The Ethics of War
2.forelesning
Approaches to war
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Just war
Political realism
Pacifism
Contingent pacifism
Perpetual peace
Just War theory as an in-between?
• Common assumption:Just war theory
between pacifism and realism
• Justifies/constrains
• Separate normative from descriptive
approaches!
Alternative categories
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Militarism
Crusading
Defencism
Pacificism
Pacifism
Just War in political theory
• A form of idealism: state leaders make
(moral) choices
• A form of realism: unlikely (and
undesirable?) that war can be abandoned
• Presumption against war or presumption
against unjust war?
• Just war as crusading or defencism?
Just war: crusading or defencism?
• Anscombe: defencism is false. Question is
who is right! (p 52)
• Turner Johnson on Just War and
defencism:
(Just cause)
- the duty to protect and assist.
- the problem of defining aggression
(Israel 1967)
- Simultanous ostensible justice
Realism
Ad bellum: Raison d’ état
In bello: Morality in war is impossible (cf.
ought-implies-can principle)
Realism (in bello)
• ”War is an act of force which theoretically
can have no limits” (Clausewitz)
• ”Inter arma silent leges” (the laws are
silent in war.)
• ”All is fair in love and war”
Realism (ad bellum)
1) Descriptive realism
• Power politics and national self-interest
• Assumptions about human nature
• The state of nature between states
(Hobbes)
2) Prescriptive realism
Walzer on the moral reality of war
• In bello: Strategic talk is meaningful and
normative (ought-) talk!
• Ad bellum: War is about making choices
and justifying them
Pacifism
• Personal (=Stevenson: Individualistic)
pacifism
• Universal (=Stevenson: political or
collectivistic) pacifism
Anscombe on pacifism
- P. is Utopian: warning against high
principles!
- P. misconstrues the use of coercive power
to be a bad thing (i.e., there can be no
society without coercive power)
- P. makes no distinction between shedding
innocent blood and shedding any human
blood.
Analysing Anscombe
• The critique against Utopianism
• The critique against non-violence
philosophy
• The critique against not distinguishing
betw. innocent and non-innocent
Justifications for pacifism
• Consequentialist pacifism
• Deontological pacifism
Anscombe’s reply
• We have a right to kill those engaged in an
objectively wrongful proceeding
• To be innocent is to not be engaged in
harming
• Discriminate between leg and illeg targets
• Only wrong to kill the innocent!
Contingent pacifism
1) rarely, if ever, is it morally permissible to
kill the innocent;
2) all wars involve killing, or the risk of killing,
the innocent;
3) rarely, if ever, are wars morally justified
The Doctrine of Double Effect
• The act is good in itself or at least indifferent (legitimate
act of war)
• The direct effect is morally acceptable (e.g., destruction
of military supplies or killing of enemy soldiers)
• The intention of the actor is good, that is, he aims only at
the acceptable effect; the evil effect is not one of his
ends or a means to his ends
• The good effect is sufficiently good to compensate for
allowing the evil effect (proportionality)
• (the agent seeks to minimise the evil effect, accepting
cost to himself) (Wars, 153-155)
Democratic Peace Theory
• Democratic peace theory: Democracies do not
go to war against each other.
• Opposed to realism as dominant theory of
international relations
• Empirically supported from the 1960’s. So far
verified?
• Institutional constraints; citizens do not consent
to war unless attacked..
• Promising, but several methodological difficulties
Preliminary articles of perpetual
peace
• No conclusion of peace shall be valid if such was made
with a secret reservation of the material future of a war
• No independently existing state (..)may be aquired by
another state
• Standing armies will gradually be abolished altogether
• No mational debt shall be contracted in conncetion with
the internal affairs of a state
• No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and
government of another state
• No state at war with another should permit such act of
hostility as would make mutual confidence impossible
during a future time of peace
Definite articles of Perpetual peace
1) Every state should have a republican
constitution
2) The right of nations should be based on a
federation of free states
3) Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions
of universal hospitality
Pacifism summarised
Pacifism:
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Individual
Political
Individual pacifism:
Non-violence
Anti-war-ism
Political pacifism:
Universal: perpetual peace/pacificism
particular: Appeasement
Cont.
Justifications for pacifism:
- Consequentialist
- deontological
Deontological pacifism:
- Radical: Killing human beings is always
wrong (war = killing => intrinsically wrong)
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Contingent: Killing innocent human beings is
always wrong (war = (almost) always killing
innocents => war is (almost) always wrong)
Just war reply
• Intentional killing of the innocent is always
wrong!
• Only soldiers can be intentionally killed in
war, and soldiers are not innocent.
• Innocence is a term of art which means
that one is not harming
• But does it work?