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Proportionality and Self-Interest

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Abstract

This paper offers a justification of the principle of military proportionality that is based in considerations of self-interest. By offering such a justification, I hope to vindicate the principle on the basis of the least controversial argument available. The war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 is used as a case study. Part 1 surveys recent work on military proportionality and suggests that the importance of this principle has increased in the age of asymmetrical warfare. Part 2 considers and rejects the traditional realist concerns about proportionality. Part 3 offers a realist rationale for adhering to the principle.

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Notes

  1. Quoted in Brown (2003, p. 173). The full transcript of the exchange can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=684.

  2. Interview with CBS news, January 24, 2003. Available online at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/24/eveningnews/main537928.shtml.

  3. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5173078.stm.

  4. For more background on the history of the principle, see Fotion (2002, pp. 91–100)

  5. According to the American theologian and philosopher Paul Ramsey, the decision to go to war is proportional only when “more good will be done than undone [by resorting to war] or a greater measure of evil prevented” (quoted in Coppieters and Fotion 2005, p. 92). In Thomas Hurka’s (2005, p. 38) formulation, the “resort to war can be wrong if the damage it will cause is excessive”. Gary Brown, taking his lead from Grotius, tells us that the “suffering of war must be overbalanced by good, or by avoiding even worse suffering”, and adds that “the determination of the likely harm must consider the interests of all: the considering nation, neutral parties, and the enemy” (in Brown 2003, p. 175).

  6. I take the example from Hurka (2005, pp. 35–36).

  7. The quote is taken from Carroll (2006, p. 88). Carroll’s analysis suggests that the allied firebombing of Dresden, a few months earlier, should have been ruled out on similar grounds.

  8. Quoted in Hurka (2005, p. 36).

  9. “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons” Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports (1996).

  10. Thus, for example, Walzer (2000) focuses on the idea of discrimination, or noncombatant immunity, and devotes very little attention to proportionality. See also Hurka (2005, FN 15, p. 45).

  11. Hurka argues that some restrictions are needed on the goods that count—and the relevant goods are only those resulting directly from the war’s sufficient just causes “in assessing a war for proportionality, it seems we count evils of all kinds, with no limits on their content…[there is] more counting on the negative than on the positive. So all evils produced count but not all goods.” See “Proportionality in the Morality of war,” p. 46.

  12. Thus, for example, does the fact that the enemy engages in fighting tactics likely to increase harm to civilians give us more latitude in determining what counts as a proportional response?

  13. Specifically, how to weigh the lives of our own citizens against lives of citizens on the other side, how to weigh the lives of our soldiers against the lives of enemy soldiers, and how to weight the lives of our soldiers against the lives of enemy civilians.

  14. An interesting question raised in this context concerns temporal span: Can distant benefits render a military decision retroactively proportionate? For example, can the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki be seen as proportionate if we could establish that it helped prevent nuclear war between the Americans and the Soviets?

  15. Washington Post, July 25, 2006. Available online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072400808.html.

  16. A report prepared by Israeli Military Intelligence 2 weeks into the war concluded that by reacting as forcefully as it did, Israel portrayed itself as a “crazy nation”. The authors of the document claimed that this image would be useful in preventing future attacks. See Shelah and Limor (2007, p. 216).

  17. See, for example, Irani and Funk (1998) and Ginat (2006).

  18. See, for example, Slater (2007). Slater writes: “…there had been a history of mutual Israeli–Hezbollah limited military raids, prisoner seizures, and retaliations; all of these military ventures ended quickly, some of them with prisoner exchanges. Thus, it is not really true that (as many have argued) Israel had no choice but to respond with overwhelming military power, for it could have continued to observe the long-established rules of the game, namely a proportionate military response, followed by a prisoner exchange.”

  19. See Brown (2003, p. 181) and Barry Gilbert (2005, p. 100).

  20. See, for example, Special Issue on Humiliation and History in a Global Perspective, Social Alternatives 25.1 (2006).

  21. Haaretz, September 12, 2006. Available online at: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/761781.html.

  22. According to data gathered by Human Rights Watch, the fighting resulted in 1,109 Lebanese casualties, mostly civilians, and one million displaced. Israel suffered 42 civilian casualties and lost 100 of its soldiers. Two hundred thousand Israelis were internally displaced during the war. The report can be accessed at: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/lebanon0907/3.htm-_Toc175028478.

  23. The quote is taken from Michael Specter’s New Yorker piece “Letter from Moscow: Why are Vladimir Putin’s Enemies Dying?” (January 29, 2007). The article is available online at: http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2007/2007_01_29_kremlin.html.

  24. Shelah and Limor (2007, p. 59). The translation is mine.

  25. Winograd Commission Interim Report, chapter 7, section 11. The translation is mine. The report is available online at: http://www.vaadatwino.org.il/reports.html.

  26. Winograd Commission Interim Report, chapter 7, section 25.

  27. Winograd Commission Interim Report, chapter 7, section 28.

  28. See, for example: Griffiths (1992) as well as “Roundtable: The Battle Rages On—John Mearsheimer versus Rogers et al. (2005). The contribution by Richard Little is especially instructive for our purposes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Suffolk University, 41 Temple Street, Boston, MA, 02114-4280, USA

    Nir Eisikovits

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  1. Nir Eisikovits
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Correspondence to Nir Eisikovits.

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Earlier versions of this paper were given at Suffolk University and Boston University. I am grateful for comments from faculty and students who attended. I benefited particularly from feedback by James Carroll, Evgnia Cherkasova, Greg Fried, Maria Granik, Ken Greenberg, Monty Link, Julia Legas, David Lyons, and Dennis Outwater.

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Eisikovits, N. Proportionality and Self-Interest. Hum Rights Rev 11, 157–170 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-008-0114-y

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