The Ethics of War

2.forelesning

Approaches to war

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
-

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 tat
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

Anscombes 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 1960s. 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:
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)
- 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?