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Ending War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2011

David Rodin
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Extract

In “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” Richard W. Miller argues that reflecting on whether and how to end the war in Afghanistan exposes serious deficiencies in just war theory. I agree, though for different reasons than those canvassed by Professor Miller. Miller argues that by focusing on the traditional categories of just cause, proportionality, and necessity (or last resort), just war theory obscures the importance of broader geostrategic considerations that he believes are the most plausible—though ultimately for Miller insufficient—rationale for continuing with the strategy of large-scale counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I doubt that geostrategic considerations can play the role in moral assessment that Miller believes they do. But the phenomena he is pointing to do illuminate important defects in traditional just war theory.

Type
Response
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Fall 2011 , pp. 359 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2011

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References

NOTES

1 Miller, Richard W., “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” Ethics & International Affairs 25, no. 2 (Summer 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This essay is part of a symposium on Miller's article, published in the same issue, with responses from George R. Lucas, Jr., Jeff McMahan, Darrel Moellendorf, and Fernando R. Tesón.

2 Bass, Gary J., “Jus Post Bellum,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32, no. 4 (2004), pp. 384–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Orend, Brian, The Morality of War (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2006)Google Scholar, chaps. 6–7.

3 Rodin, David, “Two Emerging Issues of Jus Post Bellum: War Termination and the Liability of Soldiers for Crimes of Aggression,” in Stahn, Carsten and Kleffner, Jann, eds., Jus Post Bellum: Towards a Law of Transition from Conflict to Peace (The Hague: T. M. C. Asser Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Mollendorf, Darrell, “Jus ex Bello,” Journal of Political Philosophy 16, no. 2 (June 2008), pp. 123–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This way of treating past moral costs parallels the way that sunk costs are treated in enterprise accounting. Thus, if a project would generate a positive return with an investment of $1,000, then it will always be rational to continue with that project so long as the future anticipated costs are less than $1,000. Sunk cost overruns that emerge during the course of a project may lead you to assess that you should never have commenced the project in the first place, but they are irrelevant to the rationality of continuing the project.

5 Tony Coady provides a sensitive discussion of these issues under the heading of extrication morality. See Coady, C. A. J., “Escaping from the Bomb: Immoral Deterrence and the Problem of Extrication,” in Shue, Henry, ed., Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar p. 193ff; Coady, C. A. J., “Messy Morality and the Art of the Possible,” Proceeding of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 64 (1990), 259–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Miller, “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” p. 117.

7 This is not to deny that an unjust combatant can properly resist unjust action perpetrated by an enemy in the course of a just war (for example, war crimes committed by the just party).

8 Miller, “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” p. 121.

9 A comparable point is made en passant in an excellent paper by David Luban on preventive war: Luban, David, “Preventive War,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32, no. 3 (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 219.

10 Miller, “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” p. 103. See also p. 121.

11 Ibid., p. 118.