Just War Theory

C

Cypress

Well-known member
The ethics of warfare in the modern Western tradition: pacifism,
realism,
and just war theory.

Realism is the view that the rightful sources of state action are its interests and its recognition of its own power and the limits thereof. The best we can hope for is a relatively peaceful balance of power among states. But the use of civic morality in making international and military policy is wrong-headed, silly, and dangerous.

Pacifists fall into three camps: Christian pacifists, such as Tolstoy; nonviolent resisters, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.; and just war pacifists, who hold that although some violent actions might be just in principle, today’s technological warfare is so deadly that war can never be justified by just war theory.

Just war theory has a series of rules for jus ad bellum (“justice in going to war”) and jus in bello (“justice in waging war”). Remarkably, just war theory—a philosophical theory—became official international policy in the 20thcentury. A just war can only include legitimate self-defence or humanitarian intervention in extremely limited and specific cases. Intervention becomes permissible—indeed, obligatory—with “massive” violations of rights, ethnic cleansing, or systematic massacre.



Source credit: Lawrence Cahoon, professor of political philosophy
 
Celticguy said:
ok... now what ?
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This message board has a long and lurid history of posters relentlessly defending the Iraq invasion, beating the war drums against Iran, and demanding that we continue a military commitment in Afghanistan.

To me the question is whether these posters consider any legitimate moral basis and ethical framework for the wars they desire. Or if war to them is strictly an amoral, political calculation.
 
'International Order'.
If the World is now a 'Village', something has to maintain Order and International Law. What is acceptable to the average person here in the 21st century.

Is the use of Chemical Weapons (banned since WW1) allowed to be used anywhere on the Planet?
 
Cypress said:
This message board has a long and lurid history of posters relentlessly defending the Iraq invasion, beating the war drums against Iran, and demanding that we continue a military commitment in Afghanistan.

To me the question is whether these posters consider any legitimate moral basis and ethical framework for the wars they desire. Or if war to them is strictly an amoral, political calculation.
Click to expand...

OK thx.

Its simpler from my perspective.
Iraq, well they invaded Kuwait in an effort to annex them. Seems justifiable by your standards.
Iran, they are funding terrorism and trying like mad to make nuclear weapons, thats unacceptable.
Afghanistan, better to duke it out in their back yard than ours. They started it, we finish it only we do it there.
 
Celticguy said:
OK thx.

Its simpler from my perspective.
Iraq, well they invaded Kuwait in an effort to annex them. Seems justifiable by your standards.
Iran, they are funding terrorism and trying like mad to make nuclear weapons, thats unacceptable.
Afghanistan, better to duke it out in their back yard than ours. They started it, we finish it only we do it there.
Click to expand...

It seems to me the only Just Wars the United States has been involved in since the early 20th century are WW2, the Bosnian NATO air campaign, and possibly the 1991 Gulf War.

Afghanistan may have been a just War in 2001, but it stopped being a just war years ago.
 
Jack said:
'International Order'.
If the World is now a 'Village', something has to maintain Order and International Law. What is acceptable to the average person here in the 21st century.

Is the use of Chemical Weapons (banned since WW1) allowed to be used anywhere on the Planet?
Click to expand...

Chem weapons I think were outlawed by convention after WW1.

Most of the corpus of UN international security agreements since WW2, is based on Just War Theory
 
Cypress said:
It seems to me the only Just Wars the United States has been involved in since the early 20th century are WW2, the Bosnian NATO air campaign, and possibly the 1991 Gulf War.

Afghanistan may have been a just War in 2001, but it stopped being a just war years ago.
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Afghanistan is a weird duck as its in reality not a country at all in the minds of its ruling class.
They never became a society as the rest of the world mostly did.
You could argue a sort of humanitarian-like justification for all the people who are not on-board with a collection of war lords and fiefdoms and would like to join the 21st century.
But clearly it does not have a shape that fits any hole in the board.
 
Celticguy said:
Afghanistan is a weird duck as its in reality not a country at all in the minds of its ruling class.
They never became a society as the rest of the world mostly did.
You could argue a sort of humanitarian-like justification for all the people who are not on-board with a collection of war lords and fiefdoms and would like to join the 21st century.
But clearly it does not have a shape that fits any hole in the board.
Click to expand...

I feel like just war theory requires that humanitarian intervention is only justified in the most extreme cases - things that would utterly shock the moral consciousness of the world, aka genocide, unrelentingly and unrestrained ethnic cleansing.

The fact that the Taliban are bad people does not rise to that level.

In hindsight, we probably should have just tried to kill Bin Laden by covert ops, not by invading and occupying Afghanistan
 
Cypress said:
I feel like just war theory requires that humanitarian intervention is only justified in the most extreme cases - things that would utterly shock the moral consciousness of the world, aka genocide, unrelentingly and unrestrained ethnic cleansing.

The fact that the Taliban are bad people does not rise to that level.

In hindsight, we probably should have just tried to kill Bin Laden by covert ops, not by invading and occupying Afghanistan
Click to expand...

Sadly, whacking Saddam was illegal at the time but would certainly have been far more efficient.

No real argument on the just part which is why I italicized the "could". But Afghanistan is a very unusual place and does not make for clear and clean actions. And its not just the Taliban, the warlords can flip from support to resistance on them in the blink of an eye. All they want is to sell their heroin and for everyone else to get out of their business. Actually a lot like Mexico and Columbia.
 
Although 19th Century, Clausewitz wasn't all wrong when he stated war was just another extension of foreign policy
 
Cypress said:
I was thinking of Clausewitz when I read the realist interpretation of war theory.
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Certainly ethics never entered his mind when intellectualizing on war, and as much as it may get lip service, I don't think it does either for policy makers
 
Celticguy said:
Sadly, whacking Saddam was illegal at the time but would certainly have been far more efficient.

No real argument on the just part which is why I italicized the "could". But Afghanistan is a very unusual place and does not make for clear and clean actions. And its not just the Taliban, the warlords can flip from support to resistance on them in the blink of an eye. All they want is to sell their heroin and for everyone else to get out of their business. Actually a lot like Mexico and Columbia.
Click to expand...
Afghanistan is a hard one to clearly peg.

Tolstoy's Christian pacifism obviously is naive at the scale of national foreign policy, though it could work at the scale of a social movement - like Martin Luther King's civil rights movement.

Whatever can be said about the merits of the different theories of war, the fact that international law post WW2 adopted just war theory as it's basic premise seems to have prevented the kinds of global conflagrations we saw in the first half of the 20th century.
 
archives said:
Certainly ethics never entered his mind when intellectualizing on war, and as much as it may get lip service, I don't think it does either for policy makers
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I think Jimmy Carter genuinely saw US military power as subject to just war theory, and he genuinely made a type of natural law a consideration in US foreign policy by elevating human rights.
 
Jack said:
So ... what happens if Russia invades Ukraine?
Or ... China takes Taiwan?
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They would be in violation of international law, and Ukraine's and Taiwan's allies, if any, have a legal right to respond.

Just War Theory does not disallow fighting defensive wars to defend allies who have been invaded.
 
Cypress said:
They would be in violation of international law, and Ukraine's and Taiwan's allies, if any, have a legal right to respond.

Just War Theory does not disallow fighting defensive wars to defend allies who have been invaded.
Click to expand...

Any chance anyone will oppose Russia or China expansionist policy? Other than the local inhabitants?
 
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