Abstract

There are three broadly defined positions on the morality of war. The first is pacifism, which holds that it is always wrong for a state to resort to war and always wrong for an individual to participate in war. The second is ‘political realism’, the view that war lies beyond and is unconstrained by morality. The third, which occupies the broad space between these opposing extremes, is that war is sometimes but not always morally permissible and that there are moral constraints on the conduct of war.