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Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different Traditions
One of the oldest and most enduring images of war is that of the game of chess. Although chess is clearly an abstraction, it powerfully embodies a conception of a particular type of war and moreover, it is a conception that has significant moral content. On the chessboard, two equally configured forces, displaying clear and distinguishable uniforms, do battle on a bounded field and in strict accordance with rules that specify how conflict is to commence, how it is to be conducted, and how it is to be terminated.
Public Integrity, 2017
Our changing environment must, in turn, change the way we think about Just War Theory. While there is a long rich history within the just war tradition of considering an attack on natural resources to constitute an act of war (e.g. Victoria 1532; Grotius 1625), and while there have been more recent analyses about how environmental impacts can alter which wars and which actions within war can be justified (e.g., Drucker 1989; Reichberg & Syse 2000; Woods 2007), there has not yet been, to the best of our knowledge an analysis of how the environmental impacts of war ought to alter the just war framework itself. In other words, there has not yet been a consideration of how environmental impacts ought to change not only the content of just war principles, but also the way those principles are utilized, and in some cases even the principles themselves. In this paper, we argue that the time has come for such an analysis.
The Just War tradition (JWT) is viewed in this paper as a corpus of ideas that discusses the morality and ethics of war. It has changed throughout more than 1,500 years, making it a complicated one. The Just War tradition is broad and multifaceted, yet it is confined within some essential principles that determine its boundaries. It differs from pacifism in that it holds that wars can occasionally be justified and from realism, which views war as outside the purview of moral judgment, in that it holds that both the choice to go to war and the tactics used in conducting it are subject to moral inspection. Within such confines, just war theorists disagree with one another not only about subtleties of the theory but also over fundamental issues like whether or not a war may be justified by something other than the necessity of defending oneself against an already-initiated armed attack. This paper's main goal is to provide a clear and comprehensive understanding of the JWT, the conditions under which it permits and restricts acceptable damages and the moral conundrums these arguments raise. Regarding modern just war theory, one of the central concerns is whether war can be fought and damage done for "humanitarian" or "cosmopolitan" purposes, including protecting human rights. Stated differently, the question is whether there exists a clear and present need to conduct war. This paper lays out the main problems with the use of violence, evaluates the cosmopolitan and anti-cosmopolitan contributions to Just War thinking, and ends with some observations on the suitability of Just War thinking and its connection to cosmopolitanism.
2019
War is an extreme human activity—not only because of the horror of war, but because of the severe emotional, physical, psychological, and moral strain it has on its combatants. Understanding war from the combatant’s point of view is hard enough without personally experiencing war. Without the direct experience of combat, an epistemic gap lies between one who knows what it is like and those lucky enough not to experience it. Consequently, the theoretical propositions of just and unjust conduct in war become difficult to support. I argue that just war theory and its tenets such as jus in bello, or just conduct in war, needs a thorough examination of combat experiences to define the principle with the reality of war in mind. For example, as a precept of moral responsibility in war, jus in bello is an abstract principle which can be supported by concrete historical examples if and only if the epistemic gap between the experience of combat and abstraction is bridged by a consideration of...
International Affairs, 2011
The study of war is an area that has been long ignored by conventional criminologists, mainly due to the criminogenic acts of war being legitimate and justified. This however, rests on the assumption that a 'just war' actually exists and that the just war tradition is a useful and adequate guide on which to judge our thought about war. The purpose of this dissertation is to challenge this assumption, providing a critical analysis of the rationales for war. It will be concluded that the just war tradition is flawed. Its near impossibility of being followed fully means that all wars, despite perhaps having moral authority, are unjust.
Daedalus, 2017
A central element of the dominant view of just war theory is the moral equality of soldiers: combatants have equal rights to wage war against one another and are entitled to certain protections if captured, without regard to which side's cause of war is just. But whether and how this principle should apply in asymmetric armed conflicts between states and nonstate groups is profoundly unsettled. I argue that we should confer war rights on fighters for nonstate groups when they are engaged in violence that has risen to the level of armed conflict, and when the state against which the war is being waged is not entitled to assert its monopoly on the legitimate exercise of force, either because 1) the nonstate group has established sufficient control over territory to assert its own governing authority; or 2) because the group is located abroad. Conferring war rights on nonstate fighters does not, however, permit them to engage in acts that violate the laws of war. Fighters who commi...
"Contemporary military conflicts are frequently referred to as ‘new’, ‘irregular’, or ‘asymmetric’, labels that are meant to distinguish contemporary conflict formations from previous ones. Yet the language of asymmetry is not just a conveniently vague gloss for a variety of conflicts; it also introduces a normative schema that moralizes and depoliticizes the difference between states and non-state actors. The description of contemporary conflicts as asymmetric allows states to be portrayed as victims of non-state actors, as vulnerable to strategic constellations they ostensibly cannot win. ‘Asymmetry’ is today's idiom to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized warfare, an idiom that converts ostensibly technological or strategic differences between state and non-state actors into moral and civilizational hierarchies. Furthermore, the claim that these types of conflicts are new is used to justify attempts to revisit and rewrite the international laws of armed conflicts. While such attempts are unlikely to succeed in the formal arena, informally, a transformation of the international normative order is already underway. At the heart of this transformation is how states interpret a key cornerstone of international humanitarian law: the principle of discrimination between combatants and civilians. "
2023
This brief paper is a general treatment of war -its morality and its political and social effects. Accordingly, we discuss primarily those armed interactions between nations, or, in "civil" wars, those aimed at securing the reins of government. These must, we contend, be inherently immoral on one side -the one which "starts" the war in question -and inherently moral on the other, who after all are defending their lives against the first. To say this requires a moral theory, which we briefly develop. It proceeds on Hobbesian-contractarian lines: if mankind occupies a "state of nature," then we will all be worse off than if we join with each other in adopting the restrictions of morality -fundamentally, and primarily, of nonviolence, of living at peace with each other. This raises a question about the very rationality of war, to be sure. And yet, war we have, in considerable and unfortunate abundance. How can this be? Some tentative answers are suggested.
This paper evaluates the moral equality of combatants according to the criteria of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. It identifies the precise point of disagreement in Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan's dispute regarding the moral equality of combatants and offering a mediating position.
War has changed so much that it barely resembles the paradigmatic cases of armed conflict that just war theories and international humanitarian law seemed to have had in mind even a few decades ago. The changing character of war includes not only the use of new technology such as drones, but probably more problematically the changing temporal and spatial scope of war and the changing character of actors in war. These changes give rise to worries about what counts as war and thus what norms to use in evaluating a particular conflict. In this paper, I develop an argument that the changing character of war gives us reasons to take reductionist revisions of just war theory seriously. By reductionist theories of war I mean those revisions within the just war tradition that suggest that we can use ordinary peacetime interpersonal analyses of moral responsibility and liability to harm to decide what justice requires in times of war.
The history of mankind is beleaguered with periodic wars between nations and groups that resulted in massive devastation of human lives, property, environment and civilizations. The Second World War, for one, was the most destructive war ever recorded. In its aftermath, many scholarly thinkers and leaders began intense debate on the 'legal and moral' justifications of war, its prevention and the promotion of the just-war theory as an essential norm that regulates conflicts between modern states and other international actors. The theory is based on the spirit of righteousness of conduct, responsibility, proportionality of actions and the active promotion of peacemaking among groups in conflict. The main argument of this paper is whether the concept of 'just war' is feasible to provide an ethical and legal framework to understand the relationships between humans, groups and states in managing conflicts. To discuss the main argument, the article is divided into three sections. The first section delves into the ethical and legal debate over what constitutes a just war, especially drawing from duty-based and utilitarianism perspectives. The second part examines the interactions between humans (as subjects) and states (as authority), particularly concerning the perceived centrality of the state. The third part examines how the just-war theory is adapted and manifested in the globalized and interdependent world.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021
Journal of International Political Theory, 2018
Contemporary just war thinking has mostly been split into two competing camps, namely, Michael Walzer's approach and its revisionist critics. While Walzerians employ a casuistical method, most revisionists resort to analytical philosophy's reflective equilibrium. Importantly, besides employing different methods, the two sides also disagree on substantive issues. This article focuses on one such issue, the moral equality of combatants, arguing that while a methodological reconciliation between the two camps is impossible, contemporary debate would benefit from a 'third-way' approach. Presenting James Turner Johnson's historical method as such an approach, the article suggests that while revisionists are correct in considering the symmetry thesis as ethically indefensible, in order to arrive at this judgement, it is not necessary to employ far-fetched thought experiments and the use of historical cases is preferable. The root cause of Walzer's problematic reasoning vis-à-vis the symmetry thesis, the historical approach reveals, is his uneasy relationship with the just war tradition. Contributing to a deeper understanding of the respective approaches' differences, the article seeks to move the focus of contemporary just war away from a narrow intra-disciplinary divide and towards an engagement with substantive questions.
2008
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-86051 2 (hardback), 978-0-521-67785-1 (paperback)
War is not the only or even the major cause of human suffering. But it is the cause for which we are most often most directly responsible. Our voluntary choices result in huge increases in mortality, massive refugee crises, and the dislocation of whole generations. So while there are other equally pressing problems facing humanity, none of them raises as pointed moral questions as those to do with whether and when we may take our polities to war and how we must fight if we do so. This Handbook offers a guide to thinking through the morality of war, from the perspective of contemporary analytical just war theory. This introduction explains the methodological and substantive choices made in designing the volume, then summarizes the key insights of the chapters to follow.
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