Assuming an international commitment to intervene in severe and urgent humanitarian emergencies, as expressed by the doctrine ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, I discuss two objections that the duty to intervene is nonetheless a duty that is easily limited by other moral considerations. One objection is that this duty will exceed the reasonable limits of any obligation given the high personal cost of intervention. The other objection is that any duty to intervene will be an imperfect (...) class='Hi'>duty, and therefore not a duty that is ascribed to and demandable of any specific actor. I will argue that these objections do not undermine the principle of the responsibility to protect. (shrink)

Debates on humanitarian intervention have focused on the permissibility question. In this paper, I ask whether intervention can be a moral duty, and if it is a moral duty, how this duty is to be distributed and assigned. With respect to the first question, I contemplate whether an intervention that has met the "permissibility" condition is also for this reason necessary and obligatory. If so, the gap between permission and obligation closes in the case of humanitarian (...) intervention. On the second question, I propose 'institutionalizing" the duty to intervene. In this way, an otherwise imperfect obligation to intervene can be made "perfect" and specific to some agent. (shrink)

I argue here that certain species of war, namely humanitarian military interventions (HMIs), can be obligatory within particular contexts. Specifically, I look at the notion of HMIs through the lens of just war theory and argue that when a minimal account of jus ad bellum implies that an intervention is permissible, it also implies that it is obligatory. I begin by clarifying the jus ad bellum conditions (such as just cause, right intentions, etc.) under (...) which an intervention is permissible. I then turn to the claim that permissibility necessitates obligation, by first showing that whenever an intervention is permissible, it is also minimally decent. Second, I show that minimally decent actions are morally obligatory by arguing that the notion of minimal decency is a conceptual bridge between negative and positive duties. Third, I argue that performing minimally decent actions is necessary for a state to be just. Ultimately, my conclusion arises from the following observation: if a humanitarian crisis is bad enough for one to hold that it is permissible to breach sovereignty of a nation, then it is bad enough to hold that there is an obligation to intervene. (shrink)

Just war theorists who argue that war is morally justified under certain circumstances infer implicitly that establishing the military institutions needed to wage war is also morally justified. In this paper, I mount a case in favor of a standing military establishment: to the extent that going to war is a way to discharge duties to protect fellow citizens and distant strangers from grievous harms, we have a duty to set up the institutions that enable us (...) to discharge that duty. I then respond to four objections drawn from Ned Dobos's recent book Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine. (shrink)

The mass killings, large-scale gang rape and large-scale expulsion of the Rohingyas from Myanmar constitute one of the most repugnant world events in recent years. This article addresses the question of whether armed humanitarian intervention would have been morally permissible to protect the Rohingyas. It approaches the question from the perspective of the jus ad bellum criteria of just war theory. This approach does not yield a definitive answer because knowing whether certain jus ad bellum conditions might have (...) been satisfied is difficult to judge without detailed knowledge of military intelligence assessments. Nevertheless, I argue that there was just cause for intervention according to both liberal and communitarian perspectives; that legitimate authority in the form of United Nations Security Council authorization would not have been morally necessary; that it is doubtful whether permissible intervention would have required humanitarian intent; that in late August 2017, intervention might well have been a last resort, but that morally relevant facts suggest intervention might have been disproportionate and lacked a reasonable chance of success, such that, all things considered, it would have perhaps been impermissible. -/- (Free access via third external link). (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Both trolleys and war leave innocent victims to suffer death and injury. Trolley problems accounting for the injured, and not only the dead, tease out intuitions about liability that enhance our understanding of the obligation to provide compensation and medical care to civilian victims of war. Like many trolley victims, civilians in war may suffer justifiable, excusable, or negligent harms that demand compensation. Chief among these is collateral harm befalling civilians. Collateral harm is endemic to war and comprises permissible (...) but unavoidable death or injury following necessary and proportionate military operations. Although state armies sometimes offer condolence payments for civilian death, injury, and property loss, they deny liability. Instead, they use compensation to enhance counterinsurgency efforts and assuage feelings of agent regret. As part of the medical rules of eligibility, Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan also provided medical care to victims of collateral harm. However, they denied care to similarly sick or injured civilians. While compensation is often justified to cure the harm civilians suffer, the differential use of medical resources is not. Rather, medical care remains subject to the principle of beneficence and medical need. The duty to provide civilian healthcare in war, particularly in wars of humanitarian intervention, is far-reaching and imposes significant costs that military and medical ethics are yet to recognize. (shrink)

My essay “Responsibility to Protect and Militarized Humanitarian Intervention: When and Why the Churches Failed to Discern Moral Hazard” (JRE 40.2) called for more questioning engagement with R2P than the broadly uncritical welcome given by the churches to the doctrine between September 2003 and September 2008. In response to Luke Glanville's reply, this essay identifies further reasons for caution before accepting R2P and so-called humanitarian wars alongside defensive wars as paradigmatically justified. It is structured with reference to the tests in (...) A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, the Report by the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, as recommended to the General Assembly when considering whether to authorize or apply military force: seriousness of risk, intention, last resort, proportional means, balance of consequences. (shrink)

The goal of military medicine is to conserve the fighting force necessary to prosecute just wars. Just wars are defensive or humanitarian. A defensive war protects one's people or nation. A humanitarian war rescues a foreign, persecuted people or nation from grave human rights abuse. To provide medical care during armed conflict, military medical ethics supplements civilian medical ethics with two principles: military-medical necessity and broad beneficence. Military-medical necessity designates the medical means required to (...) pursue national self-defense or humanitarian intervention. While clinical-medical necessity directs care to satisfy urgent medical needs, military-medical necessity utilizes medical care to satisfy the just aims of war. Military medicine may therefore attend the lightly wounded before the critically wounded or use medical care to win hearts and minds. The underlying principle is broad, not narrow, beneficence. The latter addresses private interests, while broad beneficence responds to the collective welfare of the political community. (shrink)

There are strong moral and legal pressures against harming civilians in times of conflict, yet neither just war theory nor international law is clear about what responsibilities belligerents have to correct harm once it has been inflicted. In this book, Marcus Schulzke argues that military powers have a duty to provide assistance to the civilians they attack during wars, and that this duty is entailed by civilians' right to life. Schulzke develops new just war principles (...) requiring belligerents to provide medical treatment and financial compensation to civilian victims, and then shows how these principles can be implemented in governmental, military, and international practice. He calls for a more individual-focused conception of international law and post-war justice for victims - as opposed to current state- or group-based reconstruction and reparation programs - which will provide a framework for protecting civilian rights. (shrink)

This book analyses the problems of current just war theory, and offers a more stable justificatory framework for non-intervention in international relations. The primary purpose of just war theory is to provide a language and a framework by which decision makers and citizens can organize and articulate arguments about the justice of particular wars. Given that the majority of conflicts that threaten human security are now intra-state conflicts, just war theory is often called on to make judgments (...) about wars of intervention. This book aims to critically examine the tenets of just war theory in light of these changes, and formulate a new theory of intervention and just cause. For Michael Walzer, the leading scholar of just war theory, armed humanitarian intervention is permissible only in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, widespread massacres, or enslavement. This book shows why this threshold is too restrictive in light of the progressive shift away from interstate conflict as well as the emerging norms of 'sovereignty as responsibility' and the 'responsibility to protect'. _Justice, Intervention and Force in International Relations_ aims to establish a new, stable foundation for non-intervention and a revised threshold for 'just cause'. In addition, this book demonstrates that over-reliance on the just cause category distorts understanding, analysis, and public discussion of the justice or injustice of resorting to war. This new book will be of much interest to students of ethics, security studies, international relations and international law. Kimberley Hudson is Assistant Professor of Political Science at American International College, and has a Phd in International Relations from Brown University. (shrink)

This article argues that the traditional jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria are fully capable of providing the ethical guidance needed to legitimately conduct military cyber operations. The first part examines the criteria’s foundations by focusing on the notion of liability to defensive harm worked out by revisionist just war thinkers. The second part critiques the necessity of alternative frameworks, which its proponents assert are required to at least supplement the traditional just war criteria. Using (...) the latter, the third part evaluates ethical issues germane to responding to cyber force, including casus belli, moral aspects of “the attribution problem,” and respective rights and duties when attacks involve innocent third-party states. The fourth part addresses in bello issues, including compliance with discrimination, necessity, and civilian due care imperatives; whether civilians may be targeted with sub-“use of force” cyber-attacks and the permissibility of using civilian contractors to conduct cyber-attacks. Throughout these analyses, conclusions are brought into conversation with those of The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. (shrink)

Most individuals realise that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as ""ethnic cleansing"" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purpose? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying (...) those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress and, most importantly, the UN Security Council in determining when long-term US military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals - whether in self-defense or in defense of others - remains the ""only"" classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principle of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars - World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War - and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgements about war decisions. The book should be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology and political science. (shrink)

The disastrous consequences of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 appear to discredit just war theories that justify military intervention in sovereign states in the name of human rights. It is possible, however, to identify factors that distinguish a defensible military intervention from the kind pursued in Iraq, and to incorporate these into a doctrine of humanitarian military intervention that would not have permitted the Iraq invasion. This improved doctrine stands in contrast to the militant (...) interventionist doctrine that endorsed the invasion – a variant referred to here as the doctrine of just anti-totalitarian war . In order to critique the JAW doctrine and distinguish it from the improved doctrine, I examine critically the JAW-supporters' attempt to make sense of what went wrong in Iraq, and propose an alternative diagnosis. It is this alternative diagnosis that grounds a defense of moderate versions of the doctrine of just military intervention, which I seek in turn to render ‘Iraq-proof’. My Iraq-proof refinement is expressed in a list of injunctions. These require, among other things, critical interrogation of the moral standing of intervening powers and greater attention to the legitimate grievances of adversaries in regions targeted for intervention. They would also permit military intervention only in moral emergencies, and usually only to establish safe havens and protect relief supplies. (shrink)

Just-war theory has a long and distinguished history that stretches back to the Christian theologians of medieval Europe. Yet principles of just war must develop alongside social norms, standards of military practice and technology, and civilian-military relationships. Since World War II, and especially since American involvement in Vietnam, military ethics has developed into an academic cottage industry. As commonly taught to undergraduates and military practitioners, contemporary just-war theory seeks to ensure the political sovereignty (...) and territorial integrity of nation-states. The theory insists that the only just wars are defensive ones and forbids wars of national aggrandizement. On this view, because of the right to collective self-determination, wars must not seek to remake the world order, as that would undermine state sovereignty.In recent decades, however, cosmopolitan philosophers have challenged various aspects of the traditional edifice in an attempt to use just-war theory to enhance the protection of human rights around the world. Scholars have argued for greater scope for humanitarian intervention to protect individuals against their own government, for principles of justice after war to ensure that all states are legitimate, and most radically, for the responsibility of ordinary combatants to assess for themselves the justice of their military's cause. On this last argument, because combatants whose cause is just have done nothing to lose their immunity from harm, attacking them is unjust, and combatants whose cause is unjust cannot fight with discrimination.This publication surveys these recent developments, and it finds that they provide a radical challenge to both the theory and the practice of contemporary warfare. Of particular importance is its insistence on the need to strengthen international institutions, so as to provide combatants with an impartial perspective on their side's cause, and to strengthen military ethics education; and its suggestion that policies on dishonorable discharge be rethought. However, this monograph also challenges certain aspects of the new approach, suggesting important connections between military ethics and democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...) to both philosophical and politi- cal discussion about war, it is at the forefront of neither. In recent years, philosophical discussion of warfare has bloomed, but the debate has focused on whom we may kill, on the assumption that our aims are justified.1 Political debate, meanwhile, is more concerned with matters of prudence, international law, and public justification, than with reassessing what is worth fighting for. For wars of intervention to halt or prevent massive humanitarian crises, this gap is not so troubling. When warfare is the only means to prevent the mass killing or enslavement of the innocent, the purposes of military force are clear enough (though undoubtedly many other problems remain). The problem is more pressing, how- ever, for the justification of national defence.3 Although common-sense morality and international law view national defence as the paradigm case of justified warfare, grounding this consensus is surprisingly difficult.4 We typically believe that any state is justified in using lethal force to protect its territory against any form of uninvited military incursion by any other state. And yet we lack a good argument to explain why this should be so. In this chapter, I explain why one familiar and otherwise plausible approach to the justification of killing in war cannot adequately ground common-sense views of permissible national defence.5 Reductionists believe that justified warfare reduces to an aggregation of acts that are justified under ordinary principles of interpersonal morality.6 The standard form of reductionism focuses on the principles governing killing in ordinary life, specifically those that justify intentional killing in self- and other-defence, and unintended but foreseen (for short, collateral) killing as a lesser evil. Justified warfare, on this view, is no more than the coextension of multiple acts justified under these two principles. Reductionism is the default philosophical approach to thinking through the ethics of killing in war. It makes perfect sense to ask what principles govern permissible kill- ing in general, before applying them to the particular context of war. If it cannot deliver a plausible set of conclusions about when national defence is permitted, then we must either revise our beliefs about which conclusions count as plausible, or else face the significant challenge of developing a different theoretical model for justifying war- fare—an exceptionalist model, which views war as an exception to the regular moral landscape, to which principles apply which apply to nothing else but war.7 We must show, in other words, that there is something worth fighting for in wars of national defence, which is not engaged when we use force in any other context. The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2.2 sets out the argument against reduc- tionism.8 Section 2.3 considers and rebuts one common response to the argument, which has often been thought sufficient grounds to disregard its conclusion. Section 2.4 then asks whether a modified reductionism would survive unscathed by the argu- ment. Finally, section 2.5 sets out some desiderata on a plausible exceptionalist alterna- tive. Section 2.6 concludes. (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)

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

In the article, I examine the relevance of Just War Doctrine to contemporary conflicts. Just War Doctrine, which grew out of Western Christian thinking, presupposes that evil might be confronted with force, if there is no alternative way to restore a just order. But modern trends call into question the certainty and universality of this doctrine. On the one hand, ideas of moral relativism and comparative justice have become more widespread, potentially undermining the use of the notions (...) “just” and “justified” in relation to military conflicts. On the other hand, the nature of war is changing, as warfare is no longer only kinetic in character. I offer examples of how the evolving character of warfare challenges the traditional understanding of Just War Doctrine. For example, there is the growing threat of cyber warfare, but the ethical criteria for its use are not defined. In relation to Just War Doctrine, questions of whether and when pre-emptive cyber attack is permissible arise, what should constitute legitimate targets of cyber warfare and to what degree collateral damage could be acceptable. Another challenge to the traditional understanding of Just of War Doctrine was the putative doctrine of humanitarian intervention.Prima facie,humanitarian interventions do not comply withius ad bellumcriteria of Just War Doctrine, because of the absence of a direct military threat to the intervening state. The justification of humanitarian intervention is based on the assertion of an intolerable violation of accepted values. The weakness of such approach, as discussed in the article, is that it implicitly assumes that one protagonist’s values are superior to others. A further example of emerging challenges to Just War Doctrine is the phenomenon of hybrid war, a term used to describe a type of conflict that is multi-faceted and in which kinetic warfare is not dominant. The orchestration of several strands of conflict, each designed to be below the threshold to provoke a military response, exploits the absence of legal and ethical norms regulating such activity. I conclude the article by suggesting that, firstly, for Just War Doctrine to remain relevant, it should be expanded to include harms caused by non-kinetic actions, and, secondly, the distinctions between the states of war and peace should be redefined to reflect the changing character of war more accurately. (shrink)

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a duty to (...) protect an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent's ability to act justly. UAVs afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter's operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using such technology is, in fact, obligatory. (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)

This presentation discusses why just war theory is in need of just military preparedness (jus ante bellum) as a new category of just war thinking and it articulates six principles of just military preparedness. The paper concludes that the United States fails to satisfy any of these principles and addresses how this bears on the application of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum norms to possible future American military interventions.

Recent discussions in the just war literature suggest that soldiers have a duty to assume certain risks in order to protect the lives of all innocent civilians. I challenge this principle of risk by arguing that it is justified neither as a principle that guides the conduct of combat soldiers, nor as a principle that guides commanders in the US military. I demonstrate that the principle of risk fails on the first account because it requires soldiers both (...) to violate their strict duty of obedience and loyalty and to exceed their special obligations to protect their fellow comrades, the state, the state's constituents and other protected civilians. I then illustrate that the principle of risk fails on the second account since it conflicts with the commander's primary obligation to protect and promote the welfare and lives of his or her soldiers. I conclude by arguing that we cannot reasonably expect soldiers and commanders to adhere to the principle of risk until there is a radical, institutional-level transformation of militaristic goals, values, strategies, policies, warrior codes and expectations of service members in the US Armed Forces. (shrink)

Michael Walzer’s use of John Stuart Mill’s A Few Words on Non-Intervention (1859) helped to inaugurate it as a canonical text of international theory. However, Walzer’s use of the text was highly selective because he viewed the first half as a historically parochial discussion of British foreign policy, and his interest in the second was restricted to the passages in which Mill proposes principles of international morality to govern foreign military interventions to protect third parties. As a result, theorists (...) tend to see those canonized passages as if through a glass darkly. Attention to the detail and context of Mill’s first-half critique of Lord Palmerston’s opposition to the Suez Canal project reveals that his discussion of purely protective intervention is embedded in a broader exploration of the limits of self-defence, including the moral permissibility of preventive military force and the use of protective interventions for defensive purposes. Moreover, reading the text holistically facilitates a refutation of some objections directed at it by Michael Doyle to the effect that Mill’s conception of self-defence incorporates elements of aggression which makes it extremely dangerous when adapted for application to the contemporary world. (shrink)

Traditionally, the just war principle of last resort requires that, before resorting to war, every reasonable alternative measure must be attempted. My view is that traditional just war principles should be generalized, so as to be applicable to military actions of all sorts—for example, armed humanitarian interventions and counterinsurgency operations. In this paper, such a generalized just war theory is presupposed. In particular, I shall presuppose a generalized last resort principle that requires that, before using (...) class='Hi'>military force, every reasonable alternative measure must be attempted. My thesis is that among these alternative measures is nonviolent action. For concreteness, the new U.S. counterinsurgency field manual is examined. The generalized last resort principle morally obligates a U.S. counterinsurgency operation to use the means of nonviolent action, whenever it is reasonable to do so. Pacifism and just war theory are often portrayed as rivals, but this paper explores one way in which just war theory could benefit from the tradition of nonviolence. (shrink)

The ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) concept has rapidly taken a prominent place in international debates about how to ensure the protection of civilians from mass atrocities in places such as Libya, the Congo, and Darfur. This article argues that RtoP has deep roots both in Scripture and also in Christian political thought of the last two millennia. In particular, it observes that, whereas twentieth-century arguments for ‘humanitarian intervention’ framed the protection of strangers and foreigners as a discretionary right, RtoP echoes (...) Ambrose of Milan and others in framing such protection as a duty. It further suggests that the emphasis of RtoP on the responsibility to work with states and to help build their capacity to protect their civilians, rather than waiting until military intervention is necessary, holds the promise of advancing the Christian principle of assisting the vulnerable while, at least in some instances, avoiding thorny and divisive debates about the justice of war. (shrink)

Terrorism, the use of military force in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the fatal police shootings of unarmed persons have all contributed to renewed interest in the ethics of police and military use of lethal force and its moral justification. In this book, philosopher Seumas Miller analyzes the various moral justifications and moral responsibilities involved in the use of lethal force by police and military combatants, relying on a distinctive normative teleological account of institutional roles. His conception (...) constitutes a novel alternative to prevailing reductive individualist and collectivist accounts. As Miller argues, police and military uses of lethal force are morally justified in part by recourse to fundamental natural moral rights and obligations, especially the right to personal self-defense and the moral obligation to defend the lives of innocent others. Yet the moral justification for police and military use of lethal force is to some extent role-specific. Both police officers and military combatants evidently have an institutionally-based moral duty to put themselves in harm's way to protect others. Under some circumstances, however, police have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to uphold the law; and military combatants have an institutionally based moral duty to use lethal force to win wars. Two key notions in play are joint action and the natural right to self-defense. Miller uses a relational individualist theory of joint actions to construct the notion of multi-layered structures of joint action in order to explicate organizational action. He also provides a novel theory of justifiable killing in self-defense. Over the course of his book, Miller covers a variety of urgent topics, such as police shootings of armed offenders, police shooting of suicide-bombers, targeted killing, autonomous weapons, humanitarian armed intervention, and civilian immunity. (shrink)

Michael Walzer argues that the just cause for humanitarian intervention is not met if there are only “ordinary” levels of human rights abuses within a state because he believes that respecting the right to collective self-determination is more morally important than protecting other individual rights. Several prominent critics of Walzer advocate for a more permissive account of a just cause. They argue that protecting individuals’ human rights is more morally important than respecting a right to collective self-determination. I (...) argue that these two accounts are far more similar than either Walzer or his critics realize because collective self-determination requires the protection of some human rights in order to allow each person the opportunity to participate in collective choices. Consequently, the just cause for intervention is met whenever at least some important human rights of one person are violated and others are being credibly threatened. The counter intuitive conclusion of my argument is that justified interventions can actually promote rather than undermine collective self-determination because just interventions allow innocents, who otherwise would have excluded from this process, the opportunity to contribute to collective choices. Of course, a just cause is insufficient in itself for intervention to be permissible because other just war precepts must also be met. (shrink)

Photo by Jonathan Ford on Unsplash ABSTRACT Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events. Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. This paper analyzes the idea of expanding a duty to rescue to climate migration. We (...) address who should have the duty and to whom the duty should extend. The paper discusses ways to define and apply the duty to rescue as well as its limitations, arguing that it may take the form of an ethical duty to prepare. INTRODUCTION Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. Examples of circumstances range from person-to-person intimate rescue to saving those in poverty, even in distant parts of the world.[1] Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events.[2] Circumstances like being thrust from homes under the threat of fire, mudslide, and flooding vary greatly from long-term changes like land becoming too arid for crops or temperatures increasing annually gradually pushing up the number of heat-related deaths, with the area slowly becoming uninhabitable. Imminence in fleeing affects resettling and need for rescue with important implications for how the duty to rescue might apply. This paper reevaluates the ethical framing of the duty to rescue and, while it is arguably a stretch, applies it to climate migration. Climate migration has become common and is expected to increase due to rises in sea level, increases in weather events that make areas uninhabitable, and changes to land that preclude farming or other necessary land uses. We argue that a duty to rescue may help highlight who has moral obligations to whom. Because the problem is so large in scope, we suggest a change in the ethical limits to humans' duty to rescue other humans who are in distress. We imagine an expansion or extension of the duty to rescue to meet some of the basic needs created by climate migration. Yet how it should expand, and how much depend on ethical framing and practical limitations. l. Expanding the Geographical Boundaries Two commonly recognized emergencies, Hurricane Katrina in the case of weather events and the current COVID-19 pandemic, provide a historical and current backdrop to evaluate ethical obligations as more disasters displace people. A significant reassessment of the ethical scope of an obligation to rescue in the case of weather events will be limited by the ability to render aid to those in distress in the case of a planet-wide weather catastrophe. The problems may overwhelm the ability to rescue or the reasonableness of attempting rescue. The extent of the moral obligation borne by humans to other humans in the case of a weather event has been largely defined by its locality and limited geographic influence. Whether we are imagining the scope of ethical obligation in the case of hurricane, flood, tornado, drought, or wildfire events, the perceived ethical obligation is significantly defined by the limited impact of these weather events on people outside the zone of the weather event's direct impact, yet close to that zone. A hurricane affecting New Orleans will not have immediate impact on the residents of California or even those on the northeast coast of the United States until a later time. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest do not impair the ability of those in the rest of the country to come forward with assistance. But as climate migration crosses international borders, and climate events occur simultaneously in many regions, a more expansive duty to rescue may provide the ethical impulse to help those who live afar or migrate long distances. In this respect, the need for help in the event of widespread climate migration due to global warming is more like a pandemic than a weather event. Its broad impact area diminishes the capability of nearly the entire balance of the human population to help due to those populations' awareness that they will, in short order, have the same need for the same resources, from the same cause. Those living near current flood zones may find their historically safe havens are also a flood zone. Those previously best positioned to rescue may find themselves also needing to relocate. Thus, we may observe the need for new rescuers. ll. The Rule of Rescue The Rule of Rescue as defined by Al Jonsen describes the moral impetus or knee jerk reaction to save identifiable people facing death.[3] A duty to rescue has since been expanded beyond imminent death and beyond the near and identifiable. But there are limitations. For example, by most accounts, the ethical duty tends not to require extreme bodily risk or financial depletion. In comparing Good Samaritans to humanitarians, Scott M. James argues the duty to rescue arises from unique dependence, but the ethical obligation to help strangers through humanitarian aid is of a different nature.[4] The wrongness of failing to help is arguably more egregious when one is in a unique position to help. Like in the tragedy of the commons, where there is no unique positioning, when the global community is called upon to help, each individual in it may feel less obliged to do so. Climate migration falls in between—it requires helping strangers, yet it may move forward without anyone seeing themselves as uniquely positioned to help until those strangers become part of communities, at which time, there may be more moral justification to help a community member in need. Generally, arguments about Good Samaritans hinge on extraordinary acts, praiseworthy because they are acts of compassion, not obligation. Now all US states have Good Samaritan laws[5] which protect helpers from liability for help gone wrong or for a failure to succeed once engaged in an act of rescue. Extraordinary help as a moral good is thus somewhat encouraged through legal protection, but not imposed. Conversely, jobs like firefighting, search and rescue, and emergency medical care tend to oblige employees to take on risks that would be extraordinary if undertaken by the average bystander, yet they are rendered ordinary rescue as part of the job. Three states, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont have a broad duty to rescue, adding legal considerations to an otherwise moral conundrum. The laws do not require bystanders to take on risk for the sake of rescuing strangers.[6] The moral duty will require looking beyond law, but it is unclear how the moral duty to rescue should be distributed in the case of climate migration. A bare minimum would prevent taking advantage of newcomers, paying sub-minimum wage, and discriminating against them. Yet such a minimum is hardly rescue. lll. An Ethical Rather than Legal Duty The difficulty in defining the duty to rescue as a legal obligation is that it is difficult to determine the extent of risk a rescuer ought to be required to take. The nature of this ethical duty is also arguably tied to the experiences of both the rescuer and the rescued. There are subjective aspects like what someone perceives as a danger that make it difficult to write enforceable laws requiring rescue. It is one thing to expect a rescuer to step into several inches of relatively warm water to lift a person lying face down in a pond and enable them to breathe. It is something altogether different to expect that rescuer to dive into frigid water and attempt to extricate someone trapped in a submerged automobile. As the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart observed, it is always easier to define application of the core intention of any rule, whether law or ethical norm. It is more difficult to create legal certainty about how the law applies to what he described as “penumbra circumstances”. In the case of a hurricane, it is easier to define what surplus resources are available in areas geographically remote from the impact of the storm and demand, as a moral obligation, that those nearby but outside the area provide assistance. It is more difficult to obligate people, organizations, or governments to supply a quantity of medication or some number of ventilators to an adjacent community when they expect to imminently need them for their own community. In the early stages of climate migration, the ethics of extreme weather event assistance, a common application of the duty to rescue, will be useful and appropriate. The rising sea levels first experienced by island nations in the South Pacific[7] will not render those living in other coastal communities, those with greater available “high ground”, unable to supply resources to those in need. But when sea level rise and climate change affect more communities simultaneously, albeit in varying degree, the task of defining what response is ethically obligatory becomes increasingly complicated. Pinpointing the obligations of those communities which are resource rich to those communities which are resource deprived, and of those partly affected to those more severely affected may become necessary. The limitations of the traditional duty to rescue could expand to meet the needs. lV. Contribution to the Problem Many argue that the duty to rescue may depend on any appropriate claim of those needing rescue. One issue is whether preferential claims among those who can identify the source of the harm should call for a greater duty or whether everyone in need should be approached as like candidates for rescue, shaping the duty as equal across those on the receiving end. As climate change does have human-made causes, there are strong arguments to impose a greater ethical duty on any entity that caused the climate-related problems leading to the mass exodus. While the global north is often implicated in pollution that causes migration, industries like energy, transportation, and agriculture are tied to climate change and associated with significant greenhouse gas emissions.[8] Practices like directing agriculture to less sustainable single crop growth generally made land less farmable. Yet it is difficult to place blame and identify specific causal relationships as most migration is due to many factors. A movement toward greater accountability can be reframed as a greater duty to rescue, a duty to engage in the extraordinary. The fossil fuel industry, for example, should have a larger obligation than the average person. Similarly, some may argue anyone unjustly enriching themselves while contributing to climate change or people who over-consume have an elevated duty to rescue.[9] Climate change lawsuits demonstrate an eagerness to hold governments and corporations accountable, despite difficulty proving causation. V. The Most Vulnerable One ethical dimension of climate migration that remains unexplored is how a duty to rescue applies to vulnerable populations who stand to be left behind or unable to migrate without assistance. Researchers from the Global North working across the Global South are increasingly observing the phenomenon of ethics dumping, where the research ethics of some countries are imposed on research subjects in other countries.[10] In that vein, rescuers should be careful not to impose unwelcome cultural standards or exploit people who are in the process of migrating. There is a gap in discussions reflecting voices that have been left out. The duty to rescue is incomplete without an attempt to understand the ethical experiences of those being rescued. The actual people affected by climate migration who are the least likely to have the means to migrate, or to do so without extreme hardship, should have a voice informing the global community including those in a position to carry out rescue. People who have the means and are young and healthy may easily make decisions to avoid the catastrophic consequences that climate migration brings. However, what about those who are left behind? For example, especially recognizing cultural differences, the homeless community, disabled community, refugees, the elderly community, and women[11] and children may suffer differently and call for more attention. In some parts of the world, human rights are severely constrained. An ethical duty to rescue, with many considerations and variables, may be more justified in the case of those most in need. As climate migration continues and increases significantly, it may be reasonable to ask the local and global community to focus on those least well positioned to migrate successfully. In this context, the use of phenomenology to understand the lived experiences of those migrating, sometimes termed “ethical experiences”, may help flesh out how a duty to rescue takes shape. The discussion of duty and obligation requires an articulation of the ethical experiences (how the local community in need of rescue views the proposed rescue). Then, the obligation to interpret the duty as ‘one shall not’ or ‘one must’ can be focused on the migrants’ needs rather than the rescuers’ feelings of obligation.[12] A revised theory of the duty to rescue taking into account the asymmetrical experiences of communities involved could ensure that the needs of people whose living situations, gender, ethnicity, age, or race impact their ability to even begin the migration process are considered. In this discussion, the rescuing is directed toward communities /collectives of persons migrating, whether at once or across a period of time. Often, the climate migrant may not be in a state to articulate the nature of this event when it happens, given its subjective proximity. Yet, when communities are given the space and opportunity to articulate their shared values, the ethical action of rescue derives its meaningfulness from the community rather than the rescuers. In other words, allowing climate migrants to explain their feelings can add complexity to what some see as a binary receiver-giver (of rescue) dynamic. This is necessary because the concept of vulnerable populations is fraught with problematic assumptions. There have been various definitions and criteria to determine what would constitute vulnerable populations.[13] For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[14] identifies and assesses vulnerable populations. These criteria may be helpful. However, they do not provide the full picture. Rather than identifying categorical criteria of vulnerable populations, engaging with people who are experiencing climate migration and listening to their current experiences and concerns helps determine need. Knowing what people need may prevent the kneejerk reaction to label people who are quite resilient yet have appropriate needs “vulnerable”. Proceeding with caution is important because the duty to rescue has hierarchical underpinnings of "us" and "them." Often when people swoop in to save, there are good and bad consequences of the intervention. We should proceed with caution because often the helper misses the actual needs of those in need. The only way to combat this would be to make sure that people are empowered to inform those agencies that are able to help. In addition to more practical approaches, large scale oral histories could allow those who have migrated already to share their experiences. It would be important to capture the lived experiences of people who are already experiencing the consequences of climate migration or of other migration like that due to political or economic extreme events. These experiences could shape our analysis of whether people in fact wish for rescue. If so, further conversations can determine best actions as well as give important insight into what resources might be necessary to empower people now and in the future. Vl. A Duty to Rescue as a Duty to Prepare If we view Good Samaritans as going above and beyond, then a duty to rescue, something ethically compelled, must bring rescue out of the framework of charity and place it in the context of humanity and obligations. Such a view would also support expanding the geographical reach of the otherwise more proximate duty. The duty may be stronger and take shape in a more workable way if it applies to preparing places expecting to see an influx of people due to climate migration and to helping those most in need. The duty may arise out of expectations of what type of community the place welcoming those migrating due to climate should be—does it want to offer good housing, schooling, and medical care as well as economic opportunity to new people? And if so, at what cost, or with which risks? If the newcomers are viewed as community members rather than strangers, a model of acceptance may lead to better preparation. Some considerations like whether the actions will reasonably help the persons in need of rescue[15] will shape the application of a duty to rescue in the context of climate migration. Similarly, ensuring that people have the chance to articulate their values may help communities support the newcomers. New relationships should not be defined as migrant and rescuer. Voluntariness in participation and not forcing any action deemed rescue would help ensure the human rights of those migrating. In the United States, President Biden issued an executive order addressing impending climate migration steeped in a duty to prepare by making plans for resettlement and to address the impact of climate migration.[16] Vll. At What Risk? As we investigate the ethical obligations to meet even basic needs, we must also ask what level of risk is ethically compelled. There is an extraordinary need to integrate newcomers successfully, but it is difficult to stretch an ethical duty to rescue to require all the prerequisites for successful climate migration. Even defining success would create deep ethical arguments. As observed in almost all migrations, extraordinary charitable acts may be the key to success, while an ethical duty to rescue must try to require the important government and community-based basics and ensuring respect for human rights. That is, the migrating people should be rescued from circumstances that contradict basic human rights. Rather than comparing communities to bystanders, mere places where people will arrive and need to hash out how to find housing, jobs, education, and opportunity, a duty of preparation may be the key to rescue those disenfranchised by migration. There are cultural, personal, physical, psycho-social, and geopolitical issues surrounding how to best help those needing to permanently relocate. Ethics arguments will certainly range from “do nothing”, which may fail people, to “do everything”, which could waste taxpayer money in futile over-preparation while failing to actually help. Communities must avoid planning exclusively for one scenario only to have it not take place. Striking the balance, a duty to rescue as it could apply to climate migration should set goals of societal integration, and providing the basics like education, housing, food, health care, and job opportunity, the precursors to flourishing. Recommending the extraordinary, morally preferred but perhaps not compulsory, when charitable actors are participating, or when wrongdoers are compensating, may be more workable than seeing the duty to rescue as compelling people or local governments to take on significant financial and personal risk for newcomers. While humanitarian ethics supports helping everyone, it is likely that people who resettle in advance of a need to flee will find themselves with more choices and opportunities. Help is warranted for those with more dire needs. Preparing for them may do just that. Vlll. Rescue Prior to Migration and Rescue in the Process of Resettlement The duty to enable the migration in the first-place hints to the inadequacy of a duty to prepare. The traditional duty to rescue perhaps steps in if rescue looks like those geographically just out of harm's way rescuing those in danger. That resembles the traditional moral requirement, or duty to rescue according to the Rule of Rescue. Humanitarian aid typically provided by many institutions makes sense and is in place, although financial support for additional humanitarian aid is always needed. Despite having moved to purportedly more capable communities, migrant communities may be able to develop more egalitarian orders of living. Rather than continually being identified as having been rescued, it is important to make sure people keep or make social ties during and after migration. Immigrants often face social isolation.[17] Small shifts in gestural language also have the potential to welcome people and show they are valued. For instance, some migrants may not like questions like “Where are you from?” and “What brings you here?” as they emphasize differences over fitting in. CONCLUSION The ethical duty to rescue should be expanded to better match those in need of relocation with a welcome environment and the resources needed to achieve success and fully integrate socially and culturally. Expanding a dialogue that includes the voices of people who have recently migrated whether due to violence, poverty, or climate, could properly frame the extent of the duty. If we are to apply the duty of rescue to climate migration, rescuers should avoid labeling people vulnerable, dependent, or needy, although there is reason to focus on those whose needs are the most dire. A soft duty to rescue people during the course of climate migration can come in the form of preparation. People will need help finding housing, education, access to food, and employment. Ultimately, to help them help themselves may be the best goal. While the obligations should be borne differently by people, whether due to a special responsibility, or a special relationship that creates a clearer duty, the global community must prepare for its role in rescuing those displaced by climate events. By helping those displaced at the start of the climate migration process according to a more commonly held notion of the duty to rescue, and by preparing to incorporate newcomers successfully according to an expanded duty to rescue, effectively a duty to prepare, countries that take on climate refugees may find themselves rewarded by the cultural diversity and workplace talents that people bring. A duty to those at a distance is a reasonable expansion of the duty to rescue. But what one ought to do in the global community varies somewhat from the traditional Rule of Rescue. - [1] Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3): 229-43. [2] Irfan, U. (2022, March 16). Why We Still Don’t Yet Know How Bad Climate Migration Will Get. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2022/3/16/22960468/ipcc-climate-change-migration-migrant-refugee, citing the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022). Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ [3] McKie, J., Richardson, J. (2003) The Rule of Rescue. Social Science & Medicine, 56(12): 2407-2419. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00244-7. [4] James, S.M. (2007). Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24(3):238-254. [5] Overview of Good Samaritan laws. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/good-samaritan-law-states [6] Fifield, J. (2017, Sept. 19). Why It’s Hard to Punish ‘Bad Samaritans’. Stateline Blog, Pew Charitable Trusts, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/09/19/why-its-hard-to-punish -bad-samaritans [7] Cassella, C. (2019). There’s a Climate Threat Facing Pacific Islands That’s More Dire Than Losing Land, Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/pacific-islanders-are-in-a-climate-crisis-as-rising-sea-levels-threaten -water; Hassan, H. R., and Cliff, V. (2019). For Small Island Nations, Climate Change is not a Threat. It’s Already Here, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/island-nations-maldives-climate-change/ [8] For example, Lyons, K. (2019). Australia Coal use is Existential threat to Pacific Islanders, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/australia-coal-use-is-existential-threat-to-pacific-is lands-says-fiji-pm [9] Cripps, E. (2013). Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [10] Schroeder, D., Chatfield, K., Singh, M., Chennells, R., and Herissone-Kelly, P.. Ethics Dumping and the Need for a Global Code of Conduct. In Cham. (Ed.)(2019). Equitable Research Partnerships. SpringerBriefs in Research and Innovation Governance. Springer. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15745-6_1 [11] Giudice L.C., Llamas-Clark E.F., DeNicola N., Pandipati, S., Zlatnik, M.G., Decena, D.C.D., Woodruff, T.J., Conry, J.A. (2021). Climate Change, Women’s Health, and the Role of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Leadership, International J Gynecol Obstet, 155(3), 345-356. 10.1002/ijgo.13958 [12] See Ferrarello, S. and Zapien, N. (2020). Ethical Experience: A Phenomenology, Bloomsbury. (for understanding phenomenological determinants of ethical action). [13] McLeman, R.A., Hunter, L.M., (2010). Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change: insights from analogues. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Change, 1(3): 450-461. [14] Least Developed Countries Expert Group. (2018). Considerations Regarding Vulnerable Groups, Communities and Ecosystems in the Context of the National Adaptation Plans: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [15] Jecker, N.S. 2013. "The Problem with Rescue Medicine." J Med Philos, 38(1):64-81. [16] White House Report. (February 9, 2021), Executive Order (E.O.) 14013, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.” (calls on the National Security Advisor to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration. “This report marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling -the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/ [17] Torres, J.M., Casey, J.A. (2017) The centrality of social ties to climate migration and mental health. BMC Public Health, 17: 600. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4508-0. (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual (...) rational agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (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)

The purpose of this article is briefly to present a case for the principle of reparation as a new jus in bello principle for just humanitarian intervention. The article is divided into three sections. In “Restorative Justice and Civilian Protection”, I investigate the idea of restorative justice in order to consider whether or not it can complement the shortcomings of the just war tradition in civilian protection. In “The Legal Framework on Reparation: Its Scope and Limitations”, I examine (...) the scope of the law of armed conflict on reparatory measures in order to consider whether and how ideas of and measures for restorative justice might be incorporated in the jus in bello framework for military humanitarian intervention. In “The Issue of Civilian Victims: A Case for Reparation”, I explore the implications of reparatory measures for victims in order to suggest that these measures are not only beneficial to civilian victims but also imperative to be taken by the interveners if they undertake military intervention within the jus in bello framework and claim its moral justifiability. (shrink)

I argue that, according to Just War Theory, those who work as administrative personnel in the private military industry can be permissibly harmed while at work by enemy combatants. That is, for better or worse, a Just War theorist should consider all those who work as administrative personnel in the private military industry either: (i) individuals who may be permissibly restrained with lethal force while at work, or (ii) individuals who may be harmed by permissible (...) attacks against their workplace. In doing so, I also provide some critical analysis of the relevant Just War concepts. (shrink)

Preventive use of force may be defined as the initiation of military action in anticipation of harmful actions that are neither presently occurring nor imminent. This essay explores the permissibility of preventive war from a cosmopolitan normative perspective, one that recognizes the basic human rights of all persons, not just citizens of a particular country or countries. It argues that preventive war can only be justified if it is undertaken within an appropriate rule-governed, institutional framework that is designed (...) to help protect vulnerable countries against unjustified interventions while also avoiding unacceptable risks of the costs of inaction. The key to ensuring the fairness of rules governing the preventive use of force is accountability.This essay proposes a scheme that would make those promoting and those rejecting the preventive use of force more accountable. The proposal contains the following crucial features:States proposing preventive war are required to enter into a contract with a diverse body of states as a condition for authorization of their actions;Prior to taking preventive action, states must make an evidence-based case to the UN Security Council, and agree in advance to submit themselves to an evaluation by an impartial body after the preventive action occurred;Both proponents of action and those opposing it will be held accountable ex post for the accuracy of their prior statements and the proportionality of their actions;Sanctions will be imposed against intervening states or states that opposed preventive action, respectively, depending on the findings of the ex post evaluation.If preventive action were blocked in the Security Council, states seeking to engage in preventive action could then present their case in a different body–a coalition of democratic states–with its own ex post and ex ante accountability procedures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese Just War Ethics: Origin, Development, and Dissent ed. by Ping-Cheung Lo, Sumner B. TwissRosemary B. KellisonChinese Just War Ethics: Origin, Development, and Dissent Edited by Ping-Cheung Lo and Sumner B. Twiss London: Routledge, 2015. 320pp. $160.00As Ping-Cheung Lo notes, Western stereotypes of Chinese culture and particularly of Confucian ethics have led many to describe ancient China as a place of peace and cooperation—a picture that (...) is contrary to historical evidence (249). This new volume, edited by Lo and Sumner Twiss, offers an important corrective to that image. The contributing authors describe the moral attitudes toward war and peace taken by Chinese thinkers in several schools during the Warring States Period of 475–221 BCE (along with one later figure, the sixteenth-century neo-Confucian Wang Yangming). In particular, they focus on five traditions: military strategy, Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and legalism. The authors collectively demonstrate that ancient Chinese thought was marked by an intense interest in both peace and war, and that these topics were approached from moral as well as strategic and prudential perspectives. Moreover, in their historical contextualization of these materials, the authors emphasize the significance of the reality of war in shaping the arguments discussed. This attention to interpretation and real-life applications of these arguments, in both the ancient world and the contemporary activities of the People’s Liberation Army, is a particular strength of the book.This volume will be of special interest to comparative religious ethicists as well as to those interested in just war reasoning. As the inclusion of the phrase “just war” in the book’s title suggests, the identification of parallels to Western just war thinking in ancient Chinese thought is a major emphasis. Lo argues that although the Seven Military Classics are often read simply as strategy manuals, their discussions of strategy are complemented by concepts similar to the just war criteria of just cause, last resort, and discrimination. Twiss and Jonathan Chan suggest that the Confucian “true king” who is to oversee war [End Page 226] virtuously and with the goal of maintaining an ordered, humane society represents a requirement similar to the just war criterion of right authority; importantly, however, “right” in the Confucian tradition comes from the ruler’s virtue rather than his sovereignty. Hui-chieh Loy’s study of the Mohist tradition identifies concepts similar to six different jus ad bellum criteria while also revealing a lack of jus in bello criteria. Finally, Lo argues for the similarities between ancient legalism and contemporary Western realism as an alternative to just war thinking.Future scholarly development in this area should include a more robust articulation of the purpose of taking this comparative approach. Some reasons are implied in the book. For instance, Twiss and Chan argue for the overlap of Confucian punitive expeditions with the contemporary model of responsibility to protect, suggesting the possibility of international consensus on that norm. On the other hand, comparative work always runs the risk of distorting or overlooking material as a result of the desire to identify similarities or differences to a particular framework. Aaron Stalnaker, for example, points out that while Confucian thinker Xunzi may have embraced some concepts similar to those of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, he did not structure his own writing in those terms (135). Similarly, Ellen Zhang argues that the Daodejing differs from just war texts in that it approaches the question of war from the perspective of a particular conception of peace as an absence of coercion; the text thus takes the avoidance of war as its moral ideal. She also suggests that Confucian punitive expeditions may be better understood as domestic criminal discipline than as acts of war or humanitarian intervention (220). The chapters of this book thus provide a helpful and illustrative starting point for the kind of theoretical conversation about comparison mentioned here.Rosemary B. KellisonUniversity of West GeorgiaCopyright © 2016 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHARITY LOST: TBE SECtJLA'.RIZATfON OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE EFFECT IN THE JUST-WAR TRADITION TIMOTHY M. RENICK Georgia State University Atlanta, Georgia 0 N AUGUST 12, 1945, the city of Hiroshima still smoldered, and President Harry Truman addressed the American people : We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who have attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed (...) American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war.1 Truman and his military advisers had made a calculation. Japan was preparing for a last-ditch defense of the Japanese Islands. The prospect was ominous, to say the least. The United States had suffered eighty thousand casualties in the taking of the smaller and less protected Okinawa just two months earlier; 120,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed (and only ten-thousand taken prisoner). Strategists estimated that losses, both military and civilian, from a full scale battle for Japan itself would exceed one million. Surely the tens of thousands killed by exploding a bomb over Hiroshima was the lesser evil. Surely this was a proportionate act : fifty thousand lives traded for a million. As Winston Churchill wrote in support of Truman's decision: "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery... at the cost of a few explosions seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance." 2 1 Michael Walzer, lust and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p.164. 2 Ibid., pp. 266-267. 441 442 TIMOTHY M. RENICK From an ethical perspective, however, the act was anything but a deliverance. I am not alone in this assessment. Advocates of the just-war tradition including Elizabeth Anscombe, Paul Ramsey, George Kennan, John Langan, and Michael Walzer have condemned the bombing of Hiroshima by means of a shared just-war argument.8 The argument goes as follows, and it is a good one. In times of war, many actions are likely to have both good and evil effects. One destroys an enemy's munitions factory (good effect) but kills an innocent child in the process (evil effect). The jus in bello of the just-war tradition, however, stipulates that an action which has a " double effect " is permissible if and only if: ( 1) it is discriminate (i.e., the actor aims only at the good effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good); and (2) it is proportionate (i.e., the good created by the act outweighs the bad).4 Now, the argument continues, Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima failed the first criterion. It was not a discriminate act because the evil effect (the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians) was not unintended. In fact, the evil was the very means to the good end. Although Truman himself claimed to have selected Hiroshima as a target because it was "a war s See, for example, G. E. M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Decision," in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1981); M. Walzer "Supreme Emergency," in Just and Unjust Wars; and John Langan, "The American Hierarchy and Nuclear Weapons," Theological Studies 43 (1982) : 447-467. ' I utilize here a helpful shorthand version of the principle of double effect introduced by Paul Ramsey in War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 1961). More frequently, the principle is rendered by means of four criteria: It is permissible to perform an act likely to have evil consequences if and only if (I) the act is good in itself or at least indifferent; (2) the direct effect is morally justified; (3) the actor aims only at the acceptable effect and does not intend the evil effect, nor is the evil effect a means to the end, however good ; and (4) there is in the good effect a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. The shortened version of the theory captures all components essential to my discussion and enhances clarity. I thus will make use of it throughout this essay. CHARITY AND... (shrink)

In this response to Johnson, Oh reaffirms the scholarly vision of Kelsay and Twiss, elaborates upon Muslim perspectives on human rights, and questions the emphasis on violent humanitarian interventions as part of the Responsibility to Protect mandate. Oh suggests that, in light of the historical relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim states and the aftermath of the second Iraq War, more consideration be given to the rebuilding of Muslim-majority societies. Oh also highlights the concept of duty as a religiously based (...) ideal to which governments of Muslim nations ought to be held. (shrink)

What significance does "ethics" have for the men and women serving in the military forces of nations around the world? What core values and moral principles collectively guide the members of this "military profession?" This book explains these essential moral foundations, along with "just war theory," international relations, and international law. The ethical foundations that define the "Profession of Arms" have developed over millennia from the shared moral values, unique role responsibilities, and occasional reflection by individual members (...) the profession on their own practices - eventually coming to serve as the basis for the "Law of Armed Conflict" itself.This book focuses upon the ordinary men and women around the world who wear a military uniform and are committed to the defense of their countries and their fellow citizens. It is about what they do, how they do it, what they think about it, how they behave when carrying out their activities, and how they are expected to behave, both on and off the battlefield - and what everyone needs to know about this. The book also examines how military personnel are treated and regarded by those whom they have sworn to defend and protect, as well as how they treat and regard one another within their respective services and organizational settings. Finally, the book discusses the transformations in military professionalism occasioned by new developments in armed conflict, ranging counterinsurgency warfare and humanitarian military intervention, to cyber conflict, military robotics, and private military contracting. From China to Russia, author George Lucas effectively sheds light on today's military ethics in existence throughout the world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. (shrink)

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty's report, The Responsibility to Protect, argues that when a state is unable or unwilling to uphold its citizens? basic human rights, such as in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens by undertaking humanitarian intervention. An essential issue, however, remains unresolved: which particular agent in the international community has the duty to intervene? In this article, I critically examine four (...) ways of assigning this duty. Although I highlight the benefits of institutionalising the responsibility to protect, I argue that we should adopt, in the short term at least, a consequentialist solution: humanitarian intervention should be the responsibility of the intervener that will be the most effective. (shrink)

Even in just wars we infringe the rights of countless civilians whose ruination enables us to protect our own rights. These civilians are owed compensation, even in cases where the collateral harms they suffer satisfy the proportionality constraint. I argue that those who authorize or commit the infringements and who also benefit from those harms will bear that compensatory duty, even if the unjust aggressor cannot or will not discharge that duty. I argue further that if we (...) suspect antecedently that we will culpably refrain from compensating those victims post bellum, then this makes satisfying the war’s proportionality constraint substantially more difficult at the outset of the war. The lesson here is that failing to take duties of compensation in war seriously constrains our moral permission to protect ourselves. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that, according to just war theory, those who work as administrative personnel in the private military industry can be permissibly harmed while at work by enemy combatants. That is, for better or worse, a just war theorist should consider all those who work as administrative personnel in the private military industry as either: individuals who may be permissibly restrained with lethal force while at work; or individuals who may be harmed by permissible attacks (...) against their workplace. In doing so, I also provide some critical analysis of the relevant just war concepts. (shrink)

Just war theory has traditionally focused onjus ad bellum(the justiceofwar) andjus in bello(justiceinwar). What has been neglected is the question ofjus ante bellum, or justicebeforewar. In particular: Under what circumstances is it justifiable for a polity topreparefor war by militarizing? When (if ever) and why (if at all) is it morally permissible or even obligatory to create and maintain the potential to wage war? What are the alternatives to the military? And if we do have militaries, (...) how should they be arranged, trained, and equipped? These considerations are not about whether warmakingis justified, but about whether warbuildingis justified.InEthics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos argues that we have not sufficiently calculated the true (noneconomic) costs of the military, and that if we did, having a standing defense force would not seem like as good an idea. Dobos pushes us to reflect on something we have taken for granted: that one of the biggest institutions in our society, which is supposed to keep us safe and allow us to lead our own lives, may in fact pose great dangers and risks to us physically, morally, and culturally. The essays in this symposium take Dobos's work as a starting point and show the importance, complexity, and richness of this new strand of ethical inquiry. (shrink)

This article defends the Responsibility to Protect doctrine against critiques by Fabrice Weissman in this journal, and against similar criticisms of humanitarian intervention and human rights norms made by postmodern thinkers in the Nietzschean tradition, such as Alain Badiou and Anne Orford. I argue against Weissman that R2P can be effective in stopping or preventing mass atrocities, and in particular that opposition to military intervention in Syria during the 2013 debates was a terrible mistake. Moreover, the moral ground for (...) humanitarian aid efforts is the same as the basis for forceful rescue from mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and persecution. Weissman's critiques misinterpret just war theory on key points and rely on inflated rhetorical strategies inspired by extreme forms of cultural and moral relativism that are intellectually bankrupt—both in blaming “Western imperialism” for most crimes against humanity committed by tyrants, and in leaving hundreds of thousands without the only protection that could prevent their murder and exile. These extreme positions and the strained rhetorical devices used to defend them do not deserve the wide respect they command in some parts of academia. (shrink)

I argue that the lives of domestic and enemy civilians should not receive equal weight in our proportionality calculations. Rather, the lives of enemy civilians ought to be “partially discounted” relative to the lives of domestic civilians. We ought to partially discount the lives of enemy civilians for the following reason (or so I argue). When our military wages a just war, we as civilians vest our right to self-defense in our military. This permits our military (...) to weigh our lives more heavily. Before arguing for this view I first explain why recent accounts attempting to show the opposite – that enemy civilians ought to be weighed more heavily – are mistaken. (shrink)

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

American and international involvement in war-torn regions such as Bosnia and Somalia has come under increasing scrutiny by politicians and scholars. Here, two distinguished philosophers debate military intervention from just-war and pacifist perspectives. Describing the range of values and issues facing governments as they consider intervening in the affairs of other nations, each scholar makes his case and then responds to the opposing argument.

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)

Suppose that state A attacks state D without warrant. The ensuing military conflict threatens international peace and security. State D (I assume) has a justification for defending itself by means of military force. Do third parties have a justification for intervening in that conflict by such means? To international public lawyers, the well-rehearsed and obvious answer is “yes.” Threats to international peace and security provide one of two exceptions to the legal and moral prohibition (as set out in (...) Article 2[4] of the UN Charter) on using force as a means for resolving interstate disputes. Just war theorists are not as verdictive. Compared to the ethics of humanitarian intervention and the ethics of national self-defense, the ethics of third-party military involvement in interstate conflicts remains underdeveloped in contemporary just war theory. This essay begins to fill that gap. I argue that to defend such interventions is tantamount to defending preventive military force, deterrent military force, and the resort to force in more cases than standardly thought. I then provide an account and limited defense of the deterrence argument. I show that deterrence is morally justified in relatively few cases and examine two problems with the argument: deterrence failures and the level of uncertainty under which leaders who use deterrent force operate. I conclude that we should take seriously the possibility that nonintervention, construed as the rejection of the direct use of military force, is the morally correct response to the most serious threats to international peace and security. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of moral justification of humanitarian intervention by modern just war theorists. At the beginning of the article, we discuss the evolution of the dominant paradigms of the moral justification of war and explain why the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention appears only at the present stage of the development of ethics and the law of war. It is noted that theorization of humanitarian intervention began in the last decades of the 20thcentury. This (...) is due to a significant transformation, a retreat in the legal and ethical studies of war from the position of radical condemnation of aggressive actions and the recognition of the political subjectivity of non-state groups. Thus, there is a rethinking of the long tradition, the Westphalian system of international relations, according to which the state was recognized as the main participant of big politics, and its sovereign right to conduct domestic policy was considered indisputable. Further, we take the works of Michael Walzer as the main source of modern conceptualization of the ethics of humanitarian interventionism, since Walzer repeatedly addressed this topic and formulated a position on this issue that is representative of the entire modern Just War Theory. The arguments of Walzer and his supporters in favor of the moral justification of humanitarian intervention are considered. Among them are the following. First, the argument about the state as an organization which goal is to protect the rights of its own citizens. If this goal is not not achieved, the state shall loose its power over these people and in this territory. Second, Walzer calls for identifying governments and armed forces involved in mass murders as criminal and, therefore, deserving of punishment. Finally, there is, perhaps the most important, demonstrative argument: an appeal to the self-evident impossibility to stand aside in cases of mass violence in any state. This is followed by a critique of these arguments, as well as a demonstration of how the modern Just War Theory can respond to these criticisms. (shrink)