Ending War

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rodin
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Moral Assessment

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

Civil War and Revolution

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Parry
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
National Defence

The vast majority of work on the ethics of war focuses on traditional wars between states. This chapter aims to show that this is an oversight worth rectifying. The strategy is largely comparative, assessing whether certain claims often defended in discussions of interstate wars stand up in the context of civil conflicts and whether there are principled moral differences between the two types of case. Firstly, the chapter argues that thinking about intrastate wars may help us make progress on important theoretical debates in recent just war theory. Secondly, it considers whether certain kinds of civil wars are subject to a more demanding standard of just cause, compared to interstate wars of national defence. Finally, it assesses the extent to which having popular support is an independent requirement of permissible war and whether this renders insurgencies harder to justify than wars fought by functioning states.

scholarly journals A fundamental asymmetry in judgments of soldiers at war

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne M Watkins ◽  
Geoffrey Goodwin
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Two Factors

How should we judge a soldier who is fighting for an unjust cause? Is such a soldier the moral equal of a soldier fighting for an opposing, just cause? According to traditional just war theory (Walzer, 2006), soldiers on either side of a war are moral equals, regardless of the justness of the cause for which they fight (the “principle of combatant equality”). According to revisionist just war theory, however, the justness of the soldiers’ cause should inform moral judgments of their actions; on this view, our judgments of soldiers on either side of a war should therefore be asymmetric (McMahan, 2009). Despite intense philosophical debate between these two theories, little work has examined how they align with lay views. Assessing this correspondence is important because people’s attitude towards soldiers may have a variety of consequences, ranging from their support for war, to their acceptance, rejection, or valorization of individual combatants. Across eight studies, we find consistent evidence that ordinary individuals’ judgments of soldiers’ actions are influenced by the justness of the soldiers’ causes, contrary to the principle of combatant equality. Two factors (partially) explain this effect: first, people implicitly presume that soldiers identify with the cause for which they fight, which influences moral judgments of their actions; second, people implicitly align themselves with the just side of a war, treating combatants on the just side as part of their ingroup, thus rendering more favorable moral judgments of them. Several other possible explanations were not supported.

The Internal Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Action ◽  
Institutional Processes

This chapter addresses a remarkably neglected issue in just war theory: the internal legitimacy of humanitarian military intervention, military actions in another state undertaken with the objective of stopping occurring or preventing imminent large-scale violations of basic human rights, without the consent of the state in which the intervention occurs. When such wars cannot be justified as necessary for protecting the rights or advancing the interests of the citizens of the states that undertake them, the question arises as to whether they are legitimate from the standpoint of the state’s own citizens. This chapter argues that the decision to engage in humanitarian wars is so especially serious and problematic (given that the primary duty of the state is to protect the rights and serve the interests of its own citizens), that special institutional processes are needed for authorizing such military action.

War

Philosophy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lazar ◽  
Jonathan Parry
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Jus Post Bellum ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
The Third

Wars are large-scale armed conflicts between two or more organized groups. The basic problem of warfare is that it involves inflicting death and suffering on people, who, in ordinary circumstances, would have fundamental rights that protect them against being treated in these ways. Of course, everyone recognizes that wars are problematic in other respects: they corrupt and destroy institutions and relationships, they waste vast sums of wealth that could be used to remedy entrenched vulnerability, and they cause irreversible and massive damage to the natural environment. These are by no means negligible costs. And yet when considering the ethics of war, most start with the killing and the suffering, because if the killing cannot be justified, then the rest is irrelevant: our only choice is to affirm pacifism. However, justifying the killing is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of justifying wars as a whole. There remain important questions to be asked about how and why the killing may be done. While the permissibility of killing per se provides the philosophical foundations of any theory of just war, the superstructure requires attention to specific questions governing the practice of warfare. In particular, for what reasons may conflict be permissibly initiated? How can we fight permissibly? How can we end wars, and deal with their aftermath, permissibly? The first two—justified resort and justified conduct—correspond to jus ad bellum and jus in bello in historical just war theory. The third is a more novel, less-discussed contribution, coined as jus post bellum by recent scholars. Only a war in which the killing is justified, and which is started, fought, and ended justifiably, can properly be called a just war.

When is a cause just?

2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 557-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN HOLLIDAY
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
World Order ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
International Forum ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
The Cold War

The September 11 terrorist strikes prompted renewed interest in a debate about just cause that has been increasingly open since the demise of the Cold War and the shift to a more multilateral and interventionist world order. This article contributes to that debate by looking first into the just war tradition to argue for a conceptual revision that equates just cause with jus ad bellum (just recourse to war). It then seeks to specify the component parts of just cause understood in this way, holding that demonstrable injustice should take the place formerly occupied by just cause in just war theory. Towards the end it uses three real-world cases to develop a mechanism for validating just cause claims. The argument is that a cause is just only when its proponents can convince an international forum of intractable injustice, responsible intervention, and an appropriate balance of contingent factors. The article closes by considering how the current war on terrorism might be assessed in such a forum.

Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott D. Sagan ◽  
Benjamin A. Valentino
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Just War Doctrine ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Moral Equality Of Combatants

AbstractTraditional just war doctrine holds that political leaders are morally responsible for the decision to initiate war, while individual soldiers should be judged solely by their conduct in war. According to this view, soldiers fighting in an unjust war of aggression and soldiers on the opposing side seeking to defend their country are morally equal as long as each obeys the rules of combat. Revisionist scholars, however, maintain that soldiers who fight for an unjust cause bear at least some responsibility for advancing an immoral end, even if they otherwise fight ethically. This article examines the attitudes of the American public regarding the moral equality of combatants. Utilizing an original survey experiment, we find that the public's moral reasoning is generally more consistent with that of the revisionists than with traditional just war theory. Americans in our study judged soldiers who participate in unjust wars as less ethical than soldiers in just wars, even when their battlefield conduct is identical, and a large proportion supported harsh punishments for soldiers simply for participating in unjust wars. We also find, however, that much of the American public is willing to extend the moral license of just cause significantly further than revisionist scholars advocate: half of the Americans in our survey were willing to allow an unambiguous war crime—a massacre of innocent women and children—to go unpunished when the act was committed by soldiers fighting for a just cause. Our findings suggest that incorporation of revisionist principles into the laws of war would reinforce dangerous moral intuitions encouraging the killing of civilians.

Just War Theory and the Last of Last Resort

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamon Aloyo
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Just War Tradition

The last resort criterion has a hallowed place in the just war theory tradition. Many leading just war theory scholars accept it as a jus ad bellum requirement and some powerful politicians reference it. While there are several versions of last resort, many take it to mean that peaceful options that have a reasonable chance of achieving a just cause must be exhausted before the use of force is permissible. Its justification is straightforward and commonsensical: war is terrible, inevitably results in the deaths of numerous innocents and destruction of their property, and thus should be avoided whenever possible. I argue that last resort should be dropped from the just war tradition because its inclusion in the just war tradition can result in a greater number of harms to innocents than if the precept did not exist. What should matter morally is the severity and numbers of harms inflicted on innocents, not whether those harms are inflicted violently or nonviolently. I suggest that in the context of achieving a just cause, the only actions that are permissible are those that are likely to inflict the fewest morally weighted harms and that meet the other just war theory precepts (excluding last resort). Three accounts of last resort do not permit this, whereas while a fourth does, it is redundant with an important account of the jus ad bellum proportionality precept. Thus violent policies may be preferable in some rare circumstances to nonviolent alternatives such as non-targeted sanctions and negotiations because nonviolent policies sometimes are more likely to foreseeably and avoidably result in far greater harms to innocents than violent options.

Chicken Killers or Bandwidth Patriots?

2012 ◽  
pp. 140-160
Author(s):  
Kurt Reymers
Keyword(s):  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Physical Damage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Resource Dilemma ◽  
Psychological Harm

In 2008, a resident of a computerized virtual world called “Second Life” programmed and began selling a “realistic” virtual chicken. It required food and water to survive, was vulnerable to physical damage, and could reproduce. This development led to the mass adoption of chicken farms and large-scale trade in virtual chickens and eggs. Not long after the release of the virtual chickens, a number of incidents occurred which demonstrate the negotiated nature of territorial and normative boundaries. Neighbors of chicken farmers complained of slow performance of the simulation and some users began terminating the chickens, kicking or shooting them to “death.” All of these virtual world phenomena, from the interactive role-playing of virtual farmers to the social, political and economic repercussions within and beyond the virtual world, can be examined with a critical focus on the ethical ramifications of virtual world conflicts. This paper views the case of the virtual chicken wars from three different ethical perspectives: as a resource dilemma, as providing an argument from moral and psychological harm, and as a case in which just war theory can be applied.

Debating Humanitarian Intervention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Tesón ◽  
Bas van der Vossen
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Almost All

The book offers contrasting views of humanitarian intervention—a war aimed at ending tyranny or violence. Fernando Tesón argues that humanitarian interventions are sometimes permissible; Bas van der Vossen argues that as a rule they are not. The authors use the tools of modern analytic philosophy, in particular just war theory, to substantiate their claims. According to Tesón, a humanitarian intervention has the same just cause as a justified revolution: ending tyranny. He analyzes the different kinds of just cause and whether or not an intervener may pursue other justified causes. For Tesón, the permissibility of humanitarian intervention is almost exclusively determined by the rules of proportionality. Bas van der Vossen, by contrast, holds that military intervention is morally impermissible in almost all cases. Justified interventions, van der Vossen argues, must have high ex ante chance of success. Analyzing the history and prospects of intervention shows that they almost never do.

Neues zur Theorie des Gerechten Krieges: Die Wende zum Soldaten und Fragen der Kriegsmoral

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Kallhoff ◽  
Thomas Schulte-Umberg
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Interdisciplinary Framework ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
The Many ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractIn Just War Theory, the leading paradigm is a normative assessment of war among nation states. As an effect of that perspective, the duties and obligations of soldiers as well as the issues of culpability have received only very little attention. Recently, philosophers have questioned this restriction in order to discuss war ethics from a different angle. Research now focuses on the single soldier’s decisions on the battlefield and their moral assessment. This paper looks at the “criterion of liability” introduced by Jeff McMahan. It explains consequences of this new approach to war ethics, including the focus on reason-giving narratives. An interdisciplinary framework introduces recent historical findings on the single soldier’s “morality”. This paper argues that the shift of attention gives insight into the many facets of “morality” in the context of war.

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