On the Ethics of War and Terrorism - By Uwe Steinhoff and Clausewitz's Puzzle: The Political Theory of War - By Andreas Herberg-Rothe and Rethinking the Just War Tradition - Edited by Michael W. Brough, John W. Lango & Harry Van Der Linden and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Conflict Resolution to Conflict Management - Edited by Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-212
Author(s):  
PAUL GILBERT
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Theory Of War

Why the Ethics of War needs the Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 227-251
Author(s):  
Ariel Colonomos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Just War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
The Face ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Normative Issues

Abstract This paper argues that, for both sociological and epistemic reasons, the ethics of war needs the social sciences and, accordingly, sets an alternative to the two prevailing approaches in the literature in the ethics of war field, i.e. the just war tradition model and the ethics of war theory. Given what we learn from the factual description of war and its interpretation in the social sciences, and given what their epistemic premises are, both models - and more particularly the second one – fail to address important normative issues that arise in the course of warfare. Based on the discussion of two case studies – states’ policy in the face of hostage-taking and the rule of proportionality – I argue it is important to move beyond the divide between a state-centric approach (the just war tradition) and an individualistic one (the ethics of war theory): it is indispensable to take into consideration other social spheres where norms emerge and find, between those spheres, some ‘overlapping normative ground’. I argue, both sociologically and normatively, that norms rely upon interlocking sets of expectations. I also argue that these social expectations need to be thoroughly examined in order to ascertain the plausibility of norms in warfare. As a conclusion, for reasons that are both sociological and normative, I stress the political importance, within a liberal and knowledge-oriented society, of the access to facts that always need to be interpreted when making normative claims.

Moral Victories

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Theory Of War ◽  
Military Relations

What does it mean to win a moral victory? In the history, practice, and theory of war, this question yields few clear answers. Wars often begin with ideals about just and decisive triumphs but descend into quagmires. In the just war and strategic studies traditions, assumptions about victory underpin legitimations for war but become problematic in discussions about its conduct and conclusion. After centuries of conflict, we still lack a clear understanding of victory or reliable resources for discerning its moral status, its implications for conduct in war, or its relationship to changing ways of war. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to tackle such issues. It is organized in two parts. After a synoptic introduction, Part I, ‘Traditions: The Changing Character of Victory’, charts the historically variable notion of victory and the dialogues and fissures this opens in the just war and strategic canons. Individual chapters analyse the importance of victory in the Bible, Clausewitz’s strategy, the political uses of defeat, arguments for unlimited war, revisionist just war theory, and contemporary norms against fights to the finish. Part II, ‘Challenges: The Problem of Victory in Contemporary Warfare’, shows how changing security contexts exacerbate these issues. Individual chapters discuss ethics in unwinnable wars, the political scars of victory, whether we can ‘win’ humanitarian interventions, contemporary civil–military relations, victory in privatized war, and operations short of war. In both parts, contributors work towards a clearer understanding of victory, forwarding several shared themes discussed in a critical conclusion.

Interlinking the Domestic with the International: Carl Schmitt on Democracy and International Relations

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH BURCHARD
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Just War ◽  
State System ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Just War Tradition

Carl Schmitt's Der Nomos der Erde allows us to rethink his interlinked proposals for the organization of the Weimar Republic, namely his theory of ‘democratic dictatorship’ and the ‘concept of the political’. Connecting the domestic homogeneity of an empowered people with the pluralism of the Westphalian state system, Schmitt seeks to humanize war; he objects to the renaissance of the ‘just war’ tradition, which is premised on a discriminating concept of war. Schmitt's objections are valid today, yet their Eurocentric foundations are also partially outdated. We are thus to argue with Schmitt against Schmitt to reflect on possibilities for the humanization of war.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

13. Normative International Relations Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Just War ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Just War Tradition

This chapter deals with normative international relations theory, a field of study that relies on a variety of approaches and theories to explore moral expectations, decisions, and dilemmas in world politics. Normative IR theory has adopted — and adapted — conceptual categories such as communitarianism and cosmopolitanism from political theory. It also borrows from moral philosophy to designate different types of ethical reasoning, such as deontology and consequentialism. The chapter begins with an overview of the history, influences, and some of the categories that normative IR theory brings to the study of international relations. It then examines the ways in which normative IR theory engages with the hidden ethical assumptions of a range of IR approaches. It also considers the case of civilian deaths during the 2003 Iraq war in relation to the the just war tradition, and more specifically to the idea that soldiers have duties to exercise restraint in war.

Just War Theory in Times of Individual Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-232
Author(s):  
Janina Dill
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Radical Revision

Just war theory (JWT) has undergone a radical revision over the last two decades. This chapter discusses the implications of this reformulation for the role of JWT in International Political Theory (IPT) and for JWT’s strategic usefulness. Revisionists’ consistent prioritization of individual rights means JWT now follows the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. At the same time, the collective nature of war makes it impossible for anyone but the omniscient attacker to properly protect individual rights and thus to directly implement revisionist prescriptions. I argue that revisionism is strategically relevant not in spite of, but because of this lack of practicability on the battlefield. It highlights the impossibility of waging war in accordance with widespread expectations of moral appropriateness, which largely follow the strictures of justified violence according to contemporary IPT. This is a crucial limitation to the political utility of force in twenty-first-century international relations.

The Ethics of War and the Concept of War in India and Europe

Numen ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torkel Brekke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Just War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Jus Ad Bellum ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Ethical Systems

AbstractThe European just war tradition makes a distinction between matters of just resort to war (jus ad bellum) and matters of just means in war (jus in bello). If one compares the just war tradition with ethical systems of other cultures, one is struck by the European concern about jus ad bellum and the lack of interest in the same in other traditions. I compare the ethics of war in two important literary traditions of classical Hinduism with the European just war tradition. Our problem: Why were Europeans so interested in matters of jus ad bellum (in particular the principle of right authority) and why did Hindu writers take so little interest in the same questions? I suggest the following answer. In medieval and early modern Europe there was great interest in jus ad bellum because Europeans had a concept of war that made two important distinctions. The European concept of war distinguished, firstly, war against external enemies from violence against internal enemies and, secondly, public from private violence. Some important studies of the ethics of war have asserted that these two distinctions are universal. I argue, on the contrary, that these two distinctions are unique to Europe. Hindu writers had a fundamentally different concept of war. They did not make the same distinctions. I argue that this conceptual difference explains why Europeans were so concerned about jus ad bellum while Indians were not.

Courts and Conflict Resolution: Problems in the Mobilization of Adjudication

1975 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1200-1217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Sarat ◽  
Joel B. Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Conflict Management ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Entire Range ◽  
Political System ◽  
System Stability ◽  
The Political

This article attempts to assess the role of courts and other adjudicative institutions in the definition, interpretation, and management of conflict. Understanding the function of courts requires an understanding of a society's entire range of conflict management mechanisms. Particular emphasis is placed on those variables most likely to determine where and how conflicts will be solved.Adjudicative institutions can be effectively differentiated by a typology which measures the level of formality in procedures and the degree of “publicness.” The structure of a dispute-resolving institution will have an important effect on which disputes are presented to it and how they are decided. The nature of the dispute, goals of the disputants, social context, and political culture are also important variables.Government has an important stake in the manner in which disputes arise and are resolved. It may promote or require the resolution of some disputes in the courts while allowing others to be resolved in less public and formal arenas. Formal litigation may provide a model for private dispute resolution. It may also absorb and deflect grievances before they escalate into more organized and intense demands on the political system. Finally, litigation may have an important effect on system stability by promoting support for regime values.

The Pacifist Tradition and Pacifism as Transformative and Critical Theory

Acorn ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Andrew Fiala ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Critical Social

Pacifism is often painted into a corner as an absolute rejection of all violence and war. Such a dogmatic and negative formulation of pacifism does leave us with pacifism as a morally problematic position. But pacifism is not best understood as a negative claim. Nor is pacifism best understood as a singular or monistic concept. Rather, there is a “pacifist tradition” that is grounded in an affirmative claim about the importance of nonviolence, love, community building, and peaceful conflict resolution. This more positive conception of pacifism aims to transform social and political life. When understood in this way, pacifism is a robust and useful critical social theory. This paper explores the philosophy of pacifism in an attempt to reconceptualize pacifism as a tradition of normative critical theory. The paper argues that pacifism ought to be understood on analogy with other critical theories—such as feminism; that pacifism should be understood in terms of the “pacifist tradition”—along lines familiar from interpretations of the “just war tradition”; and that pacifism should be seen as offering interesting themes and ideas that are worthy of philosophical attention.

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