibility; 9. Responsibility to rebuild as a limitation on initiating (...) war; Part IV. Restitution and Reparation: 10. Restitution and restoration in jus post bellum; 11. A Grotian account of reparations; Part V. Proportionality and the End of War: 12. Proportionality and the fog of war. (shrink)

War has been a key topic of speculation and theorizing ever since the invention of philosophy in classical antiquity. This anthology brings together the work of distinguished contemporary political philosophers and theorists who address the leading normative and conceptual issues concerning war. The book is divided into three parts: initiating war, waging war, and ending war. The contributors aim to provide a comprehensive introduction to each of these main areas of dispute concerning war. Each essay is an original contribution to (...) ongoing debates on various aspects of war and also provides a survey of the main topics in each subfield. Serving as a companion to the theoretical issues pertaining to war, this volume also is an important contribution to debates in political philosophy. It can serve as a textbook for relevant courses on war offered in philosophy departments, religious studies programs, and law schools. (shrink)

From the apathetic reaction to atrocities committed in Vietnam by the United States and its allies, one may conclude that moral restrictions on the conduct of war command almost as little sympathy among the general public as they do among those charged with the formation of U.S. military policy. Even when restrictions on the conduct of warfare are defended, it is usually on legal grounds alone: their moral basis is often poorly understood. I wish to argue that certain restrictions are (...) neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression. (shrink)

Stephen Nathanson argues that we cannot have morally credible views about terrorism if we focus on terrorism alone and neglect broader issues about the ethics ...

The authors argue that the 'war on terror' marks the ultimate convergence of war with politics, and the virtual collapse of any meaningful distinction between them. Not only does it signify the breakdown of international relations norms but also the militarization of internal life and political discourse. They explore the 'genealogy' of this situation firstly through the notion of the 'state of exception'—in which sovereign violence becomes indistinct from the law that is supposed to curtail it—and secondly through Foucault's idea (...) that politics is essentially a form of warfare. They suggest that these two ways of approaching the question of violence can only be understood through a racist dimension, which forms the hidden underside of the 'war on terrorism'. In other words, our contemporary situation is characterized by the mobilization not only of fundamentalist and conservative ideologies, but, increasingly, racial antagonisms and prejudices directed towards the Muslim other. (shrink)

War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities. Thus, fisticuffs between individual persons do not count as a war, nor does a gang fight, nor does a feud on the order of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. War is a phenomenon which occurs only between political communities, defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states (in order to allow for civil war). Classical war is international war, a war (...) between different states, like the two World Wars. But just as frequent is war within a state between rival groups or communities, like the American Civil War. Certain political pressure groups, like terrorist organizations, might also be considered “political communities,” in that they are associations of people with a political purpose and, indeed, many of them aspire to statehood or to influence the development of statehood in certain lands. (shrink)

A current topic of global justice is the debate over the right of humanitarian military intervention or, as some style it, the “responsibility to protect” the “human security” of all, especially where that security is threatened by the very sovereign power charged to defend it. Such intervention came into its own only in the decade of the Nineties. This essay analyzes the factors that favored that outcome and sketches the difficulties to which humanitarian intervention proved to be exposed. There can (...) be no doubt that the rhetoric supporting such a policy has expanded greatly during the past generation. But what of the reality? Is the “responsibility to protect” likely to prove the wave of the future, or merely that of the (still very recent) past? (shrink)

This book analyses the influences of ideas of honor on the causes, conduct, and endings of wars from Ancient Greece through to the present-day war in Iraq. It does this through a series of historical case studies. In the process, it highlights both the differences and the similarities between the various eras under study, and draws conclusions about the relevance of honor to war in the modern era. Each chapter looks at a particular period in history and is divided into (...) nine sections: Honor and virtue in the relevant period; Honor and the causes of war; Honor as a motivation for fighting; Honors and rewards; Death and honor; Honor and the conduct of war; Honor and the enemy; Honor and the ending of wars; Women and honor. The book makes use of original archival research and interviews with serving military officers, as well as secondary source material. Its subject will be of interest not merely to students of military history, military ethics, security studies and international relations, and anthropology/sociology/philosophy/history of ideas. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing, and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, in the article it is argued that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents (...) must comply with high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him. Adding to the doctrine, it is argued that accidentally, but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – can be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently taking. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 2, Page 376-377, June 2011.

The new western way of war from Vietnam in Iraq -- Theories of the new western way of war -- The global surveillance mode of warfare -- Rules of risk-transfer war -- Iraq: risk economy of a war -- A way of war in crisis.

Yitzhak Benbaji defends the view that soldiers on both the ‘just’ and the ‘unjust’ side in a war have the same liberty right to kill one another, because soldiers have ‘tacitly accepted’ the egalitarian laws of war and thereby waived their moral rights not to be attacked. I argue that soldiers on the ‘just’ side have not accepted the egalitarian laws of war; even if they had, they would not thereby have waived their moral rights not to be attacked. Moreover, (...) the egalitarian laws of war and ‘the war convention’ are not fair and mutually beneficial, and so would not be accepted. Benbaji does not come to grips with the problem of the killing of civilians in war: his idea that states could waive the moral rights of their citizens is untenable. (shrink)

This article examines the moral issues of guerrilla, and counter-guerrilla, warfare. Just war theorists who have studied the phenomenon tend to claim that the guerrilla tactic of wearing civilian clothes and hiding among the civilian population is rather difficult, if at all, to reconcile with the ius in bello principle of discrimination (the principle according to which combatants have to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and may only target the former “directly”). I argue that this ever-repeated assessment is profoundly confused. (...) I also argue, conversely, against the claim that this guerrilla tactic makes it somehow easier for the counter-insurgents to comply with the principle of discrimination, thereby easily allowing them to resort to tactics like area bombardment. Finally, I demonstrate that, contrary to common opinion, guerrilla war does not face greater difficulties in complying with ius ad bellum requirements than conventional or counter-insurgency war does. (shrink)

In this highly original and important book, the author analyzes one of the fundamental questions of international relations: what causes war? Drawing on historical, statistical, and philosophical perspectives to produce an innovative theory, the author rejects the simplistic notion that war can be explained by some straightforward formula, yet demonstrates that there are basic similarities among the diverse origins of wars. Comparing various narrative accounts of the origins of wars, the author shows that enquiry into the causes of war is (...) inseparable from the question of responsibility. (shrink)

Plato arguably stands as one of the precursors to what we today know as the Just War Tradition, and he has more to say about ethics and the use of force than what is often acknowledged. In this article I try to show, by analyzing selected passages and perspectives from the Republic, that Plato regards the role of military ethics as crucial in the construction of the ideal city, and he sees limitation of brutality and more generally a philosophical approach (...) to the use of force as crucial elements of the city’s approach to warfare. Military power and, indeed, harsh preparations for it do occupy a central position in Plato’s political thought, but use of armed force is at the same time closely linked to the virtue of justice as well as the other virtues. (shrink)

This book constructs a new scientific explanation of the causes of war. The author describes systematically those factors common to wars between equal states to see if there is a pattern that suggests why war occurs and delineates the typical path by which relatively equal states have become embroiled in wars with one another in the modern global system. The book differs from others in that it employs the large number of empirical findings generated in the past twenty-five years to (...) solve the puzzle of war and peace. (shrink)

This anthology brings together material on two major related topics: the military profession, and morality and war. The revised and updated edition retains those sections that made the original version indispensable in the classroom, while incorporating new selections on topics of special concern for the 1980s and beyond. In particular, Colonel Wakin has included essays focusing on the relevance of nuclear deterrence and “just war” theory in the nuclear age. More than a third of the chapters are new.The articles in (...) the first section stress the ethical dimensions of the military profession, considering topics such as the conflict between military values and societal norms, the relation of the military to the state, and the concepts of loyalty, honor, and integrity. New chapters include an essay by Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale suggesting how moral philosophy can serve the profession, contemporary commentaries on the profession by Jacques Barzun and Max Lerner, and new thoughts on ethics and leadership by Colonel Wakin.The essays in Part 2 confront the agonizing moral issues associated with warfare, especially modern warfare. In conjunction with discussions of the laws of war and war crimes, new chapters highlight the continuing debate on nuclear issues. Included are excerpts from the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response’’; a defense of pacifism by Stanley Hauerwas; arguments about the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence by Michael Walzer, Michael Novak, and Charles Krauthammer; and some moral reflections on the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars’’) by Kenneth Kemp. (shrink)

Responding to increasing global anxiety over the ethics education of military personnel, this volume illustrates the depth, rigour and critical acuity of ...

A textbook designed for the mandatory semester ethics course at the United States Naval Academy by USNA Ethics Section, with contributions by the Distinguished Chair in Ethics.

War can be defined as organized political violence among two or more nations. In accordance with the purpose, processes and results of war, the ethics of war generally comprises three aspects: right ethics, action ethics and duty ethics. The most important issue in ethics of war is “justice”. “Justice” and “injustice” as a conceptual pair do not prescribe the objective character of war but rather convey a subjective attitude and ethical position that have the potential to compel a populace to (...) either support or oppose a war. (shrink)