Papers by Daniel Brunstetter
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
Just war, oft-lauded as the authoritative moral framework to address the decision to go war and t... more Just war, oft-lauded as the authoritative moral framework to address the decision to go war and the ethical permissions this might grant, has seen the meaning of its principles mired in controversy and debate in the post-9/11 era. From calls to reclaim the historic tradition to the need to re-negotiate the terms of the orthodox stance or embrace revisionist insights drawn from analytical philosophy, critical reflections on the major wars showcased competing claims about what just war thinking should be. Where does limited force fit into the story? In answering this question, the chapter exposes a major lacuna in just war thinking by highlighting the moral and strategic dilemmas of limited force—limited strikes, Special Forces, no-fly zones, and drones—in the build-up to the major conflicts that animated just war debates of the post-Cold War era. Viewing the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the broader fight against Al Qaeda through the lens of limited force provides a new angle from which to analyse perennial debates about when to go to war and what victory looks like. Doing so exposes important limitations of existing just war moral frameworks related to concerns about escalation from limited force to war and punishment as a moral justification. Harvesting cues from the historical tradition, the chapter concludes by introducing five types of punishment that contain insights relevant to discerning the just and unjust uses of limited force.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
Understanding the risk of escalation is key to discerning the just and unjust uses of limited for... more Understanding the risk of escalation is key to discerning the just and unjust uses of limited force. Insofar as limited force is categorically different from war because it avoids the latter’s large-scale destruction and unpredictability, then holding onto a presumption against escalation from limited force to war is essential to keeping them distinct. The probability of escalation principle, introduced as part of the set of jus ad vim principles, helps to gauge the likelihood of this happening. The chapter begins by explaining what escalation is and why thinking about escalation matters for determining whether the use of limited force is just or unjust. This reveals the core of jus ad vim—the presumption against escalation maxim—which relates the strong moral penchant against making the shift from the narrow destruction of vim to the wide and unpredictable destruction of bellum. The chapter continues by exploring five archetypes of escalation—initiator, regional, on the ground, prospective, and retaliatory—along with the ethical concerns they engender to help tease out the telltale signs of when using limited force is likely to lead to escalation, as well as ways states can signal to others that escalation to war is not the intention. The chapter concludes by examining an important caveat—the conditions under which this principle might be overridden, thus making escalation to war permissible. This could be the case only in the context of humanitarian intervention to protect innocents from on-the ground escalation, and only if shaped by the principles of jus post vim.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
This chapter revisits the theme of jus post vim in the non-ideal form. It begins by looking at th... more This chapter revisits the theme of jus post vim in the non-ideal form. It begins by looking at the grey area between vim success and failure, characterized by shaky containment (the lingering doubt that the enemy is really contained) or by persistent contested order that threatens the ability of law enforcement mechanisms to uphold a minimalist view of order in certain states. Among the vim failures are the unjust escalation to war, the unfazed enemy outcome, the recurring last straw scenario, and the intractable contested and fragmented sovereignty dilemma. The chapter continues by exploring jus ex vi, or the ethical consideration of terminating the use of limited force, further to tease out what success and failure might look like. The key to defining success and knowing when to end vim operations depends on the just management of military risk principle. The chapter concludes by exploring moral options in cases of failure. Building on the observation that framing the use of force as punishment can be more restrictive than open-ended justifications based in self-defense constructed as prevention or protection against future acts of aggression, the chapter concludes by arguing states might have recourse to the punishment principles. Drawn from an interpretation of the just war tradition privileging a presumption against war as being at the heart of just war thinking, the escalation management and demonstrable retribution criteria depict the narrow moral logic where the legitimate goal of limited force is something other than the moral truncated victory of jus post vim.
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine eBooks, Jan 3, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Apr 19, 2018
The use of lethal drones by the United States (US) marks a paradox insofar as the US government c... more The use of lethal drones by the United States (US) marks a paradox insofar as the US government claims that these strikes respect human rights, while the human rights communityincluding Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Internationalraise serious concerns that challenge this claim. Would reconciling these seemingly mutually exclusive human rights narratives regarding drone use lead to the formation of a more robust regime that would provide greater respect for human rights than in the current state of legal and moral ambiguity? In order to explore this question, we examine the evolution of these conflicting discourses through three key frames of legitimationstrategic, legal and normative. We argue that the US government has moved from a strategic-legal framework characterised by a focus on strategic objectives and a permissive view of international humanitarian law to a legalnormative discourse that, by incorporating the principles of just war theory, has restrained the strategic scope of the drone programme while reinforcing the legitimacy of international humanitarian law as the paradigm of choice. Comparatively, we assert that the human rights community has pursued a human rights-centric approach that rejects the more permissive standards of an international humanitarian law-centric legal paradigm, while pushing a normative agenda that seeks to enhance respect for human rights under both international humanitarian law and international human rights law. This includes rejecting the US interpretation of just war principles and appealing to a broader understanding of the right to life norm. Taking these 'right to life' considerations seriously raises concerns about whether drones can ever satisfy human rights. In the conclusion, we explore how combining certain elements of these narratives may contribute to an emerging norm on drone use.
BRILL eBooks, Nov 20, 2018
Journal of International Political Theory, Feb 10, 2022
Revisionist just war scholarship employs the rigors of analytical philosophy to make arguments ab... more Revisionist just war scholarship employs the rigors of analytical philosophy to make arguments about the deep morality of war. Accepting the individual and cosmopolitan are paramount to making sense of war as many revisionists do, this essay looks outside the just war canon to Montaigne—a sixteenth century French humanist hailed for his exploration of the self and cosmopolitan musings—for alternative insights. It explores how Montaigne was read during the Second World War by three intellectuals to make sense of war: Stefan Zweig, Jean Guéhenno, and François Mauriac. While Montaigne’s skepticism and turn to the self as an act of preservation was, in the 1930s, rejected as a strategy to combat rising authoritarianism in Europe by philosophers such as Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school, the thinkers studied here shed light on Montaigne as a source of active humanism based in reflective action that leads to Resistance. Building on trends in just war thinking that call for paying greater attention to the lived experience of war, the article identifies several psychological and moral processes—the inward turn, the cosmopolitan gaze, casting an existential anchor, and the humanist’s wager—to shed light on the doubt-laden process of making individual moral choices amidst the rising dogmatic forces that war tends to impose.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 18, 2021
Jus in vi is the set of moral principles governing how limited force is used. Taking the traditio... more Jus in vi is the set of moral principles governing how limited force is used. Taking the traditionalist jus in bello principles as a starting point, this chapter interrogates what necessity, proportionality, and distinction look like in a limited force context and makes the case for the novel psychological risk principle by evaluating how concepts such as “excessive,” “military advantage,” and “harms” and “goods” fit into our thinking about vim. The keystone of jus in vi is the predisposition toward maximal restraint maxim. The chapter thus begins by making the case for why jus in vi principles should be more restrictive than their jus in bello counterparts. It continues by exploring how a circumscribed view of necessity sets the groundwork for constraining proportionality calculations and shaping the way we think about distinction in more restricted ways. The notion of jus in vi proportionality is then explored, with concerns about escalation and psychological risk driving the analysis. Drawing insights from revisionist just war theory to consider jus in vi distinction, the chapter concludes by making the case for affording greater protections to both combatants and non-combatants compared to standard just war accounts. Unlike war, in which almost any soldier can be targeted, in a context of limited force only those who are an active threat can be justly targeted. Both innocent non-combatants and non-threatening combatants should be preserved from the more predictable harms of limited force, though this differs depending on whether the use of limited force is protective, preventive, or punitive.
Drones and Global Order, 2021
Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force
Standard accounts of just war follow a chronological path: deliberating whether to go to war (jus... more Standard accounts of just war follow a chronological path: deliberating whether to go to war (jus ad bellum), considering what can be done in war (jus in bello), and determining the responsibilities after war’s end (jus post bellum). This chapter challenges the chronological timeline by arguing that understanding jus post vim, or the justice after limited force, is paramount to discerning the just and unjust uses of limited force. Placing the emphasis on the post-force environment first shifts the focus onto the achievable ends, which then recalibrates the goals, and, by consequence, the means employed to achieve them. The chapter thus begins by distinguishing between jus post bellum and jus post vim, with one of the main differences being that the latter is necessarily a form of truncated victory. This circumscribed nature of victory has ethical implications insofar as many of the lofty goals sometimes associated with jus post bellum (rehabilitation, regime change, war crimes trial...
Oxford Scholarship Online
The development of the theory of jus ad vim (the justice of limited force) marks a new direction ... more The development of the theory of jus ad vim (the justice of limited force) marks a new direction in just war thinking aimed at navigating the moral dilemmas that emerge when using limited force. While the just war tradition has an ever-growing body of scholarship on jus post bellum, this chapter explores whether the questions and principles are the same in a situation of limited force. In doing so, it examines what victory might look like in a situation of limited force, i.e. jus post vim. The chapter begins by explaining why we need to distinguish between jus post vim and jus post bellum. Then it raises some of the most salient questions related to victory and limited force. Finally, drawing on cases of humanitarian intervention, limited strikes against rogue regimes, and the struggle against non-state terrorist actors, it delineates the moral principles that ought to guide jus post vim.
Global Responsibility to Protect
Force Short of War in Modern Conflict
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Mar 27, 2019
<p> <italic>Jus ad vim</italic> is the set of moral principles governing the de... more <p> <italic>Jus ad vim</italic> is the set of moral principles governing the decision to use limited force. This chapter interrogates the moral permissions and restraints of these principles by recalibrating the traditional <italic>jus ad bellum</italic> criteria (just cause, last resort, proportionality, probability of success, right intention, and legitimate authority) and delineating the novel probability of escalation principle. The chapter begins with an illustration of just cause for <italic>vim</italic>, which is more permissive than for <italic>bellum</italic>, meaning there are more moral reasons to use limited force than to go to war. The concern that this view of just cause would lower the threshold for violence too far is called the permissiveness critique. The remainder of the chapter charts a course of restraint <italic>ad vim</italic>. Recalibrating last resort yields the moral independence thesis, the view that acts of limited force should not be conceived as part of the actions leading to war but rather should be thought of as an alternative set of options, while the Rubicon assessment is the deliberation process to discern what level of force is justified. The restrictive core of <italic>jus ad vim</italic> lies in satisfying a new criterion—the probability of escalation principle, which blends elements of the <italic>jus ad bellum</italic> proportionality and probability of success criteria to conceive the risks of using limited force. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how right intention and legitimate authority can be reinterpreted in a limited force context to curtail acting too easily on just cause.</p>
Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force
Law enforcement is often seen as the de facto, and relatively pure, alternative to contemporary j... more Law enforcement is often seen as the de facto, and relatively pure, alternative to contemporary just war. If we are not at war, then the more restrictive law enforcement is the viable paradigm. This chapter interrogates two assumptions underlying this view. It begins by demystifying the unwritten assumption that the liberal law enforcement paradigm associated with Western democracies is the idealized foil to just war. Using France, whose postcolonial legacy complicates the turn to the Western liberal paradigm as an illuminating case, the chapter explores how domestic warlike violence creates a state of fractured order—the violence and potential for abuses of power that permeate society as the government seeks to balance security and individual rights. The chapter then turns to the transnational context to challenge the view that there exists a clear line between the state of war and the state of peace. Mali serves as a paradigmatic case to illustrate how the effectiveness of law enf...
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Papers by Daniel Brunstetter