According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate the (...) rights of innocent people ("collateral damage"), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance. (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)

The article critically analyzes one of the central assumptions of Michael Walzer’s version of just war theory, as presented in his main work devoted to war ethics. As requested by the author of Just and Unjust Wars, the controversial nature of the principle of the moral equality of soldiers is revealed by discussing the actual course of events of a historical military conflict – namely, the outbreak of World War II, one of the main issues dealt with in Walzer’s book. (...) The exclusion of individual responsibility of people involved in a military operation which finds no moral justification seems to entail a number of consequences that put a heavy burden on Walzer’s overall model of military ethics. In order to ensure the necessary level of coherence of just war theory one may need to modify Walzer’s principle of the moral equality of soldiers – at least in relation to the participants of total war. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan has recently proposed what he calls a “combined liability-lesser-evil justification.” Its core idea is that the fact that someone has no right against the infliction of a certain lesser harm makes it easier for the necessity or lesser evil justification to justify inflicting a greater harm on him. This idea has been taken up by authors like Saba Bazargan or Helen Frowe. I will argue that McMahan’s basic idea is implausible to begin with, leads to counter-intuitive results, and (...) seems to stem from a confusion between discounting the rights of wrongdoers and “subtracting” one right from the other. I then argue that Bazargan’s conclusion that minimally responsible threats can sometimes be killed as well as certain other conclusions that Bazargan regards as a particular advantage of his “hybrid account” are single-handedly generated by one element of that account, namely by the lesser-evil discounting view. Thus, the hybrid view is redundant. Moreover, both the hybrid view and the lesser evil discounting view of killing MRTs have strongly counter-intuitive implications. Finally, I show that Frowe’s application of the combined justification to non-responsible threats is entirely arbitrary and therefore useless. “Combined liability-lesser-evil justifications” should be rejected. (shrink)

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in Michael (...) Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)

I shall argue that in some wars both sides are (as a collective) justified, that is, they can both satisfy valid jus ad bellum requirements. Moreover, in some wars – but not in all – the individual soldiers on the unjustified side (that is, on the side without jus ad bellum) may nevertheless kill soldiers (and also civilians as a side-effect) on the justified side, even if the enemy soldiers always abide by jus in bello constraints. Traditional just war theory (...) and self-proclaimed “revisionist” just war theory think otherwise since the former focuses on the law enforcement or public authority justification for inflicting harm and the latter on the self-defense justification. These are both intrinsically asymmetrical justifications: there is no justified self-defense (properly understood) against justified self-defense, nor is there justified law-enforcement against justified law-enforcement. However, there can, as I will show, be justified self-defense against force that is justified by a necessity justification, and there can be force justified by a necessity justification being used against force that is also justified by a necessity justification. The necessity justification is not intrinsically asymmetrical, and it is an indispensable justification in the context of war. Moreover, with regard to some forms of inflicting harm on others one may give special weight to one’s own interests and the interests of those to whom one has special responsibilities when assessing the proportionality of those acts. That is, the proportionality calculation may be agent-relative. This is in particular so in the case of foreseeably preventing innocent and non-threatening people from being saved (for instance, by shooting down a tactical bomber who would have saved them by destroying an ammunitions factory) but less so in the case of the intentional or foreseeable direct harming of innocent and non-threatening people (dropping bombs on people standing near an ammunitions factory). In the light of these considerations, I will then answer the question as to when soldiers may justifiably participate in war (and when not). (shrink)

Soldiers sign contracts to obey lawful orders; they also swear oaths to this end. The enlistment contract for the Armed Forces of the United States combines both elements: -/- '9a. My enlistment is more than an employment agreement. As a member of the Armed Forces of the United States, I will be: (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties … (4) Required upon order to serve in combat or other hazardous situations.' -/- We standardly think (...) that these oaths and contracts give soldiers new moral reasons to fight. Many also think that soldiers who are ordered to fight by legitimate states have moral reasons to obey those orders, just in virtue of their provenance. -/- We generate these reasons through our voluntary decisions—to sign the contract or swear the oath; to form the institutions and give the orders. They are therefore additional moral reasons, on top of the reasons that we have prior to those voluntary decisions. Simply because they are additional, these reasons seem limited in force and scope. In particular, they arguably cannot override pre-existing commitments. For example, if I already have a duty not to kill an innocent person, my promising to breach that duty seems irrelevant to whether doing so is permissible. Similarly for orders issued by legitimate states: the citizens of a legitimate state have pre-existing moral reasons not to kill the innocent; by what alchemy could their state's orders allow combatants to override those reasons? If additional reasons could make prohibited acts permissible, as Sidgwick observed, ‘we could evade any moral obligation by promising not to fulfil it, which is clearly absurd’ (Sidgwick 1981). -/- We might conclude that the contracts soldiers sign, the oaths they take and the orders they receive have weight only when they pertain to acts that soldiers are already allowed to do. Perhaps these additional reasons can require actions that would otherwise be merely permissible, but they cannot license otherwise prohibited actions. If this is right, then it radically limits the relevance of contracts, oaths and authority to the ethics of war, since almost all conflicts involve soldiers breaching some pre-existing moral duties. -/- This is obviously true for soldiers fighting on the unjust side in a war, since almost all the killing they do is unjust. But in all actual wars soldiers on the just side also kill at least some innocent victims, whether as part of an unjust subordinate aim, as ‘collateral damage’, or simply because their adversaries are not sufficiently responsible for unjustified threats to be liable to be killed. If additional reasons cannot make otherwise prohibited acts permissible, then they are practically irrelevant to the ethics of killing in war, at least in this sense: if fighting is impermissible without regard to the contract, oath and authority of their state, then fighting is simply impermissible. -/- This is a tempting conclusion. In this paper, however, I argue that even if it is true at the level of objective permissibility, it is false for subjective permissibility. And since subjective permissibility is where (at least some of) the action is in the ethics of war, this is a significant result. I explain first why additional reasons can make otherwise subjectively prohibited acts permissible, then why just war theorists should care more than they seem to about subjective permissibility. Although I focus throughout on the ethics of war, my arguments generalise to all kinds of additional reasons. (shrink)

Those of us who are not pacifists face an obvious challenge. Common-sense morality contains a stringent constraint on intentional killing, yet war involves homicide on a grand scale. If wars are to be morally justified, it needs be shown how this conflict can be reconciled. A major fault line running throughout the contemporary just war literature divides two approaches to attempting this reconciliation. On a ‘reductivist’ view, defended most prominently by Jeff McMahan, the conflict is largely illusory, since such killing (...) can be justified by aggregating individuals’ ordinary permissions to use force in self- and other-defence. In opposition, a rival ‘nonreductivist’ approach holds that these considerations are insufficient for the task. One prominent version of non-reductivism grounds the permission to kill in combatants’ membership in certain kinds of group or association. The key claim is that participation in certain morally important relationships can provide an independent source of permission for killing in war. This paper argues that non-reductivism should be rejected. It does so by pushing a dilemma onto non-reductivists: if they are successful in showing that the relevant relationships can generate permissions to kill in war, they must also jettison the most intuitive restrictions on conduct in war—the constraint on intentionally killing morally innocent non-combatants most saliently. Since this conclusion is unacceptable, non-reductivism should be rejected. (shrink)

New biotechnologies have the potential to both dramatically improve human well-being and dramatically widen inequalities in well-being. This paper addresses a question that lies squarely on the fault line of these two claims: When as a matter of justice are societies obligated to include a new biotechnology in a national healthcare system? This question is approached from the standpoint of a twin aim theory of justice, in which social structures, including nation-states, have double-barreled theoretical objectives with regard to human well-being. (...) The first aim is to achieve a sufficient level of well-being in each of six core dimensions. In the special case of healthcare systems, this aim is focally but not exclusively attentive to achieving health sufficiency as one of the core dimensions. The second aim is to combat the emergence and persistence of densely woven patterns of systematic disadvantage that tend to undermine the achievement of a sufficient level of health and the other core elements of well-being of some persons and groups. Judgments about entitlements to health related resources, including new biotechnologies, are made in light of a threshold notion of health sufficiency. What is enough or sufficient health? The answer that is defended here is that sufficient health is enough health for a decent human life, understood as enough health to live a full life course without preventable, significant functional disability or decrement in health, or treatable pain or suffering. When a state must include a new biotechnology in its national healthcare system is also influenced by ancillary concerns about the connection between health and other core dimensions of well-being. What counts as a significant functional impairment or health decrement is thus explicated, in part, in relation to the theory’s sufficiency aim for the other essential dimensions of well-being, and thus for a decent life, overall. Those elements of health that play a critical role in the experience of sufficient reasoning, affiliation, security, respect and self determination are especially important; any loss of health function or capacity that threatens the individual’s prospects for sufficiency in these other dimensions, including the relational egalitiarian concerns they entail, constitutes a significant functional impairment. Within national borders, individuals are thus entitled to those health-related goods and services that are essential for a sufficiency of each of the dimensions of well-being; with regard to self determination and respect, what is sufficient by way of guaranteed access to specific goods and services is going to depend on the implications of such access for where an individual stands in relation to her co-nationals. The content of any entitlement to health-related goods and services is also necessarily dynamic. What can be done for health and the other core dimensions of well-being as a function of technological innovation and diffusion is in constant flux. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this analysis for the conditions under which states are obligated to include access in their healthcare systems to one biotechnology, deep brain stimulation. (shrink)

Even among those who find lethal defense against non-responsible threats, innocent aggressors, or justified aggressors justified even in one to one cases, there is a debate as to what the best explanation of this permissibility is. The contenders in this debate are the liability account, which holds that the non-responsible or justified human targets of the defensive measures are liable to attack, and the justified infringement account, which claims that the targets retain their right not to be attacked but may (...) be attacked anyway, even in one to one situations. Given that we normally think that rights are trumps, this latter claim is counter-intuitive and rather surprising, and therefore in need of justification and explanation. So far only Jonathan Quong has actually tried to provide an explanation; however, I will argue that his explanation fails and that Quong’s own account of liability is misguided. I then address Helen Frowe’s critique of the liability account. She makes the important concession that the tactical bomber has to compensate his victims, but she tries to block the conclusion that he must therefore be liable. I will demonstrate that her attempt to explain away liability fails once that concession is made. (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...) justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

Traditional just war doctrine holds that political leaders are morally responsible for the decision to initiate war, while individual soldiers should be judged solely by their conduct in war. According to this view, soldiers fighting in an unjust war of aggression and soldiers on the opposing side seeking to defend their country are morally equal as long as each obeys the rules of combat. Revisionist scholars, however, maintain that soldiers who fight for an unjust cause bear at least some responsibility (...) for advancing an immoral end, even if they otherwise fight ethically. This article examines the attitudes of the American public regarding the moral equality of combatants. Utilizing an original survey experiment, we find that the public's moral reasoning is generally more consistent with that of the revisionists than with traditional just war theory. Americans in our study judged soldiers who participate in unjust wars as less ethical than soldiers in just wars, even when their battlefield conduct is identical, and a large proportion supported harsh punishments for soldiers simply for participating in unjust wars. We also find, however, that much of the American public is willing to extend the moral license of just cause significantly further than revisionist scholars advocate: half of the Americans in our survey were willing to allow an unambiguous war crime—a massacre of innocent women and children—to go unpunished when the act was committed by soldiers fighting for a just cause. Our findings suggest that incorporation of revisionist principles into the laws of war would reinforce dangerous moral intuitions encouraging the killing of civilians. (shrink)

War has changed so much that it barely resembles the paradigmatic cases of armed conflict that just war theories and international humanitarian law seemed to have had in mind even a few decades ago. The changing character of war includes not only the use of new technology such as drones, but probably more problematically the changing temporal and spatial scope of war and the changing character of actors in war. These changes give rise to worries about what counts as war (...) and thus what norms to use in evaluating a particular conflict. In this paper, I develop an argument that the changing character of war gives us reasons to take reductionist revisions of just war theory seriously. By reductionist theories of war I mean those revisions within the just war tradition that suggest that we can use ordinary peacetime interpersonal analyses of moral responsibility and liability to harm to decide what justice requires in times of war. (shrink)

This thesis will utilise the literature on the distinction between doing harm and allowing harm to develop a novel system of moral sequencing that can be applied to general moral problems to decide if, when, and how an agent should intervene to prevent harm from occurring to another agent. Off the back of this discussion, this thesis will offer a way of determining the responsibility of certain agents for their actions within a moral sequence. These motivations will be at the (...) centre of the discussions in this thesis and will be accomplished by ultimately updating the system of moral sequencing so that it makes sense of practical cases of inner-agent change, which itself provides a justification for intervening earlier, and potentially diminishing the responsibility for agents who have experienced an inner-agent change, in a moral sequence. (shrink)

Medical rules of eligibility permit severely injured Iraqi and Afghan nationals to receive care in Coalition medical facilities only if bed space is available and their injuries result directly from Coalition fire. The first rule favors Coalition soldiers over host-nation nationals and contradicts the principle of impartial, needs-based medical care. To justify preferential care for compatriots, wartime medicine invokes associative obligations of care that favor friends, family, and comrades-in-arms. Associative obligations have little place in peacetime medical care but significantly affect (...) wartime medicine. The second rule suggests liability for collateral harm that is unsupported by international law and military ethics. Absent liability, there are pragmatic reasons to offer medical care to injured local civilians if it quells resentment and cements support for Coalition forces. In contrast to peacetime medicine, military necessity and associative obligations outweigh distributive principles based on medical need during war. (shrink)

Las aeronaves remotamente tripuladas han tenido una incidencia creciente en los conflictos armados contemporáneos, y es esperable que ésta no haga sino aumentar en el futuro cercano. A menudo han sido presentados como “revolucionarios” y tanto resistidos como defendidos a ultranza en la literatura especializada. Este artículo procura analizar cómo los drones nos obligan a repensar el marco normativo en virtud del cual consideramos el uso de la fuerza permisible. En particular, examina cómo algunos de sus principales rasgos inciden no (...) solamente en la aplicación de los principios de necesidad y proporcionalidad, sino también en su precisión conceptual, y argumenta que las probabilidades de éxito forman parte sustancial de una concepción plausible del principio de proporcionalidad. El artículo cierra considerando el argumento de Walzer según el cual, dado que el daño causado es finalmente responsabilidad de quienes usan a civiles inocentes como escudos humanos, y no de quienes operan los drones, el hecho de que puedan causar una cantidad desproporcionada de daño es irrelevante a la hora de evaluar su permisibilidad. (shrink)

Uwe Steinhoff’s The Ethics of War and the Force of Law contains an extended critique of ‘moral fundamentalism’, or the project of uncovering an individualist ‘deep morality’ of war governed by the same moral principles and rules that govern ordinary moral life, as well as a more positive account of war that depicts it as a social practice. Much of Steinhoff’s account is indebted to a series of claims involving the standing to blame, reciprocity, and the necessity and proportionality conditions (...) on self-defence. On all these claims, Steinhoff is open to challenge. First, he is arguably over-dependent on ‘standing to blame’ considerations. Second, his commitment to reciprocity is under-explained. Third, the necessity condition does not clearly explain how conventional elements explain the formation of defensive standards. Fourth, there are problems in explaining how the distinct defensive conventions adopted by distinct communities can actually be made to get on to the same page when these communities go to war with each other. (shrink)