What Is 'Victory' in the Orthodox Christian Ethics of War?

The text reconstructs the protocol of 'victory' as part of the interruption of enmity and establishment of temporary peace. Different understandings of the enemy and enmity imply that victory in war and cessation of conflict can essentially determine the way war is conducted, and that they follow rules of war. Victory is supposed to be a crucial moment that characterizes the ethics of war. Particular testimonies and thematizations of victory in the Orthodox Christian tradition can provide an intro-duction into a potential ethics of war that could ensure a new relationship towards the enemy and killing the enemy.

The Ethics of War and War-Making: A Philosophical Interrogation of African Involvement in the World Wars and Their Exclusion From War Monuments and Memorials

Wars are cataclysmic events that inflict horrendous damage on people and society. In the case of the two World Wars whose magnitudes were global, and manners of prosecution total, this assertion pales in logic. The dangers that a future global war could pose for humanity given the tremendous leaps forward in the science and technology of warfare and weapons since the last World War are tremendous. This paper aims to use the examination of the ethics of war and warfare as backdrop on the analytical assessment of the implications of the exclusion of Africans from both the memorial and monuments that honor soldiers and their service in the two World Wars, even though their service and sundry contributions are salient and tremendous. The paper calls up the issue of racial identity in both Wars in puzzles: Do African soldiers in the Wars share a common humanity with their White counterparts? If they do, another puzzle is the following: Why then is their service still being commodified, to the extent of exclusion in memorials and monuments to soldiers that served and died in both Wars? The damning extrapolation from these puzzles is that there is still the belief albeit erroneous, in the establishment circles that regardless of the facts of history about the Wars, Africans are still viewed as lacking in contributions to the resolution of the threats that the World Wars represented to global peace. To reposition that under laying mind-set, the paper recommends the inclusion of African values of complementarity and inclusiveness in the quest for lasting global peace and the prevention of future Wars.

Restraining the fox: Minimalism in the ethics of war and peace

Peace plays a central role in the ethics of war and peace, but this proves to be an enormous challenge. In a recent article, Elisabeth Forster and Isaac Taylor grapple with this important topic. They argue that certain concepts in just war theory—aggression, legitimacy, and peace—are essentially contested and susceptible to manipulation. Because the rules are interpreted and applied by the very states that wage war, it is as if the fox is asked to guard the chicken coop—a recipe for disaster. To avoid manipulation of the theory and make the goal of peace attainable, they defend “minimalism” in the ethics of war and peace. This paper responds to and builds on their article. After nuancing the analysis, I will argue (a) that their minimalism does not solve the problem since the proposed alternative concept is equally prone to misuse, and (b) that their minimalism is mistargeted. What I propose is to specify and ground the rules of war without raising the standard too high, to disentangle jus ad bellum and jus post bellum and see peace as guiding principle for jus post bellum, and to interpret that in a minimalist way.

Conclusion

Rounding out Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict, the conclusion first highlights the signposts that lead the reader to understand how the ethics of war is inseparable from the ethics of military medicine. Military medicine must serve just war. Historically, just wars are defensive or humanitarian. But things may change. So next, we look to the future. Past wars do not necessarily predict coming conflicts. Future wars will see novel weapons and new adversaries drawing from nation-states, nonstates, criminals, and unknown assailants. Nevertheless, the experience of recent wars, particularly those in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers important lessons to guide military medicine as war evolves into ways we can anticipate and in ways we cannot.

The Problem of Perfidy and the Failure of Forms

This commentary on Arthur Ripstein’s Tanner Lectures takes up several principal concerns with Ripstein’s powerful argument. First, the author suggests that Ripstein understates the tension, verging on contradiction, of the ius ad bellum and the ius in bello, where the former (in modern thought) treats wars as a great evil to be avoided at nearly all costs, while the second treats war as a legitimate form of interpersonal conflict. Second, the author queries whether Ripstein’s focus in Lecture I on the wrong of perfidy causes him to place too much emphasis on the specific value of a negotiated peace, as opposed to further, intrinsic concerns with the breach of trust and lack of honor. And third, the author questions whether formal features of an aggressor’s intention can make any difference to the (im)permissibility of killing civilians. Last, the author strongly endorses Ripstein’s conception of the ethics of war as grounded in politics, not individual, interpersonal morality.

Asking the fox to guard the chicken coop: In defense of minimalism in the ethics of war and peace

Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles.

Reduced Legal Equality of Combatants in War

The focus on the moral rights of combatants in the ethics of war ignores a very important point: although morally unjust combatants cannot be considered moral equals to just combatants, especially with regard to the right to kill, there are sound moral reasons why the laws of war should accept a kind of equality between them, a concept referred to as “reduced legal equality.” Reduced legal equality is not about equal moral rights but about granting legal immunity to combatants for their conduct in accordance with the laws of war. This article shows that reduced legal equality of combatants is not only the morally best legal regulation in our nonideal international world but also the correct interpretation of international law.

Justice between Wars

One way to tell the story of contemporary ethics of war is as a gradual expansion of the period of time to which theorists attend in relation to war, from ad bellum and in bello to post bellum and ex bello. Ned Dobos, in his new book, Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, invites us to expand this attention further to the period between wars, which he calls jus ante bellum. In this essay, I explore two significant implications of this shift in normative focus. First, I argue that it opens up an important and productive field of the ethics of military policy-making outside of conflict, including procurement, training, force posture, and military diplomacy. Second, I argue that attending to the relationship between ante bellum and ad bellum considerations contains the seeds of a powerful pacifist argument.

Just war theory in Njegos’s works

Modern just war theory represents more of a tradition of thoughts on ethical issues of war than a theory per se. However, philosophical attitudes on war coming from authors from non-western cultures, including Serbian culture, are often left outside of this tradition. Author aims to demonstrate that there are clear ideas on ethical attributes of war and warring in Njegos?s work. By analyzing Njegos?s views expressed in his most significant works, through the prism of criteria of the classical elements of the modern just war theory (Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello), author demonstrates the existence of Serbian tradition of thought on ethics of war and warring. In this way, modern just war theory is supplemented and enriched with the Serbian historical perspective on justness of war and in war. Simultaneously, author highlights the challenges and perils of interpretation of philosophical ideas without considering the historical context, specific political-culturological circumstances and personality of the idea author. This is of a particular contemporary relevance, as misinterpretations of Njegos?s ideas on war and justice in war are often used to further fuel national antagonisms and destabilize the region.