On the Moral Equality of Combatants

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff McMahan
2019 ◽  
pp. 116-132
Author(s):  
Yitzhak Benbaji ◽  
Daniel Statman

The purpose of this chapter is to offer a contractarian defence of Moral Equality, the thesis that Just and Unjust Combatants do not wrong each other when they kill and maim each other in war. We concede that the killings of Just Combatants by Unjust Combatants is pre-contractually impermissible. Moral Equality is nevertheless true if an agreement between states that equalize the legal standing of soldiers is fair and also mutually beneficial. By accepting such an agreement, combatants attain a right to take advantage of traditional jus in bello rules, thereby violating no duty against Just Combatants by attacking them.


Analysis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 512-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Lang

Diametros ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Maciej Marek Zając

Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants (MEC) involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-471
Author(s):  
Robert O. Keohane

AbstractIn their article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino argue that the American public evaluates soldiers’ wartime actions more according to whether the war they are fighting was initiated justly, than on their actions during warfare. In this respect, their views are more similar to those of revisionist philosophers than to those of traditional just war theorists. Before leaping to broad conclusions from their survey, it should be replicated. If the findings hold in the replication, intriguing questions could be asked about comparative cross-national attitudes and about the relationship between democracy and war.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff McMahan

AbstractIn their article “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants,” Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino have revealed a wealth of information about the views of contemporary Americans on the ethics of war. Virtually all they have discovered is surprising and much of it is alarming. My commentary in this symposium seeks mainly to extract a bit more from their data and to draw a few further inferences. Among the striking features of Sagan and Valentino's data are that the views of Americans tend to cluster at the extreme ends of the spectrum of possible views about the ethics of war, that an apparent sympathy for pacifism coexists with harshly punitive views about the treatment of soldiers, and that few of those surveyed appear to have given any thought to the implications of the views they expressed for what it might be permissible for enemies of the United States to do to captured American soldiers. The commentary concludes by arguing that Sagan and Valentino's findings do not, as they argue, support the fear that is sometimes expressed that a wider acceptance of revisionist just war theory, and in particular its incorporation into the law, would make the practice of war even more barbarous than it already is.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Dragan Stanar

This paper aims to explain the effect of the post-truth on revisionism in Just War Theory. Revisionism in JWT is based on the claim that Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello cannot be separated and that only combatants who fight on the just side are morally justified in killing. Presupposition of this argument is that combatants can and ought to know the moral status of their side. This paper will demonstrate that it is impossible to demand combatants to know whether their side is just by investigating the implications of post-truth in modern conflicts. By demonstrating the practical impossibility of combatants to know whether their side is just, author will show that the assumption of inculpable ignorance in war must remain the essence of JWT. Posttruth phenomenon only fortifies the necessity of separating Jus ad Bellum from Jus in Bello and upholding the principle of moral equality of combatants in contemporary wars.


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