The Ethics of War

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The Ethics of War

• 9.forelesning

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Summary/Walzer on intervention

• Legalist paradigm Political communities (states)
  as self-determining gt principle of
  non-intervention (prima facie rule)
• Exceptions (revisions of legalist paradigm)
• Secession
• Counter-intervention
• Humanitarian intervention
• How should we interpret humanitarian as a just
  cause?
• Violations of basic human rights (Luban)? Or as
  acts that shock the moral conscience of mankind
  (Walzer), such as enslavement and massacre?

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Genocide as a case for humanitarian intervention

• Srebrenica 11.7.1995 8000 men and boys massacred
• Rwanda 1994 aprox. one million people massacred
  in 100 days

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Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide (1948)

• Article 1
• The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide,
  whether committed in time of peace or in time of
  war, is a crime under international law which
  they undertake to prevent and to punish.

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Article 2

• In the present Convention, genocide means any of
  the following acts committed with intent to
  destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
  ethnical, racial or religious group, as such
• (a) Killing members of the group
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
  members of the group
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group
  conditions of life calculated to bring about its
  physical destruction in whole or in part
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
  within the group
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group
  to another group.

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Article 3

• The following acts shall be punishable
• (a) Genocide
• (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide
• (c) Direct and public incitement to commit
  genocide
• (d ) Attempt to commit genocide
• (e) Complicity in genocide.

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The responsibility of the bystander (AJV)

• Agents, victims and bystanders (actions are
  tryadic not dyadic)
• Bystanders are persons possessing a potential to
  halt the agents ongoing actions
• Typology of bystanders
• Passive bystanders
• Bystanders by assignment (e.g. UN observers)

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Acting and not acting

• Not acting is still acting, letting things be
  done by someone else, sometimes to the point of
  criminality. (P. Ricoeur)
• Inaction as action if one decides not to act
  (intentional)
• Responsibility for omissions the obligation to
  help
• Complicity
• Signal responsibility sending a message
• How far does bystander responsibility extend?
• Doing and allowing (Arendt to act is to
  initiate. But does this not undermine the point
  above?)

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Three lessons

• Bystanders legitimize killing and are morally
  complicit
• Deeds follow words
• Failure to act harms the bystander too shames
  humanity

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Iraq A case for humanitarian intervention?
(Mellow)

• Assumptions
• No WMDs in Iraq
• UN inspectors
• Intentional deception by Bush/Blair (Powell
  point)
• Illegal war of aggression

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Just war framework (again!)

• Just cause
• Legitimate authority
• Right intention
• Last resort
• Proportionality
• Reasonable hope of success
• Open declaration

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Just cause

• Sufficient just cause (suff. to override
  presumption against force)
• Humanitarian injustice as just cause
• Presumption of self-determination as basic good
  (and therefore) (prima facie) collective right
• Individual human rights and individual human
  suffering

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Some critical points

• The doctrine of self-help and a domestic analogy
• Can forcible democratisation succeed?
• Is forcible democratisation justified without
  consent?

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Consider the analogy

• A group of attackers are torturing and killing a
  nearby family. You are part of an armed group
  (hunting buddies, say), who happen to pass the
  scene. You have no way to stop the attacks other
  than using your guns, so you prepare to shoot.
  The family yells at you to stop, since they are
  dedicated pacifists and have chosen to suffer and
  die.
• Are you wrong to shoot?
• Mellow surely not!
• Do you agree?

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(No Transcript)
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Right intention

• Mixed motives/humanitarian pretext for
• Oil?
• Culpable ignorance about WMDs?
• Establish hegemony in Middle-East?
• Finish daddys business?

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Right intention problems

• Whose intention? The President? The
  administration? Legislative bodies?
• How do we identify a groups intention?
• Right intention or absence of bad intentions?
• Mere presence of intention or also motivational
  force? Threshold? Counterfactual? (Necessary or
  sufficient or both?)

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Mellow Exclude right intention!

• The inclusion of right intention in the
  JAB-criteria mixes two levels of moral judgement
  jugdement of action and judgement of character
• Acts are right and wrong independent of the
  agents mental states
• One can do the right thing for the wrong reasons,
  and vice versa.

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True, but

• Can actions be morally right or wrong independent
  of the agents mental states?
• Yes and no
• Subjective versus objective ought
• But permissibility is not about the objective
  ought !!!

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Last resort

• UN inspectors could have continued
• But that is only relevant if WMDs were cause
• For the humanitarian cause, perhaps war was the
  only way?

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Legitimate authority

• According to IL, resort to war was illegal (Not
  sanctioned by SC)
• But immoral?
• Is legitimate authority substantial or merely
  formal requirement?
• Can just cause and legitimate authority be
  separated? (Buchanan)

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Legitimate authority in Iraq?

• Moral case/domestic analogy. Legitimate authority
  is substantial, not formal, criterion
• Risk of undermining law does not render act
  immoral per se
• Deception? Only a problem if intention is
  important?

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Proportionality

• Relevant good and bad effects
• Good Pertains to the just cause
• Bad Possibility of civil war or destabilisation
  of the region
• How to weight incomparable effects?
• Thought experiments? (Imagine that..)
• Counterfactual doing nothing (cf. AJV)

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Counterfactual proportionality

• Conflates proportionality with last resort?
• Do nothing is always one of the last resort
  alternatives.. (Walzer, p. 81)
• Counterfactual proportionality allows us to
  dismiss the bad effects as irrelevant! (305)
• Demonstrated by allows us to calculate
  upfront. Dismisses actual consequences.
• But perhaps there is no other way?

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Pre-emptive war

• Defensive war
• Sufficient threat
• Manifest intent to injure
• Active preparation which makes the intent a
  positive danger
• A general situation in which waiting or choosing
  other options gravely magnifies the risk
• Always a moral risk! Particular assessment
  necessary.

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Preventive war

• Some state of affairs X (US dominance) preserves
  some important value V (Freedom and democracy)
  and is therefore worth defending at some cost
• To fight early, before X begins to unravel,
  greatly reduces the cost of the defence of V,
  while waiting does not avoid war (unless one
  gives up V) but only results in fighting on a
  larger scale at worse odds.
• (David Luban. Preventive War)

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The Bush Doctrine

• Making the world safe for democracy. Any nation
  harboring terrorists is a threat to peace and
  liable to attack.

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Too risky?

• Walzer Preventive war may be counter-productive
  (destabilising)
• Luban Too risky, makes war ordinary
• Also violates the rights of those who have not
  yet done anything to forfeit them

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Buchanan

• Alternative reading is possible Preventive war
  can be read as preventive self-defence
  justification against those wrongfully imposing a
  dire risk (cf. The National Security Strategy)
• Risk is not fixed, it depends on the
  institutional framework
• (given (1) Not true that those who pose dire
  threat have not done anything (wrong) to forfeit
  rights

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The quest for a new institutional framework
(Buchanan)

• Just War Norm (JWN) legalist paradigm
• Preventive war and forcible democratisation
  challenges JWN (with regard to just cause)
• Buchanan No question of choice between more or
  less permissive norms, but a question of
  replacing JWN with new institutions.
• Legitimate authority (Understood as proper
  insitutional framework) is a substantial, not
  just formal, criterion.
• The validity of a norm can depend on
  institutional context. Just cause requires
  legitimate authority!

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The limits of just war theory

• The validity of use-of-force norms can depend
  upon institutional context
• Validity of JWN is contingent upon the absence of
  satisfactory institutional framework and on the
  costs of risk reduction
• We ought to create new institutions which allows
  us a more permissive norm depending on whether a
  new norm would be
• morally better and
• the feasibility and costs of creating new
  institutions