The question of the morality of war is something of an embarrassment to liberal political thinkers. A philosophical tradition which aspires to found its preferred institutions in respect for individual autonomy, contract, and voluntary association, is naturally confronted by a phenomenon that is almost exclusively explained and justified in the language of States, force and territory. But the apparent difficulties involved in providing a convincing account of nature and ethics of war in terms of relations between individuals has not prevented (...) liberal theorists from attempting this task. This paper examines a recent attempt by Igor Primoratz to sketch out the implications of a consistent liberalism for just war doctrine and, in particular, as regards the question of who may be a legitimate target of attack in wartime. Primoratz’s paper itself is a critique of Michael Waltzer’s authoritative exposition of just war theory for failing to be sufficiently and consistently liberal. The debate between these two authors is a productive site for investigating the potential and limitations of liberal theories of just war. (shrink)

Since its earliest incarnations, just war theory has included the requirement that war must be initiated and waged by a legitimate authority. However, while recent years have witnessed a remarkable resurgence in interest in just war theory, the authority criterion is largely absent from contemporary discussions. In this paper I aim to show that this is an oversight worth rectifying, by arguing that the authority criterion plays a much more important role within just war theorising than is commonly supposed. As (...) standardly understood, the authority criterion provides a necessary condition for the justification of the resort to war, but has no bearing on the question of permissible conduct in war. In opposition, I argue for an alternative interpretation of the criterion, which attributes to it a fundamental role in assessing this latter question. With this revised interpretation in place, I then demonstrate its advantages by applying it to the practical issue of armed conflicts that are initiated and fought by non-traditional belligerents. While several theorists have recognised that this common feature of modern armed conflict poses a challenge to mainstream just war theory in general—and to the authority criterion in particular—I argue that existing discussions frequently misconstrue the nature of the challenge, since they assume the standard interpretation of the authority requirement and its role within the theory. I then show that the revised interpretation provides a clearer account of both the challenge posed by non-traditional belligerency and the kind of response that it requires. (shrink)

David Rodin denies that defensive wars against unjust aggression can be justified if the unjust aggression limits itself, for example, to the annexation of territory, the robbery of resources or the restriction of political freedom, but would endanger the lives, bodily integrity or freedom from slavery of the citizens only if the unjustly attacked state actually resisted the aggression. I will argue that Rodin's position is not correct. First, Rodin's comments on the necessity condition and its relation to an alleged (...) "duty to retreat" misinterpret the law, and a correct interpretation of the law is not only compatible with, but implies a permission to resist the "bloodless invader," and this is also the correct view from the perspective of morality. Second, Rodin's remarks on the proportionality of self-defense against conditional threats focus on physical or material harm but implausibly ignore the severity of the violations of autonomy and of the socio-legal or moral order that such conditional threats involve. Third, I will address Rodin's claim that defensive wars against "political aggression" are disproportionate because they risk the lives of those defended in an attempt to secure lesser interests. I will argue that this take on proportionality misses the point in an important respect, namely by confusing wide and narrow proportionality, and makes unwarranted assumptions about the alleged irrationality or impermissibility of incurring or imposing lethal risks to safeguard less vital interests. Next, I will also show that while Rodin talks of a "myth of national self-defense" and of the necessity of moving beyond traditional just war theory and international law, it is actually his interpretation of just war theory and international law that weaves myths. Finally, I will argue that Rodin's views on national self-defense on the one hand, and "war as law enforcement" on the other, are incoherent. (shrink)

In 1925, Russian philosopher Ivan Il'in published a book entitled On Resistance to Evil by Force . The book generated a bitter polemic among @migré Russian thinkers, which constitutes probably the most thorough debate on the justification of the use of force ever conducted among Russian scholars. This paper analyses Il'in's work and places it into the context of Russian history and philosophy. Il'in argued that war was sometimes necessary, but never 'just'. On occasions, the only way of fulfilling one's (...) obligation to resist evil is to fight. At such times one must do so. But one must understand that what one is doing, though necessary, is unjust, because one is always at least partially responsible for the situation which made violence necessary. While not shirking one's responsibilities, it is only by facing up to the guilt of one's deeds that one can prevent war from undermining one's moral equilibrium. This paper shows that most of those who took part in the debate provoked by Il'in's book agreed with the fundamentals of his argument. This fact illustrates that there is a distinctive Russian philosophy regarding the use of force which in important aspects differs from Western just war theory. (shrink)

Many just war theorists (call them traditionalists) claim that just as people have a right to personal self-defense, so nations have a right to national-defense against an aggressive military invasion. David Rodin claims that the traditionalist is unable to justify most defensive wars against aggression. For most aggressive states only commit conditional aggression in that they threaten to kill or maim the citizens of the nation they are invading only if those citizens resist the occupation. Most wars, then, claimed to (...) be justified by the traditionalist fail to meet the proportionality criterion. Thus, a just war, for Rodin, is best conceived of as a punitive war of law enforcement, not as a war of national-defense. I argue that Rodin does not have a case against the traditionalist. If national-defense is a disproportionate response to conditional aggression, then punitive war is a disproportionate response as well. Furthermore, the belief that punitive war is a proportionate response to conditional aggression underscores the traditionalist’s view that self-determination, cultural identity and the like are of sufficient value to defend by means of lethal force. I end the paper by very briefly sketching an account, different from that of Rodin’s, of how individual nations can be justified in waging wars of law enforcement. (shrink)

War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities. Thus, fisticuffs between individual persons do not count as a war, nor does a gang fight, nor does a feud on the order of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. War is a phenomenon which occurs only between political communities, defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states (in order to allow for civil war). Classical war is international war, a war (...) between different states, like the two World Wars. But just as frequent is war within a state between rival groups or communities, like the American Civil War. Certain political pressure groups, like terrorist organizations, might also be considered “political communities,” in that they are associations of people with a political purpose and, indeed, many of them aspire to statehood or to influence the development of statehood in certain lands. (shrink)

This paper challenges one line of argument which has been advanced to justify imposing risks of collateral harm on prospective beneficiaries of armed humanitarian interventions. This argument - the ‘Beneficiary Principle’ - holds that non-liable individuals’ immunity to being harmed as a side effect of just armed humanitarian interventions may be diminished by their prospects of benefiting from the intervention. Against this, I defend the view that beneficiary status does not morally distinguish beneficiaries from other non-liable individuals in such a (...) way as to permit exposing them to greater risks of being harmed. The argument proceeds in four steps. I first show that the BP can neither be grounded in liability-based nor in lesser-evil justifications for harming. I then argue that a standalone justification for unintended harming based on beneficiary status would face at least two critical challenges. The first concerns the BP’s applicability to collectives; the second questions the normative weight we can plausibly ascribe to beneficiary status when beneficiaries are such by virtue of being victims of wrongful threats of harm. I argue that standing to benefit is morally irrelevant when the benefit consists in the mitigation or prevention of wrongful harms, and consequently suggest that the BP may only serve as a distributive principle in allocating risks of harm if it is disambiguated in a number of critical aspects and applied in a more narrowlydefined set of circumstances. (shrink)

In Chapter 7, “Dignity, Self-Respect, and Bloodless Invasions”, Saba Bazargan-Forward asks How much violence can we impose on those attempting to politically subjugate us? According to Bazargan-Forward, “reductive individualism” answers this question by determining how much violence one can impose on an individual wrongly attempting to prevent one from political participation. Some have argued that the amount of violence one can permissibly impose in such situations is decidedly sub-lethal. Accordingly, this counterintuitive response has cast doubt on the reductive individualist project. (...) Bazargan-Forward argues, however, that political subjugation involves an institutionally embodied form of disrespect that has been altogether missed. A proper appreciation of this sort of disrespect, he contends, morally permits much greater defensive violence against those attempting to politically subjugate us or others. (shrink)

A drone industry has emerged in the US, initially funded almost exclusively for military applications. There are now also other uses both governmental and commercial. Many military drones are still being made, however, especially for surveillance and targeted killings. Regarding the latter, this essay calls into question their legality and morality. It recognizes that the issues are complex and controversial, but less so as to the killing of non-combatant civilians. The government using drones for targeted killings maintains secrecy and appeals (...) to non-traditional justifications. Most scholars who assess these killer drone practices support citizen immunity, either by favoring a modified just war theory that prioritizes civilians’ right to life or by challenging official deviations from applicable laws. They accordingly declare such killing immoral if not a war crime. The manufacturers of these killer drones are not themselves the killers, but they are abetters, i.e., sine qua non facilitators. So, I argue that any company concerned about its corporate social responsibility should cease manufacturing them. (shrink)

Recent debates in just war theory have been concerned with the status of combatants during war. Unfortunately, however, the debate has, up to now, focused on self-defensive wars. The present article changes the focus slightly by exploring the status of combatants during military humanitarian intervention (MHI). It begins by arguing that MHI poses a number of challenges to our thinking about the status of combatants. To solve these it draws on Jeff McMahan's theory of combatant liability. On this basis, the (...) article contends that, first, combatants engaged in atrocities lack the same set of rights and liberties held by intervening combatants. Second, and more controversially, drawing on McMahan's theory as well as the notion of complicity, it suggests that the same applies to those combatants who do not perpetrate atrocities but are merely ordered to defend the target state against the intervening state. (shrink)

This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently (...) of each other. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the use of military robots in terms of the jus in bello concepts of discrimination and proportionality. It argues that while robots may make mistakes, they do not suffer from most of the impairments that interfere with human judgment on the battlefield. Although robots are imperfect weapons, they can exercise as much restraint as human soldiers, if not more. Robots can be used in a way that is consistent with just war theory when they are programmed to (...) avoid using force against all but the most clearly hostile targets. However, the essay also cautions against using robots for counterinsurgency because they may alienate people in the contested area and lead to an escalation of hostilities. (shrink)

The issue of human nature is very complex and elusive, and mankind has been trying to unveil its elements since the beginnings of any philosophical reasoning. Whether they were questions of ontology, gnoseology, or ethics, it has been an uneasy task to uncover the complexity of the term. This article concentrates on finding ideas that support the existence of human nature and consequently searches for its possible ethical implications. I focused on the traditional issues of good vs evil, especially in (...) terms of dichotomy between committing violent acts and waging wars in contradiction to creation of conditions for peaceful and just societies. In the article, I compare various ideas on human nature and analyse their potential in unveiling its ethical implications. I also comment on the possibility of war and peace being consequences of human nature and its connection to our disposition of being moral subjects. (shrink)

Oppressive governments that use violence against citizens, e.g. murder and torture, are usually thought of as liable to armed revolutionary attack by the oppressed population. But oppression may be non-violent. A government may greatly restrict political rights and personal autonomy by using surveillance, propaganda, manipulation, strategic detention and similar techniques without ever resorting to overt violence. Can such regimes be liable to revolutionary attack? A widespread view is that the answer is ‘no’. On this view, unless a government is or (...) is likely to turn violent, revolution against it is disproportional. After all, revolution would involve launching potentially lethal attacks against oppressors who do not threaten the lives and bodily integrity of their subjects but pose only lesser threats. I argue that this claim of disproportionality is false. Armed revolution against Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes can be proportional under some circumstances, thus they may be liable to revolutionary attack. My argument relies on the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality. This account holds that responsibility for posing threats renders agents liable to greater defensive harms than the harms with which they threaten. Even if non-violent oppressive regimes do not threaten citizens with murder, serious physical injury, or enslavement, their responsibility for creating an environment in which citizens’ political rights and personal autonomy are extremely restricted may loosen the proportionality requirement of inflicting defensive harm and render them liable to revolutionary attack. (shrink)

In his book, A Theory of Truces, Nir Eisikovits offers a perceptive and timely ethics of truces based on the claim that we need to reject the ‘false dichotomy between the ideas of war and peace’ underpinning much current thought about conflict and conflict resolution. In this article, I concur that truces and ‘truce thinking’ should be a focus of concern for any political theory wishing to address the realities of war. However, Eisikovits’s account, to be convincing, requires engagement with (...) a tradition of thought figuring only marginally in his reflections on truces, that is, just war theory. I argue this for three reasons. Without incorporation of the just war principles that should inform the decisions to enter conflict, to maintain conflict, and to cease conflict, any theory of truces will be, first, normatively inadequate, failing to provide us with requisite direction, and, second, open to the charge of permitting intolerable injustices, a charge Eisikovits wishes to avoid. Third, engagement with just war theory is important for arriving at a nuanced understanding of peacemaking, one which grants truces their place in our deliberations and spurns simplistic ‘war versus peace’ binaries whilst keeping more ambitious ideals of peace firmly in sight. (shrink)

John Locke says that a victim is permitted to kill a Conditional Threat in self-defense. Yet, David Rodin argues that killing is disproportionate to the harm averted and is therefore impermissible. But Rodin mischaracterizes the situation faced by a Conditional Threat victim as analyzed by Locke. In this article, I aim to provide a more satisfactory reading of Locke on self-defense against Conditional Threats, particularly of the thesis that killing involves a proportionate response to the harm averted. In addition to (...) this, I also aim to further elaborate and defend Locke's view. First, I show that a Conditional Threat deprives his victim of her freedom to act as she thinks fit, without having to depend on the Conditional Threat's arbitrary will. Second, I argue that an interest in not being deprived of one's freedom to act as one thinks fit, without having to depend on another person's arbitrary will, by a conditional threat of deadly harm, is of sufficient value to make killing a proportionate act, especially if the person is highly morally culpable. If killing also meets the necessity condition of justified self-defense (admittedly, a big “if”), it follows that Locke, not Rodin, holds the correct view. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that cosmopolitanism prohibits war and requires a global approach to criminal justice. My argument proceeds by drawing out some implications of the core cosmopolitan intuition that every human being has a moral status which constrains how they may be treated. In the first part of this paper, I describe cosmopolitanism. In the second part, Cosmopolitanism and War, I analyse violence, consider the standards cosmopolitanism sets for its justification, and argue that war fails to meet them. (...) In the third part, Cosmopolitanism and Criminal Justice, I argue that cosmopolitanism implies a moral obligation to deal justly with human wrongdoing wherever it occurs. Cosmopolitan pacifism follows: war is prohibited, and a consistent global criminal justice system is required. In the fourth part, Why No Cosmopolitan Pacifists?, I consider why cosmopolitans tend not to identify as pacifists, and in the final part, Objections, I discuss some objections. (shrink)

One of the biggest challenges facing modern societies is how to monitor one’s intelligence community while maintaining the necessary level of secrecy. Indeed, while some secrecy is needed for mission success, too much has allowed significant abuse. Moreover, extending this secrecy to democratic oversight actors only creates another layer of unobserved actors and removes the public scrutiny that keeps their power and decision-making in check. This article will therefore argue for a new type of oversight through a specialised ethical whistleblowing (...) framework. This includes, first, outlining what intelligence wrongdoings justify whistleblowing; second, whether whistleblowing is the correct remedy – something not necessarily clear with intelligence; and finally, what form the whistleblowing should take. This framework will examine the Snowden case to determine whether he was correct leaking intelligence data and whether the means were appropriate, and second, whether those involved in the Central Intelligence... (shrink)

In recent years the power and reach of prominent hacker groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec has been clearly demonstrated. However, in a world where hackers are able to wield significant online power, can they do so ethically as legitimate agents? To answer this question this paper will develop an ethical framework based on the premise that hackers have exhibited instances where they have acted to protect people from harm at a time when there was no one else to do (...) so. At its core this paper will argue that political hacking can be justified when it is done to protect the vital interests of oneself or others. Moreover, it will also argue that just because hackers are outside the state does not automatically discount them as ethical actors and that when the state fails to protect people – whether it is due to a lack of ability, political will or because the state is the source of the threat – hackers can fill the void. In order to achieve this, first it is necessary to highlight the space for hackers to operate; second, guide hacker activity by creating an ethical framework detailing what actions are justified towards what end; third, to offer mechanisms that can aid in reaching these ethically justified decisions; and as a result, inform further ethical debates on how to react to these political hackers. This means that the framework can be used to both justify and condemn hacking depending on the circumstances, allowing those on the outside to distil and evaluate a political hack, both past and present, while guiding hacker collectives by providing clearer ethical tools for determining the appropriate agendas and methods. (shrink)

Most contemporary advocates of the Just War Tradition (JWT) condemn religious war. If they are correct, waging war should be a secular affair, fully justifiable on non-religious grounds. This secularized understanding of the JWT draws on normative commitments that lead many political theorists to advocate in favor of a secularized politics in western liberal polities. As a matter of historical fact and contemporary commitment, many Muslims have rejected the secularized conception of the morality of war found in contemporary conceptions of (...) the JWT. I argue that, given appropriate distinctions between relevantly different kinds of religious war, advocates of the JWT have excellent reason to rethink their antipathy to religious war. Specifically, I argue that distinct kinds of religious war can enjoy differential normative standing and that there is no compelling reason to believe that religiously justified wars must be waged in a morally improper manner, viz., in a way that violates the JWT's in bello requirements. (shrink)