Online research in philosophy

This paper explores the question of whether the United Nations should engage in preventive military actions. Correlatively, it asks whether UN preventive military actions could satisfy just war principles. Rather than from the standpoint of the individual nation state, the ethics of preventive war is discussed from the standpoint of the UN. For the sake of brevity, only the legitimate authority, just cause, last resort, and proportionality principles are considered. Since there has been disagreement about the specific content (...) of these principles, a third question also is explored: How should they be formulated? Moreover, these questions are addressed in the context of a particular issue: the goals of the non-proliferation and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. (shrink)

Recent work in the ethics of war has done much to challenge the collectivism of the convention-based, Walzerian just war theory. In doing so, it raises the question of when it is permissible for soldiers to resort to force. This article considers this issue and, in doing so, argues that the rejection of collectivism in just war should go further still. More specifically, it defends the ‘Individual-Centric Approach’ to the deep morality of war, which asserts that the justifiability (...) of an individual’s contribution to the war, rather than the justifiability of the war more generally, determines the moral acceptability of their participation. It then goes on to present five implications of the Individual-Centric Approach, including for individual liability to attack in war. (shrink)

The article provides an account of the unlikely revival of the medieval Just War Theory, due in large part to the efforts of Michael Walzer. Its purpose is to address the question: What is a just war theorist? By exploring contrasts between scholarly activity and forms of international activism, the paper argues that just war theorists appear to be just war criminals, both on the count of aiding and abetting aggression and on the count of inciting (...) troops to commit war crimes. (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)

In his Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer claims that his theory of just war is based on the rights of individuals to life and liberty. This is not the case. Walzer in fact bases his theory of jus ad bellum on the supreme rights of supra-individual political communities. According to his theory of jus ad bellum, the rights of political communities are of utmost importance, and individuals can be sacrificed for the sake of these communal rights. At (...) the same time, Walzer bases his theory of jus in bello on the supreme rights of individuals to life and liberty. According to his theory of jus in bello, the rights of individuals are of utmost importance, and political communities can never permissibly violate them in war. Thus, Walzer’s theory of just war is based on two incompatible theories of justice. This explains why Walzer’s theory produces incoherent practical prescriptions in cases of supreme emergencies. Furthermore, it is impossible for Walzer to base his theory of jus ad bellum on the rights of individuals as he conceives them. The theory of jus ad bellum holds that soldiers are obligated to obey the commands of their political superiors. However, this obligation violates the rights of individuals in a number of respects. This is why Walzer does not base the theory of jus ad bellum on individual rights, and produces an incoherent theory. (shrink)

Available Again! Long before the "shock and awe" campaign against Iraq in March 2003, debates swarmed around the justifications of the U.S.-led war to depose Saddam Hussein. While George W. Bush's administration declared a just war of necessity, opponents charged that it was a war of choice, and even opportunism. Behind the rhetoric lie vital questions: when is war just, and what means are acceptable even in the course of a just war? Originally published in 1991, in (...) the wake of the first war against Iraq, Just War Theory explores this essential dilemma. With a new preface by the editor, the essays in this indispensable collection move beyond the theoretical origins of just war theory to examine issues faced by military strategists, politicians, social theorists, and anyone concerned with the provocations and costs of military action. Popular wisdom once claimed that notions of just war would become obsolete with the onset of "total warfare," characterized by attacks on civilians and undiscriminating weapons of mass destruction. While the last decade has been ripe with brutality, just war theory is more critical than ever to the future of international relations and public discourse. This readable collection is an invaluable introduction to the debate. (shrink)

Introduction -- Just war theory -- Objections to just war theory -- Easy cases : Germany, Japan, Korea -- Harder cases : Serbia, Russia, Kosovo, Iraq -- Multiple reasons -- More problems with just war theory -- Prevention : Sri Lanka, Thailand -- Two just war theories -- Problems with just war theory I -- Problems for just war theory II -- Closing thoughts.

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)

With its interesting spectrum of viewpoints on some very actual and challenging themes, this book attempts to challenge the personal opinion of scholars and ...

Introduction By Charles Randall Paul Thank you very much. Thank you very much Reverend Kowalski. I will now introduce our panel. I'll make my own remarks I ...

In what circumstances is it legitimate to use force? How should force be used? These are two of the most crucial questions confronting world politics today. The Just War tradition provides a set of criteria which political leaders and soldiers use to defend and rationalize war. This book explores the evolution of thinking about just wars and examines its role in shaping contemporary judgements about the use of force, from grand strategic issues of whether states have a right (...) to pre-emptive self-defence, to the minutiae of targeting. Bellamy maps the evolution of the Just War tradition, demonstrating how it arose from a myriad of sub-traditions, including scholasticism, the holy war tradition, chivalry, natural law, positive law, Erasmus and Kant's reformism, and realism from Machiavelli to Morgenthau. He then applies this tradition to a range of contemporary normative dilemmas related to terrorism, pre-emption, aerial bombardment and humanitarian intervention. (shrink)

In his widely influential statement of just war theory, Michael Walzer exempts conscripted soldiers from all responsibility for taking part in war, whether just or unjust (the thesis of the moral equality of soldiers). He endows the overwhelming majority of civilians with almost absolute immunity from military attack on the ground that they aren't responsible for the war their country is waging, whether just or unjust. I argue that Walzer is much too lenient on both soldiers and (...) civilians. Soldiers fighting for a just cause and soldiers fighting for an unjust one are not morally equal. A substantial proportion of civilians in a democracy are responsible, to a significant degree, for their country's unjust war. Moreover, under certain (admittedly rare) circumstances, some of them are legitimate targets of military attack. This has bearing on settling moral accounts in the wake of war and the issue of forgiving the wrongs done in its course: possible candidates for such forgiveness are much more numerous than is usually assumed. (shrink)

The use of private military companies (PMCs) has become increasingly prevalent, with such firms as Blackwater, MPRI, and DynCorp taking over a growing number of roles traditionally performed by the regular military. This article uses the framework of just war theory (JWT) to consider the central normative issues raised by this privatization of military force. In particular, I first examine the claim that private contractors are inappropriate actors to wage war because they contravene the JWT principle of right intention. (...) The next section asserts that the use of PMCs is largely consistent with the application of the principle of legitimate authority but undermines two of its central rationales. In the third section, I apply the jus in bello principle of discrimination to PMC personnel. Overall, I argue that JWT needs to be updated and extended to respond to the issues raised by the privatization of military force. (shrink)

The traditional requirements upon the waging of a just war are ostensibly independent, but in actual practice each tenet is subject ultimately to the interpretation of a legitimate authority, whose declaration becomes the necessary and sufficient condition. While just war theory presupposes that some acts are absolutely wrong, it also implies that the killing of innocents can be rendered permissible through human decree. Nations are conventionally delimited, and leaders are conventionally appointed. Any group of people could band together (...) to form a nation, and any person could, in principle, be appointed the leader of any nation. Because the just war approach assumes absolutism while implying relativism, the stance is paradoxical and hence rationally untenable. (shrink)

Most of us accept that all persons have a right not to be killed, unless they forfeit or, perhaps, waive it. According to the currently dominant understanding of the just war, civilians retain the protection of this right in conditions of war but combatants do not. On one view, combatants forfeit the right by posing a threat to others; on another view, they waive it when they accept combatant status, which requires that they identify themselves visually and in other (...) ways as legitimate targets. Yet people who fight in a just war (“just combatants”) and fight only by permissible means, are simply defending themselves and other innocent people against a wrongful attack or some other serious wrong. They do not, it seems, either forfeit their right not to be killed or grant their enemies permission to try to kill them. I believe, therefore, that the blanket permission that those who fight without a just cause (“unjust combatants”) have to kill just combatants is a legal permission only, not a moral permission. The law of war, I suggest, diverges quite radically on this issue from the morality of war. Although just combatants retain their moral right not to be killed, and although their right is seldom overridden, it is nonetheless best, for a variety of contingent and largely pragmatic reasons, not to hold unjust combatants legally liable for killing them. The moral right of just combatants not to be killed is not protected by a legal right in wartime. This is, however, not the common view of the permissibility of killing just combatants in war. Most people, including most moral theorists in the just war tradition, believe that the morality of war and the law of war coincide on this point. They believe, 2 as I noted, that all combatants lose their moral right not to be killed by enemy combatants in conditions of war. But what is the reason for thinking that the right they have in peacetime no longer protects them in war? I have argued at length elsewhere against the view that just combatants forfeit their right not to be killed by posing a lethal threat to others, as well as against the view that they consent to become legitimate targets and thus waive their right not to be killed.1 If my arguments are right, we must, if we wish to preserve the traditional view, explore other possible ways of defending it.. (shrink)

A survey of just war theory literature reveals the existence of quite different lists of principles. This apparent arbitrariness raises a number of questions: What is the relation between ad bellum and in bello principles? Why are there so many of the former and so few of the latter? What order is there among the various principles? To answer these questions, I first draw on some recent work by Jeff McMahan to show that ad bellum and in bello principles (...) are not, as often portrayed, independent—the justice of conduct in war largely presupposes the justice of the recourse to war. Undermining this independence claim is one important step toward revealing the unified logical structure of just war theory. I then argue that we can see the dependence of the jus in bello upon the jus ad bellum , not just in the content of certain principles, but also in the structure of the two sets of principles: I construct a one-to-one mapping between ad bellum and in bello principles. In doing so, I argue also that the shared structure successfully finds place for the questions central to the evaluation of the morality of war: what is a sufficient provocation to use force, what objectives may be sought by force, why or for what ends, who has authority to decide to use force, and when or in what circumstances? Despite variations in expression, the theory allows for a coherent and comprehensive evaluation of morality in warfare. (shrink)

Just wars are supposed to be proportional responses to aggression: the costs of war must not greatly exceed the benefits. This proportionality principle raises a corresponding ‘interpretation problem’: what are the costs and benefits of war, how are they to be determined, and a ‘measurement problem’: how are costs and benefits to be balanced? And it raises a problem about scope: how far into the future do the states of affairs to be measured stretch? It is argued here that (...) weapons innovation always introduces costs, and that these costs cannot be determined in advance of going to war. Three examples, the atomic bomb, the AK-47 and the ancient Greek catapult, are given as examples. It is therefore argued that the proportionality principle is inapplicable prospectively. Some replies to the argument are discussed and rejected. Some more general defences of the proportionality principle are considered and also rejected. Finally, the significance of the argument for Just War Theory as a whole is discussed. (shrink)

Given the close relationship between the modern arms industry and the military, engineers and other professionals who work in the arms industry should be held accountable to the principles of just war theory. While they do not deploy weapons on the battlefield and are not in the military chain of command, technical professionals nonetheless have a moral duty to abide by principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. They are morally responsible both for choosing the companies that (...) employ them (and to whom these companies sell arms) and a well as what types of arms they develop. (shrink)

The traditional theory of the just war comprises two sets of principles, one governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the other governing the conduct (...) class='Hi'> of war (jus in bello). One of the central pillars of the traditional theory is that the two set of principles are, in Michael Walzer’s words, “logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a just war to be fought unjustly and for an unjust war to be fought in strict.. (shrink)

Frequently, the just war principle of noncombatant immunity is interpreted as morally prohibiting the intentional targeting of noncombatants. Apparently, many just war theorists assume that to target means to (intend to) kill. Now that effective nonlethal weapons have been envisaged, it should be evident that there is no conceptual connection between intentionally targeting and intentionally killing. For, using nonlethal weapons, there could be intentional targeting without intentional killing. This paper explores the question of whether the noncombatant immunity principle (...) should be revised, so as to allow uses of nonlethal weapons. Preliminary to answering this question, some other questions are explored, among which are the following. Why should a noncombatant immunity principle be accepted? Why is it morally permissible to intentionally target enemy combatants? Are noncombatants grievously harmed when they are incapacitated by nonlethal weapons? Is it morally permissible to intentionally incapacitate enemy combatants with nonlethal weapons, while knowingly but not intentionally incapacitating noncombatants? In order to focus on moral questions involving nonlethal weapons, questions about their effectiveness or legality are set aside. Instead of the idea of noncombatant immunity as expressed above, a delimited principle of noncombatant immunity is proposed—namely, that, in the conduct of war, the intentional grave injuring or killing of noncombatants is morally prohibited. Also proposed is a principle of noncombatant targeting, which would allow some uses of nonlethal weapons to intentionally incapacitate noncombatants. (shrink)

Any attempt to justify war in the fashion of just war theories risks underestimating its morally problematic nature. This becomes clear if we ask how the individual soldier or citizen is supposed to use just war theory in his own thinking. Michael Walzer's recent book, Just and Unjust Wars, illustrates the problem nicely. Walzer's view is that whether a state is justified in going to war is not a matter for the citizen to judge, and with regard (...) to the way the war is conducted the individual soldier can have only minimal moral responsibility for what is done. Walzer's position is criticized in detail and the conclusion drawn that such an understanding of just war theory undermines the theory's significance as a moral outlook on war. It is also argued that a more pertinent version of just war theory must have strong implications for social change. (shrink)

The main premise of this article is that contemporary just-war theory offers only a weak response to its two main rivals: realism and pacifism. These alternativeperspectives on the ethics of war and peace are dismissed too readily by just-war theory, often for the wrong reasons. In light of this deficiency, this paper seeksto forward the debate in two ways: 1) by reconstructing realism and pacifism in a rigorous and charitable fashion; and 2) by contending that, even in the (...) face of such formidable rivals, just-war theory remains the most plausible and principled account of the deep moral and political problems associated with the momentous issue of armed conflict. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of just war in two ways. Part I outlines the formation, early development, and substantive content of just war tradition in its classic form, sketches the subsequent development of this idea in the modern period, and examines three benchmarks in the recovery of just war thinking in American thought over the last four decades. Part II identifies and critiques several prominent themes in contemporary just war discourse, testing them against the context, (...) purpose, and content of the just war idea in its classic form. My argument throughout is that the historical substance of just war tradition needs to be respected in contemporary just war discourse, both to discipline that discourse and to engage contemporary moral reflection with the values embodied in just war tradition. (shrink)

This essay argues that the ambiguities of the just war tradition, sifted through a feminist critique, provides the best framework currently available for translating the ethical entitlement to human dignity into concrete feminist political practices. It offers a gendered critique of war that pursues the just war distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets of wartime violence and provides a gendered analysis of the peace which the just war tradition obliges us to preserve and pursue.

Some recent authors have argued that Aquinas deliberately integrated a pacifist outlook into his just war theory. Others, by contrast, have maintained that his rejection of pacifism was unequivocal. The present article attempts to set the historical record straight by an examination of Aquinas's writings on this topic. In addition to Q. 40, A. 1 of Summa theologiae II–II, the text usually cited in this connection, this article considers the biblical commentaries where Aquinas explains how the Gospel “precepts of (...) patience,” especially Matthew 5:39, “Do not resist evil,” should be interpreted in light of the doctrine of just war. The article concludes that Aquinas formulated a two-stage theory whereby pacifism was rejected as a suitable form of agency for the state (respublica), while it was affirmed as the appropriate response to evil for the agency of the church (ecclesia). (shrink)

As it is traditionally conceived, Just War Theory is not well suited for dealing with nation vs non-nation wars. It thus makes sense to create a second Just War Theory to deal with these wars. This article explores the differences and similarities between the two theories.

This paper highlights the relevance of moral authority, and the role that egoistic ethical claims have in waging war. This is done, in view of the just war tradition, by drawing a parallel between the crusades in the 'kingdom of heaven' proclaimed in 1095, and the present Islamic jih d , as well as the Bush administration's declaration of a war on terror. It maintains that the role of self-legitimized leaders is crucial in shaping the order of the jus (...) ad bellum criteria, in both Christian and Muslim societies, and that the indiscriminate usage of just war rhetoric proves to be a formidable weapon. Moral authority is described as a power resource, capable of capsizing the relevance of ethics, subjecting the interpretation of justice to declare war to the self-proclaimed authorities, and moving masses on the grounds of enthusiasm. (shrink)

This essay challenges a "meta-theory" in just war analysis that purports to bridge the divide between just war and pacifism. According to the meta-theory, just war and pacifism share a common presumption against killing that can be overridden only under conditions stipulated by the just war criteria. Proponents of this meta-theory purport that their interpretation leads to ecumenical consensus between "just warriors" and pacifists, and makes the just war theory more effective in reducing recourse (...) to war. Engagement with the new meta-theory reveals, however, that these purported advantages are illusory, made possible only by ignoring fundamental questions about the nature and function of political authority that are crucial to all moral reflection on the problem of war. (shrink)

I offer an argument for why torture, as an act of state-sponsored force to gain information crucial to the well-being of the common good, should be considered as a tactic of war, and therefore scrutinized in terms of just war theory. I argue that, for those committed to the justifiability of the use of force, most of the popular arguments against all acts of torture are unpersuasive because the logic behind them would forbid equally any act of mutilating or (...) killing in battle. I will also argue that looking at torture through the perspective of the just war tradition forces us to place strictures on the practice that make it hard to justify, helps us to see why torture should never be legalized, helps us to clarify when circumstances might justify torture, and suggests what sort of character is required to recognize when those circumstances have occurred. (shrink)

In this essay, Robin May Schott criticizes leading proponents of just war theory and introduces the notion of justifiable but illegitimate violence. Instead of legitimating some wars as just, it is better to acknowledge that both the situation of war and moral judgments about war are ambiguous. Schott raises the questions: What are alternative narratives of war? And what are alternative narratives to war? Such narratives are necessary for addressing the concepts of evil and of witnessing in the (...) ethical discourse after Auschwitz. (shrink)

In this short article I call into question the view that the current United States war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity. In this effort I am primarily engaged with the thought of the famous just war theorist Michael Walzer as it has developed from 1977 until 2009.

What is, or should be, the role of defense in thinking about the justification of use of armed force? Contemporary just war thinking prioritizes defense as the principal, and perhaps the only, just cause for resorting to armed force. By contrast, classic just war tradition, while recognizing defense as justification for use of force by private persons, did not reason from self-defense to the justification of the use of force on behalf of the political community, but instead (...) rendered the idea of just cause for resort to force in terms of the sovereign's responsibility to maintain justice, vindicating those who had suffered from injustice and punishing evildoers. This paper moves through three major stages in the historical development of just war thinking, first examining a critical phase in the formation of the classical idea of just cause as the responsibility to maintain justice, then discussing the shift, characteristic of the modern period, to an idea of sovereignty as connected to the state and the prioritization of defense of the state as just cause for use of force, and lastly showing how this conception of the priority of defense became part of the recovery of just war thinking in the latter part of the twentieth century. The paper concludes by noting recent changes in thought on international law that tend to emphasize justice at the expense of the right of self-defense, suggesting that the roots of just war thinking imply the need for a similar rethinking of contemporary just war discourse. (shrink)

Many just war theorists (call them traditionalists) claim that just as people have a right to personal self-defense, so nations have a right to national-defense against an aggressive military invasion. David Rodin claims that the traditionalist is unable to justify most defensive wars against aggression. For most aggressive states only commit conditional aggression in that they threaten to kill or maim the citizens of the nation they are invading only if those citizens resist the occupation. Most wars, then, (...) claimed to be justified by the traditionalist fail to meet the proportionality criterion. Thus, a just war, for Rodin, is best conceived of as a punitive war of law enforcement, not as a war of national-defense. I argue that Rodin does not have a case against the traditionalist. If national-defense is a disproportionate response to conditional aggression, then punitive war is a disproportionate response as well. Furthermore, the belief that punitive war is a proportionate response to conditional aggression underscores the traditionalist’s view that self-determination, cultural identity and the like are of sufficient value to defend by means of lethal force. I end the paper by very briefly sketching an account, different from that of Rodin’s, of how individual nations can be justified in waging wars of law enforcement. (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)

Recently a number of liberal political theorists, including Rawls and Walzer, have argued for a 'supreme emergency exemption' from the traditional just war principle of discrimination which absolutely prohibits direct attacks against innocent civilians, claiming that a political community threatened with destruction may deliberately target innocents in order to save itself. I argue that this 'supreme emergency exemption' implies that individuals too may kill innocents in supreme emergencies. This is a significant theoretical cost. While it will not constitute a (...) decisive refutation of all arguments for a supreme emergency exemption, my hope is that many will see this cost of endorsing the exemption as unacceptable. (shrink)

With regard to the morality of war, political philosophers have defended one of two basic positions, just war theory or absolute pacifism, but between thesetwo opposing views are various moderate positions. Throughout its long history, the Catholic Church has taken various stances, some strong and others more moderate, on the question of war. Unfortunately, the most recent formulation of the Church’s position is a moderate position without clear guidelines. In this paper I argue that if one wishes to maintain (...) that war is permissible in certain circumstances, it is important to have a position which rules out certain other types of wars as wrong in principle. Neither conditional pacifism nor the modern formulation of just war theory provides such a principled position; instead, the most plausible attempt to place the appropriate limits on war ought to begin from traditional just war theory. This view, which I refer to as strict just war theory, emphasizes particular aspects of traditional just war theory. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I (...) consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the “just authority” of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

If women are not yet accorded the full rights of citizenship internationally and especially in the military context, a feminist position on just war may have to be provisional. Drawing on Virginia Woolf's argument referenced in the title, Eide suggests in this essay that feminist theory develop its principles from women's exclusion from national privileges and argues that jus post bellum or justice after war be central to feminist theories of just war.

While the origin and development of the just war tradition until the early modern period blended concerns, ideas, and practices from the moral, legal, political, and military spheres, from the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth it largely disappeared as a conscious source of moral reflection about war and its restraint. Beginning in the 1960s, however, American theologian Paul Ramsey initiated a recovery of just war thinking in a series of writings applying the principles of discrimination and proportionality, ideas (...) he traced both to Augustinian theology and to natural law, to the debate over nuclear weapons and later to the Vietnam War. Ramsey's work directly engaged both theological and policy debate over military force, initiating lines of reflection that have since developed further and become increasingly institutionalized. This brief essay examines the nature of Ramsey's just war thought and its influence over the last 40 years. (shrink)

Most of us assume that we have a basic right not to be killed. We might not consider that to be an absolute right—since that would entail strict pacifism—but rather what philosophers call a prima facie right.2 For example, we might be said to forfeit our right not to be killed if we commit a particularly heinous crime like aggravated murder. Or we might waive that right if we suffer from a terminal illness and can’t end our own life without (...) assistance from others. And any right that can be forfeited or waived cannot be absolute. But we’re certainly on solid ground in believing that we have to have very serious moral reasons to justify killing people. In the Western just-war tradition, war is thought to be morally acceptable if it can satisfy certain ethical and procedural criteria. But that tradition also regards war as potentially causing so much suffering, death and destruction that leaders must carefully weigh those harms against the goals they hope to achieve through war. Even if one’s country has been seriously harmed, one’s soldiers or other citizens unjustly killed by foreign powers or terrorists, leaders still face significant moral constraints under just-war criteria on what they may do in response. Having just cause to go to war, for example, does not permit one to wage total war. (shrink)

Just war theory requires that a nation at war respect proportionality both before it goes to war, jus ad bellum, and in the way it fights a war, jus in bello. To respect proportionality is to know or estimate on good evidence that the whole war and the tactics used in the war will not generate more evil and harm and costs than they will generate good and help and benefits. This paper argues that the 2003–2004 U.S. war on (...) Iraq fails on both counts. It considers, in regard to jus ad bellum, the evils, harms, and costs that the war forces on the Iraqi military and civilians, the American military, and American and non-Iraqi civilians. It considers, under jus in bello, the evils, harms, and costs that the war forces on Iraqi civilians. On the proportionality standards for a just war, this war is a miserable failure. (shrink)

Abstract This article lays a theoretical foundation the perspective of international law for applying the principle of proportionality of cause in modern just war theory. It proposes an analytical framework for measuring proportionality based on general tort law, filtered through the international law of state responsibility. It proposes assessing the use of force as a proportionate (or disproportionate) remediation for an injury (present or future) caused by another state that is in breach of its legal obligations. The article then (...) applies this approach to the problems of anticipatory self-defense and humanitarian intervention. (shrink)

Scholarly critiques of the just war tradition have grown in number and sophistication in recent years to the point that available publications now provide the basis for a more philosophically challenging Peace Studies course. Focusing on just a few works published in the past several years, this review explores how professional philosophers are reclaiming the terrain long dominated by the approach of political scientist Michael Walzer. On center stage are British philosopher David Rodin’s critique of the self-defensejustification for (...) war and American philosopher Andrew Fiala’s skeptical assessment of the just war tradition in its entirety. Also considered is a collection of more narrowly focused critiques by philosophers and some highly relevant extra-philosophical studies regarding the social interconnections between authority and violence. (shrink)

Can just war theory and pacifism be substantially reconciled in theory and practice? In this paper I argue that James Sterba is mistaken in thinking that they can. There is no such thing as just war pacifism. However, this does not mean that just war theorists and pacifists cannot have a reasonable conversation about the justifiability of war. They can have such a conversation if they overcome their exclusive concern with the question of action-guidingness, that is, the (...) binary question of whether or not war can be morally justified. Justified wars are tragic. (shrink)

Abstract This introductory article argues that world public order continues to be challenged by the emergence of the doctrines of anticipatory self-defense and humanitarian intervention. These challenges may be better understood, and reconciled, by application of the just war tradition.

Only rarely have feminist theorists addressed the adequacy of just-war theory, a set of principles developed over hundreds of years to assess the justice of going to war and the morality of conduct in war. Recently, a few feminist scholars have found just-war theory inadequate, yet their own counterproposals are also deficient. I assess feminist contributions to just-war theorizing and suggest ways of strengthening, rather than abandoning, this moral approach to war.

Abstract Is the use of armed force by international forces in Afghanistan ethically justified? The answer is one of degree: the fighting is neither completely just nor completely unjust. To evaluate the extent of justification, a novel Just War Index (JWI) is introduced. It is a composite indicator: the average of estimated values for seven criteria from the long-standing Just War tradition ? Just Cause, Right Intent, Net benefit, Legitimate Authority, Last Resort, Proportionality of Means and (...) Right Conduct, each of which are evaluated on a 7-point scale. Because the two international missions using armed force in Afghanistan ? the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) ? have different mandates, different histories and different approaches to the use of force, they are evaluated separately. The ISAF mission is found considerably more justified than OEF though still ethically deficient. (shrink)

Contemporary debate on humanitarian intervention has prompted a revival of interest in the Just War ( justum bellum ) tradition of moral reflection. This tradition can be seen to provide an ethical vocabulary for assessing and possibly justifying these interventions. Just War is typically viewed as a middle way between Pacifism, on the one hand, and Realism, on the other; hence an ample literature exists comparing these traditions. Considerably less has been written, however, contrasting Just War with (...) Perpetual Peace. This article seeks to remedy that lacuna, with particular application to the question of humanitarian intervention. Taking the political controversy over NATO's 1999 Kosovo intervention as its point of departure, the article shows how support or opposition to this intervention often hinged upon the differing presuppositions of the Just War and Perpetual Peace traditions. It then proceeds to map out these different presuppositions by historical reference to exponents of each tradition, Aquinas and Vitoria for the former, Dante and Kant for the latter. (shrink)

Abstract Finding the western just war criterion of reasonable chance of success to be a contribution to ethical decision making about armed conflict requires dealing with a number of critiques. Specifying ?probability? rather than the alternatives ?hope? or ?chance?, and raising standards of evidence involved, makes the term less vague. Expanding the concept of ?success? to include morally defensible aims that can be achieved without military victory enriches the understanding of the moral relationship between ends and means in armed (...) conflict. Asking decision makers to accept moral responsibility for the costs of possible failure is a unique contribution to the just war criteria. The enriched concept of reasonable probability of success thus offers morally significant insights to prewar jus ad bellum decisions, and can benefit ethical decision-making about whether to continue once fighting has begun. (shrink)

In my article I defend the claim that terrorism is morally indefensible, irrespective of the religious or political circumstances and motives behind the actions of its agents and sponsors. My argument is based on the indefeasible presupposition of modern civilization and our human rights culture that, like the prohibition against murder in the law of crimes, the deliberate killing of innocent civilian non-combatants—the principle target of terrorists—destroys the cardinal value of the sacrosanctity of all individual human life by making a (...) dignified or rights-respecting, flourishing social life impossible. In my view the Islamist terrorist network of Al Qaeda (and some Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad) offers a paradigm case of modern terrorism due to the success of their attack on the American homeland on 9/11 (2001).Accordingly, I suggest the outlines of a philosophical critique of some common contemporary views which often thwart a common defense against terrorism because they blur the moral clarity of those who ordinarily respect the dignity and basic rights of persons as well as the rule of law. The views I target include a type of moral relativism, a postmodernist perspectivism, and the “Blowback” thesis currently circulating in some official military and political precincts. In addition, I explain why terrorism so deeply offends the law of war and its correlative Just War tradition; and also I reflect on why rights-based democracies must confront terrorism without subverting their own foundations. (shrink)

An effort to recover and explicate the idea of just war in Christian terms spans Paul Ramsey's career for almost four decades, from his earliest book (1950: 166-84) to his last (1988). His writings on this subject constitute one of the most important thematic and substantive contributions of his thought. This essay begins with a summary of classical just war tradition and assesses the relation of Ramsey's conception of just war to it. Then it examines that (...) conception in detail, focusing on three topics: the core idea of Christian love as an absolute moral norm expressed in the principle of discrimination, Ramsey's conversionist understanding of history and of politics that undergirds his argument from both discrimination and proportionality in conversation with the secular policy community, and the imbalance between treatment of the "jus in hello and the jus ad helium" in Ramsey's just war thought. Emphasis throughout is given to the influence of the contexts of debate in which Ramsey developed his ideas. (shrink)

This essay argues that the flaws of just war theory should lead us to develop a new approach to living with others. Danielle Poe begins her argument with a description of just war theory and its failures. In the next section, Poe discusses the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On and Luce Irigaray in order to construct ethical commitments between people. These ethical commitments come from concrete acts of empathy, such as relationships of compassion, kindness, and hospitality. Finally, Poe (...) considers how these concrete acts can create conditions to prevent war. (shrink)

Just war theory distinguishes between jus ad bellum (whether the war itself is just) and jus in bello (whether the conduct of the war is just). I argue, against the traditional view, that modern warfare has made it impossible to separate the two in practice. Specifically, I argue that modern war is a techno-cultural system which requires its participants to violate the primary criterion of jus in bello—noncombatant immunity. From this it follows that even a war of (...) self-defense is not a just war. I consider several challenges to my position: the doctrine of double effect and the claim that noncombatant immunity can be suspended on the basis of military necessity or supreme emergency. I argue that neither of these challenges is acceptable and that to suspend the rule of noncombatant immunity is to suspend the moral point of view. Finally, I consider alternatives which would change the techno-cultural system of modern war. (shrink)

Abstract It has become almost commonplace to regard the concepts of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Just War as not only compatible but rather closely connected. Contrary to this position I argue here that some Just War criteria are in significant tension with R2P. This tension results from the fact that Just War only makes war permitted while R2P prescribes an obligation. But R2P and Just War not only are in significant tension, but also suffer from (...) inverted weaknesses: R2P is too demanding while Just War is not demanding enough. Granting that R2P implies a duty to protect, I argue that such a duty is too demanding since it conflicts with the principle of ?ought implies can?, whereas Just War is arguably not far-reaching enough as ?duties-talk? does not fit into its structure. I finish by proposing an interpretation of R2P and Just War which not only eliminates the tension but also compensates for these weaknesses. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed rape and sexual violence used on such a massive scale and often in a widespread and systematic program that the international community has had to recognize that rape and sexual violence are not just war crimes but might be crimes against humanity or even genocide. I suggest that just war theory, while limited in its applicability to mass rape, might nevertheless offer some framework for making the determination of when sexual violence and rape constitute (...) war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. In addition, just war theory can provide the normative justification individual soldiers need to resist orders and actions that demonstrate egregious moral breakdown as found in instances of mass rape and systematic use of sexual violence, and just war criteria demonstrate that the use of rape and sexual violence in war time can never be legitimated, especially in the case of prisoner interrogation. (shrink)

The late twentieth century has provided both reasons and occasions for reassessing just war theory as an organizing framework for the moral analysis of war. Books by G. Scott Davis, James T. Johnson, and John Kelsay, together with essays by Jeffrey Stout, Charles Butterworth, David Little, Bruce Lawrence, Courtney Campbell, and Tamara Sonn, signal a remarkable shift in war studies as they enlarge the cultural lens through which the interests and forces at play in political violence are identified and (...) evaluated. In his review of the contribution made by these texts, the author focuses on the cohesion of just war theory, the asymmetry between Christian and Islamic attitudes toward holy war, and the need to develop just war theory into a tool adequate to assist in the moral evaluation of violent conflicts within, not just between, nation-states. (shrink)

Pope John Paul II's opposition to the Iraq War was not that it failed to meet the conditions of Just War Theory. Indeed, we cannot tell from what he publicly said whether he thought it met those conditions or not, for he would have opposed it in any case. His thinking was rather that even just and necessary wars always come, as it were, too late, and are never able to solve the problems that made wars just (...) and necessary. He was not trying therefore to enter into the details of Just War Theory. He wanted to subsume the principles of war into the principles of peace and to do so, not by denying justice, but by transcending it with charity. This article shows how this thinking is to be understood and the many means the Pope devised for putting this thinking into practice. (shrink)

Abstract The article criticizes the trend of reformulating the traditional just-war criterion of Proper Authority, which was designed to de-legitimize force by non-state actors, into a requirement that decisions to resort to force be multilateral. The article illustrates several shortcomings of the judgment processes of the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the World Court, and states? populations, and argues among other things that reformulating Proper Authority would render other criteria meaningless, especially Just Cause. Finally, the article rebuts (...) the strongest objection to a system in which states judge their own causes for war: the problem of invincible ignorance. (shrink)

In recent times, ‘just war’ discourse has become unfortunately associated, in the minds of some, with the idea of the forcible promotion or imposition of democracy as a legitimate just cause. It would thus be understandable if supporters of just war theory were to disavow any particular linkage of its tenets with the democratic ideal. However, while certainly not endorsing the stated cause, this article contends that the theory in its most plausible and attractive form does exhibit (...) certain biases towards the ideal, in both jus ad bellum and jus post bellum. If these biases fall short of shackling the theory to claims such as ‘only democracies can fight just wars’, they may nevertheless place taxing justificatory burdens on a non-democracy's claim to have a war-waging right and on non-democratic conceptions of the just peace that should ideally follow a just war. (shrink)

Although international law and the Charter of the United Nations define a doctrine of just war, some critics have argued that the U.S. has become an empire that can no longer be bound by such doctrine. On the contrary, I maintain that we must retain just war doctrine as a normative base from which to critique the U.S. and its preemptive wars against terrorism. Neither the Afghanistan nor the Iraq war has been a just war. By its (...) imperialist intentions and barbarous actions, the U.S. government has shown itself no longer to be a legitimate authority with the moral justification to begin or conduct a war. Such subversion of democratic deliberation requires a moral force to mobilize resistance from below. Since no war initiated by the undemocratic elite of the U.S. Empire could possibly be just, we have a conscientious obligation to become revolutionary pacifists against any wars called by such an illegitimate government. In contrast to universal pacifism, a context-justified revolutionary pacifism can be defended as a coherent moral and political position. (shrink)

This article analyses current trends in and future expectations of nanotechnology and other key enabling technologies for security as well as dual use nanotechnology from the perspective of the ethical Just War Theory (JWT), interpreted as an instrument to increase the threshold for using armed force for solving conflicts. The aim is to investigate the relevance of the JWT to the ethical governance of research. The analysis gives rise to the following results. From the perspective of the JWT, military (...) research should be evaluated with different criteria than research for civil or civil security applications. From a technological perspective, the boundaries between technologies for civil and military applications are fuzzy. Therefore the JWT offers theoretical grounds for making clear distinctions between research for military, civil security and other applications that are not obvious from a purely technological perspective. Different actors bear responsibility for development of the technology than for resorting to armed force for solving conflicts or for use of weapons and military technologies in combat. Different criteria should be used for moral judgment of decisions made by each type of actor in each context. In addition to evaluation of potential consequences of future use of the weapons or military technologies under development, the JWT also prescribes ethical evaluation of the inherent intent and other foreseeable consequences of the development itself of new military technologies. (shrink)

(2012). JUST WAR, NONCOMBATANT IMMUNITY, AND THE CONCEPT OF SUPREME EMERGENCY. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 273-286. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2012.758399.

The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served (...) as the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis-à-vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components. (shrink)

As critical incidents and terrorist threats are on the increase, the military/SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) aspects of U.S. civilian policing are being expanded. The person called upon as a last resort to kill the criminal agent has a unique position on the SWAT team. The police sniper is asked to kill with premeditation and usually not in a situation of self-defense. Very little appears in the ethics literature analyzing the morality of the sniper role. This paper will tentatively outline (...) a process of analysis that draws upon the framework of principles associated with the just-war tradition. Elements examined are the ends of sniper killing, intention and motives, relevant emotions, and implementation means used. The conclusion is that a plausible case can be made for the moral justification of such killing as long as certain conditions or tests are met. (shrink)

The just war tradition assumes that civil war is a possible site of justice. It has an uneasy relationship with liberalism, because the latter resists the idea that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified in moral terms. The paper suggests that, even if this is true, these two schools of thought are closer to each other than often appears to be the case. In particular, the paper argues that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified using the liberal assumptions that (...) nonviolent opposition is the proper non-institutional technique to fight oppressive regimes, and that law enforcement is the appropriate response to unjustified rebellions. Given these assumptions, insurgent warfare is limited to circumstances in which, firstly, nonviolent resistance is no longer a reasonable course of action; and secondly, insurgents have the intention to create the political conditions that are needed to make it a coherent option again.Counter insurgent warfare, in turn, is restrained to those situations in which, first, there is a rebellion or revolution even though the use of nonviolent strategies for conflict and change remains a reasonable choice; and second, police agencies lack the resources that arerequired for managing and suppressing rebel activities. Of course, these requirements should be taken as presumptions, and there may be cases when they do not hold. (shrink)

Given certain well-known empirical facts–including the Bush II administration’s motivations and its actions initiating the war – the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and its continuing war of occupation) is not just (i.e., is not morally justified), on any standard interpretation of Just War Theory criteria for jus ad bellum. Since there was no imminent threat of attack by Iraq against the U.S., the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a Preventative or Merely Precautionary War (which is notrecognized (...) by either Just War Theory or international law as a legitimate basis for initiating a war) rather than a Preemptive War (which may sometimes be justified, if there is a real threat of imminent attack) or a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack from an aggressor, which is always justified). Moreover, the neo-conservative program for perpetual U.S. world domination by the weakening of other nations and the invasions of weaker nations for purposes of U.S. economic and geopolitical advantage (behind the facade of “spreading democracy and freedom”) is not morally justified. However, the moral status of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan is much less clear. Many argue that is was morally justified according to both Just War Theory and international law, given certain well-established empirical facts; particularly, al-Qaeda’s involvement with the events of 9-11 and the Taliban government’s protection of al-Qaeda and its terrorist infrastructure within Afghanistan. On this analysis, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was justified as both a Reactive War (responding to an unjustified attack against primarily civilian targets) and a Preemptive War (to try to make sure that al-Qaeda did not have the opportunity to use its infrastructure in Afghanistan to arrange other attacks on civilian targets in the U.S. or other nations). But the cogency of this analysis depends on whether there were any realistic alternatives fordisrupting al-Qaeda and bringing its leaders to justice; and some argue that such alternatives did exist. Moreover, even if U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was morally justified it is arguable that the amount and type of force used – e.g. intensive, wide-spread bombing campaigns that killed many civilians – were not justified. (shrink)

This paper critically explores the growing assertiveness with which liberalism has approached questions of the just use of force since 9/11. The liberal position rests upon broad claims about the centrality of human rights concerns to considerations of the justice of war. The claim is that a liberal-cosmopolitan respect for human rights forces us to reconsider the conservative, generally prohibitive, position on the use of force defended by traditional just war theory and enshrined in international law. This argument (...) is has been most fully developed by Allen Buchanan in several important books and papers and it is Buchanan’s position that forms the basis for the critique of the assertive cosmopolitan attitude to the use of force that is offered in this article. The paper shows that both the just war tradition and those who theorize the ethics of the law of armed conflict have taken the moral and political reality of human rights seriously (in a manner that directly addresses Buchanan’s core argument) but that there remain compelling reasons to defend a conservative approach to the use of force. (shrink)

The relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello has been characterized differently throughout European history. There have been three main positions exemplified by Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and Emer de Vattel. They are, first, both the cause and the conduct of warfare must be just; second, the cause must be just, but the conduct of the war is unconstrained in order to achieve the goal of peace; and, third, we must assume justice on both sides, (...) and concentrate on ensuring just conduct in armed conflict. Each attempted to distil customary practices, which they saw in some relation to Natural Law, the ultimate source of moral obligation. Customary international law now serves the function of Natural Law in that even if treatises in which it is articulated lapse the customary constraining precepts remain, and are equally obligatory. It is contended that the relationship between just war and just conduct in war during the 20th and 21st centuries has mirrored the three classic positions, and since 9/11, with the advent of new dimensions to warfare in the war against terror, the relationship is in flux. Since 9/11 there has been a growing emphasis on jus ad bellum and a relative silence on the principles of jus in bello. Implicitly, there is an informal acceptance of something like Pufendorf’s position in which outlaw combatants are deemed to place themselves outside of the protection of customary law. (shrink)

In the war on terror, both 'sides' have taken great pains to justify their actions in moral terms. As force is employed so are sophisticated arguments which directly invoke the just war traditions of the West and Islam. This book offers an exploration of the ways in which George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden drew upon, and simultaneously re-conceptualised, important moral concepts from within the Western and Islamic just war traditions. It examines a range of jus ad (...) bellum and jus in bello issues, including Western debates about pre-emptive self-defence, Islamic requirements for right authority to declare war, proportionality in the Battle of Fallujah, and the legitimacy of suicide bombing in Islam. It also considers how a series of authoritative voices in the West and in the Muslim world appealed to just war and jihad ideas to vigorously contest Bush and bin Laden's cases for war. The book's central argument--that the Bush administration and al-Qaeda departed from important consensuses about justified warfare--contains within it an alternative way of understanding the war on terror. Rather than a clash between civilisations, it is suggested that the conflict can be accounted for by a clash within civilisations: in resorting to war, both sides acted against their own traditions and contravened the requirements of their own civilisations. -/- This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. (shrink)

Recently, alternatives to both the structure and content of ‘orthodox’ just war theory have been proposed by Jeff McMahan and David Rodin. In this paper, I draw on this debate to show that key ideas in just war theory can be disputed in both of these respects. More broadly, it is unclear how we should assess the debate between differing conceptions of individual principles (such as just cause and proportionality) and the competing wider theories in which they (...) might be situated. I employ the idea of reflective equilibrium, taken from John Rawls, to show how these conflicting viewpoints might be understood and assessed. I argue, then, that contemporary just war theory faces both important questions of substance, and a set of difficult meta-theoretical issues concerning the grounds on which competing just war theories can be assessed. Futhermore, I contend, this should influence the character of – and our expectations for – real-world just war institutions. (shrink)

Vitoria and Suárez defend the categorical immunity of the innocent not to be intentionally killed. But they allow for inflicting collective punishment on the innocent and the noninnocent alike during and after a just war. So they allow for deliberately harming them. Inflicting harm on the innocent can often result in their death. Hence, holding both claims seems incoherent. First, the objections against using the term “innocent” are explained. Second, their views on just war are explored. And third, (...) by appealing to Aquinas' double-effect reasoning, it is shown how they try to avoid the above-mentioned incoherence. Still, their appeal might be insufficient to palliate the tension between the above-mentioned claims. If just wars are possible, the deliberate harming of the innocent is reasonably unavoidable for defeating and punishing those who wage them. Hence, defenders of just wars, whether from a religious or a secular perspective, must live with such a tension. (shrink)

From A Theory of Justice to The Law of Peoples Rawls’s liberalism develops from individualism to a kind of communitarianism. This apparently makes him blind to conflicts between the individual and the collective, and the resulting position contributes to change his perspective on just war. From a duty to prevent war by civil disobedience he develops a duty to initiate war because of human right violations, and this must be criticized.

The rapidly expanding literature on terrorism can be seen to respond to the growing incidence of violent political conflict. Most of the relevant discussion is conducted within the framework of just war theory – a theory in which armed conflicts are considered legitimate only when they are explicitly announced and justified; when they take place between states and their armies; and when they are strictly exclusive of non-combatants. This article argues that framing the discussion in these terms is unhelpful: (...) rather than help us to properly consider and delegitimize terrorism, it tends to expose the inadequacy of just war theory itself under conditions of modern violence. The purpose of this article is thus to establish that the framework of just war theory is inadequate to the delegitimation of terrorism. The article concludes by arguing, on these grounds, for the replacement of the theory of just war with a theory of justified political violence. (shrink)

In this chapter, I take up the question of whether one of the central principles of jus ad bellum – just cause – is relevant in a world in which cyberattacks occur. I argue that this principle is just as relevant as ever, though it needs modification in light of recent developments. In particular, I argue, contrary to many traditional just war theorists, that just cause should not be limited to physical attacks. In the process, I (...) offer an improved definition of cyberattack and show how some other principles of jus ad bellum constrain this widened notion of just cause. (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)

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)

Drawing on examples from the history of warfare from the crusades to the present day, "The ethics of war" explores the limits and possibilities of the moral regulation of war. While resisting the commonly held view that 'war is hell', A.J. Coates focuses on the tensions which exist between war and morality. The argument is conducted from a just war standpoint, though the moral ambiguity and mixed record of that tradition is acknowledge and the dangers which an exaggerated view (...) of the justice or moral worth of war poses are underlined. In the first part, the broad image of the just war is compared with the competing images of realism, militarism and pacifism. In the second part, the moral issues associated both with the decision to go to war and with the manner in which war is conducted are explored. Was the allied decision to go to war in the Gulf premature? were economic sanctions a more effective and morally preferable option? was Britain justified in going to war over the Falklands? did the allied bombing of Germany in the Second World War constitute a war crime? should the IRA's claim to belligerent status be recognised? these questions and more are raised in this important book. (shrink)

In the tradition of just war theory two assumptions have been taken pretty much for granted: first, that there are quite a lot of justified wars, and second, that there is a moral inequality of combatants, that is, that combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war but not vice versa. I will argue that the first assumption is wrong and that therefore the second assumption is virtually irrelevant for reality. I (...) will also argue, primarily against Jeff McMahan, that his particular thesis about the moral inequality of “just” and “unjust combatants” is an analytical truth which, however, does hardly apply to anything (there are few if any “unjust combatants” as he defines them). If one takes his thesis less literally, namely in the sense of a thesis about combatants participating in a justified war and combatants participating in an unjustified war, it is correct in principle, but still of little practical relevance even if one disregarded the fact that there are virtually no justified wars. One of the reasons for this is that, contrary to McMahan’s claims, justification does not defeat liability. (shrink)

This study of the comparative ethics of war seeks to open a discussion about whether there are universal standards in the ideologies of warfare between the major religious traditions of the world. The project looks at the ideology of war in the major Asian religious traditions. Does our exploration of the ethics of war in Asian civilizations have any bearing on the pressing questions of armed conflict today? It has become clear that Islamic ethics and law contain sophisticated concepts of (...) both just war (jus ad bellum) and just warfare (jus in bello) . The contributions of this work explore the central issues of just war in non-Western religious traditions. This new approach will be of interest to scholars of religion and war studies. (shrink)

Larry May argues that the best way to understand war crimes is as crimes against humanness rather than as violations of justice.

Wars have been entered into as a means of gaining property, taking slaves and dominating and controlling peoples. The pacifist claims that no form of war can ever be justified. By contrast, just war theory holds that it is possible for a war to be morally justified, an idea that underlies much international law, as can be seen in the Geneva Conventions. Teichman introduces us to such thinkers as Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, John Rawls and Elizabeth Anscombe (...) on the very idea of a just war. (shrink)

What are the ethical principles underpinning the idea of a just war and how should they be adapted to changing social and military circumstances? In this book, Steven P. Lee presents the basic principles of just war theory, showing how they evolved historically and how they are applied today in global relations. He examines the role of state sovereignty and individual human rights in the moral foundations of just war theory and discusses a wide range of topics (...) including humanitarian intervention, preventive war, the moral status of civilians and enemy combatants, civil war and terrorism. He shows how just war theory relates to both pacifism and realism. Finally, he considers the future of war and the prospects for its obsolescence. His clear and wide-ranging discussion, richly illustrated with examples, will be invaluable for students and other readers interested in the ethical challenges posed by the changing nature of war. (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)

Augustine famously defends the justice of killing in certain public contexts such as just wars. He also claims that private citizens who intentionally kill are guilty of murder, regardless of their reasons. Just as famously, Augustine seems to prohibit lying categorically. Analyzing these features of his thought and their connections, I argue that Augustine is best understood as endorsing the justice of lying in certain public contexts, even though he does not explicitly do so. Specifically, I show that (...) parallels between his treatments of killing and lying along with his “agent (auctor)–instrument (minister)” distinction, in which God is the true agent or “author” of certain acts and humans are merely God's instruments, together imply that he would regard certain instances of public lying as permissible and even obligatory. I buttress my argument by examining several key but neglected passages and by responding to various objections and rival interpretations. Throughout, I challenge standard interpretations of Augustine's ethics of killing and lying and seek to deepen our overall understanding of these dimensions of his thought. In so doing, I contribute to ongoing discussions of public and private lying and to the task of relating Augustine's thought to contemporary debate and deliberation on war, killing, and lying. (shrink)

which I will argue must ultimately be ment that there be a good or compelling assessed by reference to the moral plausireason to go to war—and then to observe bility both of these implications and of that, at least until quite recently, contemthe larger understanding of a just war in porary just war theory and international which the conception is embedded. As I law have recognized only one just cause..

The concept of jus post bellum deals with moral considerations in the aftermath of conflict and is concerned with how a just peace should look like. This paper analyses the concept of jus post bellum as developed by contemporary Just War theorists. Its aim is to provide a critical perspective on the proposed substantial scope of this concept. In other words, it will consider the question: in restoring peace after war, is it justified for just combatants to (...) change the political structure of a defeated aggressor? The piece will be divided into two main parts. First, through a review of the literature, I define the current state of the art on jus post bellum thinking in relation to a number of key aspects of this concept. What does241 it entail? Which principles is it made of? What sort of activities do just war theorists speak about when they speak of creating a just peace? Second, I focus on the principle of ?political rehabilitation? of the defeated state: is it permissible? Under what circumstances? While considering these questions and authors' views on this matter, the paper will provide a critical reappraisal of the current debate on the justifiability of political reconstruction in post-conflict states. (shrink)

In this paper, I suggest that for some proposed solutions to global justice problems, incompatibility with the necessary features of international law is a reason to reject them. I illustrate this by discussing the problem raised by the case of unjust combatants, that is, combatants lacking a just cause for war. I argue that the principle of inequality of combatants, which suggests that we ought to prohibit those without a just cause for war from fighting, is not only (...) a bad international legal principle, but also a bad principle of global justice. (shrink)

With the ending of the strategic certainties of the Cold War, the need for moral clarity over when, where and how to start, conduct and conclude war has never been greater. There has been a recent revival of interest in the just war tradition. But can a medieval theory help us answer twenty-first century security concerns? -/- David Fisher explores how just war thinking can and should be developed to provide such guidance. His in-depth study examines philosophical challenges (...) to just war thinking, including those posed by moral scepticism and relativism. It explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning; the relation between public and private morality; and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance not just to politicians and generals but to ordinary service people. -/- The complexity and difficulty of moral decision-making requires a new ethical approach - here characterised as virtuous consequentialism - that recognises the importance of both the internal quality and external effects of agency; and of the moral principles and virtues needed to enact them. Having reinforced the key tenets of just war thinking, Fisher uses these to address contemporary security issues, including the changing nature of war, military pre-emption and torture, the morality of the Iraq war, and humanitarian intervention. He concludes that the just war tradition provides not only a robust but an indispensable guide to resolve the security challenges of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This paper considers the increasingly common suggestion that a new form of warfare has emerged. It clarifies the notion of new wars and responds to an argument for the claim that in order to achieve military parity non-state actors must violate just war principles. I reject the claim that violation of just war principles is necessary and argue that we can make reasonable normative judgments about new wars in terms of just war theory. From there, I consider (...) the possibility that military parity can be achieved in a way that does not violate these principles and argue that it is permissible for relatively weak non-state actors to fight with fewer restrictions than conventional states. (shrink)

In this essay, Denike assesses the appropriation of international human rights by humanitarian law and policy of "security states." She maps representations of the perpetrators and victims of "tyranny" and "terror, " and their role in providing a "just cause" for the U.S.–led "war on terror. " By examining narratives of progress and human rights heroism Denike shows how human rights discourses, when used together with the pretense of self-defense and preemptive war, do the opposite of what they claim—entrenching (...) the sovereignty of Western imperialist states while eroding the conditions necessary for the recognition of the human rights of others. (shrink)

Whether we think of the routine conviction or acquittal of suspects on the basis of scientific evidence in the law courts, the trust placed in scientific medicine and the extraordinary interventions it makes possible, or the importance that policy makers attach to the opinions of scientists, it is clear that those making up our scientific institutions are among the most authoritative and respected people that there are. Among intellectual endeavours science has an unrivalled dominance in terms of funding, status and (...) influence on practical affairs. However, the days when natural science was widely considered to be a model for the study of the arts and the humanities already seem distant. Indeed the influence of science even within subjects which were conceived of as scientific from their very inception, such as political science and sociology, has waned considerably. Perhaps in economics scientism is still dominant but elsewhere in academia a widespread disillusionment with science has taken hold. Perhaps this is understandable given what were with hindsight the obviously foolish attempts to study everything with the same methodology as is employed in physics. Yet the backlash against a misconceived scientism and reductionism in the study of social life and culture has amounted to more than just a defence of disciplinary boundaries, for critics of science now assail it in its own castles (which they allege are built in the air). (shrink)

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)

This article applies jus in bello criteria to a relatively novel tactic in asymmetrical warfare: the attempt by a conventionally weaker force to shape the conditions of combat so that the (morally scrupulous) stronger force cannot advance without violating the rules of war. The weaker side accomplishes this by placing its own civilian population before the attacking force: by encouraging or forcing civilians to be human shields, by launching attacks from civilian areas, by provoking reprisal massacres, by creating humanitarian disasters, (...) and by secreting military targets in civilian neighborhoods. This set of tactics is introduced with historical examples taken from recent conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East. The paper argues that the doctrine of double effect is largely inapplicable to these tactics due to their publicity-seeking nature; that enemy war crimes do not reciprocally release the attacker from his moral obligations; and that responsibility for vulnerable civilians devolves to anyone with the power to offer them protection. Specific tactical recommendations are generated for situations where the deployment of this tactic can be anticipated, for situations where the attacker is and is not immediately imperiled by its use, and in situations where attempts at discrimination are futile. (shrink)

The efficiency of engineering applied to civilian projects sometimes threatens to run away with the social agenda, but in military applications, engineering often adds a devastating sleekness to the inevitable destruction of life. The relative crudeness of terrorism (e.g., 9/11) leaves a stark after-image, which belies the comparative insignificance of random (as opposed to orchestrated) belligerence. Just as engineering dwarfs the bricolage of vernacular design—moving us past the appreciation of brush-strokes, so to speak—the scale of engineered destruction makes it (...) difficult to focus on the charred remains of individual lives. Engineers need to guard against the inappropriate military subsumption of their effort. Fortunately, the ethics of warfare has been an ongoing topic of discussion for millennia. This paper will examine the university core class I’ve developed (The Moral Dimensions of Technology) to meet accreditation requirements in engineering ethics, and the discussion with engineering and non-engineering students focused by the life of electrical engineer Vannevar Bush, with selected readings in moral philosophy from the Dao de Jing, Lao Tze, Cicero, Aurelius Augustinus, Kant, Annette Baier, Peter Singer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Judith Thomson. (shrink)

Abstract There is general agreement that the targeting of civilians in war is morally wrong. But sometimes starvation tactics are accepted as being a better option than direct military attacks. This article questions this view by arguing that starvation tactics affect civilians first and inflict long-term suffering. It argues that they are not just unless they can be limited to a small area where only military personnel will be affected. It looks at the provision for starvation tactics in the (...) Geneva Conventions, and at the argument of double effect. It then illustrates the argument with three case studies: the siege of Leningrad; the application of sanctions prior to and during the Gulf War in 1990?1991; and restrictions of food during the war in Bosnia. (shrink)