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’ 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: - 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?