Can there be a just war?

Think ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Richard Norman
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
The Right ◽  
Self Defence

Richard Norman examines justifications for war that are rooted in the right of self-defence.

Internecine War Killings

Utilitas ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
CÉCILE FABRE
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Interesting Issue ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
Self Defence

In his recent bookKilling in War, McMahan develops a powerful argument for the view that soldiers on opposite sides of a conflict are not morally on a par once the war has started: whether they have the right to kill depends on the justness of their war. In line with just war theory in general, McMahan scrutinizes the ethics of killing the enemy. In this article, I accept McMahan's account, but bring it to bear on the entirely neglected, but nevertheless interesting, issue of what the military call ‘blue-on-blue’ killings or, as I refer to such acts here, internecine war killings. I focus on the case of the soldier who is ordered by his officer, at gunpoint, to go into action or to kill innocent civilians, and who kills his officer in self-defence. I argue that, at the bar of McMahan's account of the right to kill in self-defence, the officer lacks a justification for attacking the soldier as a means of enforcing his order, and the soldier thus sometimes (but not always) has the right to kill his officer should the latter so act.

The invocation of the right to self-defence in response to armed attacks conducted by armed groups: Implications for attribution

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (01) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika de Wet
Keyword(s):  
Due Diligence ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Armed Attack ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
State Actors ◽  
The Right ◽  
United Nations Charter ◽  
Territorial States ◽  
Self Defence

AbstractThe right to self-defence in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter is increasingly being invoked in response to armed attacks conducted by armed groups located in a territory of another state, with or without the (direct) assistance of such a state. This article examines the implications of the invocation of the right to self-defence under these circumstances for the principles of attribution within thejus ad bellumparadigm. First, it illuminates how the threshold requirements for indirect armed attacks (that is, the state acting through a private actor) have been lowered since the 1986Nicaraguadecision of the International Court of Justice. In so doing, the article suggests that in order to prevent a complete erosion of the benchmarks of an indirect armed attack, the notions of ‘substantial involvement’ in an armed attack, ‘harbouring’, and ‘unwillingness’ should be interpreted as manifestations of due diligence. Thereafter, the article illustrates that there is also an increasing attribution of armed attacks directly to non-state actors, notably those located in areas over which territorial states have lost control. Such states could be depicted as being ‘unable’ to counter the activities of non-state actors. The article further submits that particularly in these instances, the principle of necessity within the self-defence paradigm can play an important role in curbing the potential for abuse inherent in the vague notion of ‘inability’, if interpreted in light of Article 25 of the Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts.

Neither Civilian nor Combatant: Weaponised Spaces and Spatialised Bodies in Cizre

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Haydar Darıcı ◽  
Serra Hakyemez
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Government ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Kurdish Conflict ◽  
Self Defence

What kind of work does the categorical distinction between combatant and civilian do in the interplay of the necropolitics and biopower of the Turkish state? This paper focuses on a time period (2015-2016) in the history of the Kurdish conflict when that distinction was no longer operable as the war tactics of the Kurdish movement shifted from guerrilla attacks of hit and run in the mountains to the self-defence of residents in urban centres. It reveals the limit of inciting compassion through the figure of civilian who is assumed to entertain a pre-political life that is directed towards mere survival. It also shows how the government reconstructs the dead bodies using forensics and technoscience in order to portray what is considered by Kurdish human rights organizations civilians as combatants exercising necroresistance. As long as the civilian-combatant distinction remains and serves as the only episteme of war to defend the right to life, the state is enabled to entertain not only the right to kill, but also to turn the dead into the perpetrators of their own killing. Finally, this paper argues that law and violence, on the one hand, and the right to life and the act of killing on the other, are not two polar opposites but are mutually constitutive of each other in the remaking of state sovereignty put in crisis by the Kurdish movement's self-defence practices.

Intervening Agency and the Right of Non-Sacrifice

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-211
Author(s):  
Alec D. Walen
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
The Right ◽  
Primary Agent

This chapter argues for the extension of an idea from the previous chapter, that of a right of non-sacrifice. It argues that this right exists in certain cases of intervening agency: when the intervening agent presents the primary agent with a choice either to submit to suffering a harm or to resist, knowing that the intervening agent will then harm others. The argument proceeds in four parts. First, the chapter explains why such a case is puzzling; second, it dismisses two unsuccessful attempts to resolve the puzzle; third, it explains why intervening agency sometimes has the effect of changing the nature of the causal structure in which an agent acts, though noting as well that intervening agency is not unique in having that effect; and finally, it explores how these ideas might be relevant to just war theory and eliminative killing in that context.

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