The Ethics of War

1. The Ethics of War 2.forelesning

2. Approaches to war • Just war • Political realism • Pacifism • Contingent pacifism • Perpetual peace

3. Just War theory as an in-between? • Common assumption:Just war theory between pacifism and realism • Justifies/constrains • Separate normative from descriptive approaches!

4. Alternative categories • Militarism • Crusading • Defencism • Pacificism • Pacifism

5. 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?

6. 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

7. Realism Ad bellum : Raison d’ état In bello: Morality in war is impossible (cf. ought-implies-can principle)

8. 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”

9. 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

10. 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

11. Pacifism • Personal (=Stevenson: Individualistic) pacifism • Universal (=Stevenson: political or collectivistic) pacifism

12. 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.

13. Analysing Anscombe • The critique against Utopianism • The critique against non-violence philosophy • The critique against not distinguishing betw. innocent and non-innocent

14. Justifications for pacifism • Consequentialist pacifism • Deontological pacifism

15. 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!

16. Contingent pacifism • rarely, if ever, is it morally permissible to kill the innocent; • all wars involve killing, or the risk of killing, the innocent; • rarely, if ever, are wars morally justified

17. 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)

18. 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

19. 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

20. Definite articles of Perpetual peace • Every state should have a republican constitution • The right of nations should be based on a federation of free states • Cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality

21. Pacifism summarised Pacifism: - Individual - Political Individual pacifism: - Non-violence - Anti-war-ism Political pacifism: - Universal: perpetual peace/pacificism - particular: Appeasement

22. 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)

23. 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?