PHI1102 Ethics of War - Past Paper Notes

[Ethics of war] [The Vietnam War: My Lai Village] \- In a notorious incident during the Vietnam War, American soldiers attached the village of My Lai, expecting to confront enemy combatants. Instead, they found themselves confronting unarmed villagers. PBS website described it: \- "As the "search...

[Ethics of war] [The Vietnam War: My Lai Village] \- In a notorious incident during the Vietnam War, American soldiers attached the village of My Lai, expecting to confront enemy combatants. Instead, they found themselves confronting unarmed villagers. PBS website described it: \- "As the "search and destroy" mission unfolded, it soon degenerated into the massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly. (Lieutenant) Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire. According to eyewitness reports offered the event, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed. For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and moved them down in a fury of machine gun fire." [The question] - According to the traditional view (Elizabeth Anscombe, and Paul Ramsey), **non-combatants are innocent human beings**. **And killing innocent human beings is murder. Thus, it is seriously morally wrong to murder innocent human beings.** However, enemy combatants are not innocent in the way that enemy non-combatants are, so it may be permissible, or even obligatory, to kill them. This argument led to an important distinction: 1. **Combatants**: The traditional view is that killing enemy combatants is not only as morally permissible but also as morally commendable. 2. **Non-Combatants:** The traditional view is that killing enemy non-combatants is morally impermissible (because it involves murdering innocent people). This view is also called "the immunity thesis". - What justifies this difference in moral judgment on the killing of enemy combatants and the killing of enemy noncombatants? What is the difference? - **The Justification (The Principle of Punishment)**: The traditional view is justified in accordance with the principle of punishment: It is morally permissible to kill someone if and only if he has is *guilty* to *deserve* death as some sort of *punishment*. If combatants are not innocent, they are guilty of becoming existential threat, or presumably what they are guilty of is intentionally prosecuting a war against your country. Therefore, they deserve punishment by death. But noncombatants are not guilty of this, and thus they do not deserve punishment of any sort, especially intentional killing. [An objection] - George Mavrodes raised an objection against the traditional view, arguing that "the sense of "innocence" used in the argument has no moral content. He argued that a very **reluctant conscripted combatant**, one who serves in the army only under threat of punishment, may be much less responsible for the prosecution of the war (that is, some combatants are innocent) that, say, an **influential and enthusiastic noncombatant** (that is, some non-combatants are not innocent). - Note that Mavrodes also thinks that we should not kill noncombatants, but he argues that this immunity is based on a convention among nations. [Fullinwider's Response: The Principle of Self-Defense] - **The Principle of Self-Defense (Fullinwider's Position)**: Although Fullinwider defends the traditional view---that whereas combatants may be killed, noncombatants may not---he thinks that the justification rests on considerations that have to do with ***self-defense***, not on considerations that haver to do with ***guilt, desert,*** and ***punishment***. - Thus, Fillinwider condemns killing that exceeds the limits of self-defence attached both to combatants and to non-combatants, especially the latter. [A Case: Jones & Smith] - **Jones and Smith Case**: 1. Smith attempts to kill Jones, but Jones kills Smith for self-defense. Fullinwider argues that Jones is justified by the Principle of Self-Defense. (existential threat) 2. Smith, through heavy gambling losses, is in debt to the mob for \$100000.00 (or Jones rapes Smith's wife). He is forced to kill Jones (a crusading district attorney), but Jones kills Smith. Fullinwider believes that Jones act of killing is still justified by the Principle of Self-Defense. (existential threat) 3. Smith's wife (who was raped by Jones) is standing across street egging Smith on as he fires at Jones. Jones, though he justifiably shot Smith in self-defense, could not justifiably turn his gun on the wife in self-defense. Or, Jones cannot open his gun at the mobsters, assuming they are unarmed. (no existential threat) [Self-Defense vs Punishment] - "In these cases of killing and attempted killing there are two points of view: the point of view of **self-defense** and the point of view of **punishment**. Some considerations that become morally relevant from the second point of view in justifying killing are not relevant from the first point of view. We use the notions of guilt and innocence almost always in connection with the second point of view, the perspective of punishment. From that point of view, Smith\'s wife and the mobsters are as guilty as Smith. In the instance where the mobsters cause Smith to act under duress, perhaps they are more guilty." (p. 93) - "If we were to speak of innocence and guilt as categories applying in cases of self-defense, then for the purpose of justifiably killing in self-defense and from that point of view we would say that Smith alone was guilty (justifiably liable to killing) and his wife and the mobsters were innocent (not justifiably liable to killing), though all are guilty from the point of view of punishment." (p. 93) [Fullinwider's Argument:\ Moral Immunity of Noncombatants] - "From the point of view of self-defense, only those are justifiably liable to be killed who pose the immediate and direct jeopardy. In the case of war, it is nations\' armed forces which are the agents of the jeopardy. In a war, the armed forces of nation A stand to opponent nation B as Smith stood to Jones. It is against them that B may defend itself by the use of force. The active combatants, their arms, ammunition, war machines and facilities, are the legitimate targets of intentional destruction." (p. 94) - "Though A\'s civilian population may support its war against B and contribute to it in various ways, they stand to B as Smith\'s wife or the mobsters stood to Jones. For the purpose of justifiably killing in self- defense and from that point of view, the civilian population is morally immune-it is \"innocent.\" To intentionally kill noncombatants is to kill beyond the scope of self-defense. It is to kill unjustifiably from the point of view of self-defense." (P. 94) [Cont.] - "Our obligation not to kill noncombatants stems from our obligation not to kill without justification; and the Principle of Self-Defense justifies killing only combatants. Since both the obligation to not kill without justification and the Principle of Self-Defense are \"natural\" rather than conventional, the moral immunity of noncombatants does not rest (solely) upon the existence of appropriate conventions among nations." (p. 94-95) - This means that noncombatants have natural right to life. - But what is natural right to life? To answer this question, we take a quick look at John Locke's natural right theory [John Locke:\ The Natural Law & the Natural Right] - **The Natural Law**: John Locke, an eighteenth-century British philosopher and one of the great fathers of liberalism, has stated that the fundamental law of nature is that as much as possible mankind is to be preserved (self-preservation). 1. Duty to preserve one's self, (**the law of nature**) 2. Duty to preserve others when self-preservation does not conflict (**the law of nature**). - **The Natural Right**: He subsequently argued that there are three basic/natural rights that cannot be violated. These are: - The right to life (i.e., self-preservation) - The right to liberty or freedom - The right to property or ownership [Just war ] - On Locke's account, aggressors (combatants) act without justice and defenders act with justice (at least, theoretically) That is, the **combatants forfeits their own lives and rights when they initiate force or war** (§172) and sets up the rule of force as their standard. The defenders -- the prosecutors of a just war -- thus gain arbitrary and despotic **power over soldiers captured in a just war** (they can be even enslaved). - However, the **noncombatants maintain their rights to life**, if they do not pose any direct or immediate threat to the defenders. [Conclusion] - Fullinwider recognizes the right to kill in war but argues that the intentional killing of **non-combatants are murder**. - He also recognizes that nations might use the Principle of Punishment, but even so they must punish ***only the morally guilty*** (culpable from the point of view of punishment), ***not the morally innocent*** (innocent from the point of view of punishment). - Accordingly, if there were some perfect techniques of warfare to discriminate between ***the morally guilty*** and ***the morally innocent***, then we may appeal to the principle of punishment. [Just war] - "The policy of attacking the civilian population in order to induce an enemy to surrender, or to damage his morale, seems to have been widely accepted in the **civilized world**, and seems to be accepted still, at least if the stakes are high enough. It gives evidence of a moral conviction that the deliberate killing of non-combatants, women, children, old people is permissible if enough can be gained by it. This follows from the more general position that any means can in principle be justified if it leads to a sufficiently worthy end. Such an attitude is evident not only in the more spectacular current weapons systems but also in the day-to-day conduct of the nonglobal war in Indochina: *the indiscriminate destructiveness of antipersonnel weapons, napalm, and aerial bombardment; cruelty to prisoners; massive relocation -of civilians; destruction of crops; and so forth*." ("War and Massacre," Thomas Nagel) [Three Positions on War] 1. **Realism**: some reject the very idea of the "morality of war". Of those, some deny that morality applies at all once the guns strike up. 2. **Pacifism**: it is the view that one may not kill another person under any circumstances, no matter what good would be achieved or evil averted thereby. 3. **Just War**: task of just war theory is to seek a middle path between them: to justify at least some wars, but also to limit them.  [Just War: St. Thomas Aquinas] - The classic Just-War Theory has its origins in Christian theology. **Saint Augustine** is usually identified as the first thinker to offer a theory on war and justice. He referred to the Bible and regarded some wars as necessary to amend an evil. - But **St. Thomas Aquinas** gave the most systematic exposition of the just war theory in the Western tradition, one that still is used by many thinkers and politicians. - In the *Summa Theologicae*, Aquinas presents the general outline of what becomes the traditional just war theory as discussed in modern universities. He discusses not only the justification of war but also the kinds of activity that are permissible (for a Christian) in war. - In the twentieth century, just war theory has undergone a revival mainly in response to the invention of nuclear weaponry and American involvement in the Vietnam war. The most important contemporary texts include Michael Walzer's *Just and Unjust Wars* (1977), Richard Norman *Ethics, Killing, and War* (1995), Michael Walzer on *War and Justice* (2001), as well as seminal articles by Thomas Nagel "War and Massacre", Elizabeth Anscombe "War and Murder", and a host of others, commonly found in the journals *Ethics* or *The Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs*. [Just War: Traditionalists vs. Revisionists] - Contemporary just war theory is dominated by two camps: 1. **Traditionalist (legalists):**   "Their views on the morality of war are substantially *led by international law*, especially the law of armed conflict. They aim to provide those laws with morally defensible foundations. *States* (and only states) are permitted to go to war only for national defence, defence of other states, or to intervene to avert "crimes that shock the moral conscience of mankind" (Walzer 2006: 107). Civilians may not be targeted in war, but all combatants, whatever they are fighting for, are morally permitted to target one another, even when doing so foreseeably harms some civilians (so long as it does not do so excessively)." 2. **Revisionist:** Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction---it lacks deeper moral foundations. They have (*a*) challenged the permissibility of national defense, and the moral standing of states more generally; (*b*) argued for expanded permissions for military humanitarian intervention; (*c*) questioned civilian immunity; and (*d*) argued that combatants fighting for wrongful aims cannot do anything right, besides lay down their weapons. [Three Sets of Criteria] - Just War Theory has three sets of criteria: 1. ***jus ad bellum* **(the right to go to war): 2. ***jus in bello* **(the right conduct within war): 3. ***jus post bellum*** (the right way to end war): - The moral justifications for a war are expressed in *jus ad bellum*; whereas, the moral conduct of the war is expressed in *jus in bello*. And the right to terminate a war is expressed in *jus post bellum*. [***jus ad bellum* **(the right to go to war)] - "Saint Thomas Aquinas revised Augustine\'s version, creating three criteria for a just war: 1. The war needed to be waged by a **legitimate authority.**  \"The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority." (St. Augustine) 2. The war must have a **just cause**. "A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly." 3. Authorities must have the **right intentions**. "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war."" [***jus in bello* **(the right conduct within war)] **4) Probability of Success**: "In order for a war to be just, there must be a rational possibility of success. A nation cannot enter into a war with a hopeless cause." **5) Proportionality**: "The violence in a just war must be proportional to the casualties suffered. The nations involved in the war must avoid disproportionate military action and only use the amount of force absolutely necessary." **6) Civilian Casualties**: "The use of force must distinguish between the militia and civilians. Innocent citizens must never be the target of war; soldiers should always avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are only justified when they are unavoidable victims of a military attack on a strategic target." - "This list of criteria were intended to protect civilians and guarantee that wars were not just fought for the interest of private parties." [Combatants vs Non-combatants] - We may divide the possible victims of war into two classes: *combatants and non-combatants."* - **Combatants** are most members of the organized armed forces of a group that is at war, as well as others who directly participate in hostilities or have a continuous combat function. "Soldier" is used interchangeably with "combatant" - **Non-combatants** are not combatants. There are, of course, many hard cases, especially in asymmetric wars, but they are not considered here, "civilian" is used interchangeably with "non-combatant." - The above criteria place no constraints on killing combatants. Both traditionalist just war theory and international law explicitly endorse: - "Individual human beings enjoy fundamental rights to life and liberty, which prohibit others from harming them in certain ways. Since fighting wars obviously involves depriving others of life and liberty, according to Walzer, it can be permissible only if each of the victims has, "through some act of his own... surrendered or lost his rights" (Walzer 2006: 135). He then claims that, "simply by fighting", all combatants "have ***lost their title to life and liberty***" (Walzer 2006: 136)." (SEP)"   [Cont. ] - "This introduces the concept of **liability** into the debate, which we need to define carefully. On most accounts, that a person is liable to be killed means that she is not wronged by being killed. Often this is understood, as it was in Walzer, in terms of rights: everyone starts out with a right to life, but that right can be forfeited or lost, such that one can be killed without that right being violated or infringed." (SEP) [The Fundamental question] - "These simple building blocks give us both Discrimination and Combatant Equality---the former, because **non-combatants, in virtue of retaining their rights, are not legitimate objects of attack; the latter, because all combatants lose their rights, regardless of what they are fighting for**: hence, as long as they attack only enemy combatants, they fight legitimately, because they do not violate anyone's rights." - **How fundamental are non-combatants rights to life and liberty? Is it universal?** Now, we look at this question. *[Thomas Nagel **War and Massacre** ]* [Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War?] - **"Yes. It was the least bad option" -- Robert James Maddox** - "The atomic bombs were horrible but I agree with US secretary of war Henry L. Stimson that using them was the "least abhorrent choice". A bloody invasion and round the clock conventional bombing would have led to a far higher death toll and so the atomic weapons actually saved thousands of American and millions of Japanese lives. The bombs were the best means to bring about unconditional surrender, which is what the US leaders wanted. Only this would enable the Allies to occupy Japan and root out the institutions that led to war in the first place." **Robert James Maddox** - Some people have argued that it was not only a war crime, crime against humanity, mass murder, or state terrorism, but also an act of genocide. [A Definition of Genocide] - **Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Article II):** - *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. [Targeting Non-Combatants is Widely Practiced by the Civilized World] - "The policy of attacking the civilian population in order to induce an enemy to surrender, or to damage his morale, seems to have been widely accepted in the civilized world, and seems to be accepted still, at least if the stakes are high enough. It gives evidence of a moral conviction that the deliberate killing of non-combatants, women, children, old people is permissible if enough can be gained by it. This follows from the more general position that any means can in principle be justified if it leads to a sufficiently worthy end. Such an attitude is evident not only in the more spectacular current weapons systems but also in the day-to-day conduct of the nonglobal war in Indochina: *the indiscriminate destructiveness of antipersonnel weapons, napalm, and aerial bombardment; cruelty to prisoners; massive relocation -of civilians; destruction of crops; and so forth*." [Main thesis] - In "War and Massacre" by Thomas Nagel, Nagel argues that there are limits on what can be done to an enemy even for the sake of overall good. He believes that such an idea is grounded on the principles of **Absolutism**, where morality is determined by the action itself (**deontology**). This is contrary to the view of **Utilitarianism**, which relies on the premise that morality is determined by its consequences (Consequentialism). Could one in fact generate such a moral structure around war? Do the ***ends justify the means*** in War? (the problem of means and ends). - "I wish to argue that certain restrictions are neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression." (p. 123) [Two Moral Approaches on Waging War] 1. **Utilitarianism:** "It gives primacy to a concern with what will *happen*." - "Utilitarianism says that one should try, either individually or through institutions, to maximize good and minimize evil... and that if faced with the possibility of preventing a great evil by producing a lesser, one should choose the lesser evil." ( p. 125) 2. **Absolutism (deontology):** "Absolutism gives primacy to a concern with what one is *doing*." - "The conflict between them arises because the alternatives we face are rarely just choices between *total outcomes:* they are also choices between alternative pathways or measures to be taken. When one of the choices is to do terrible things to another person, the problem is altered fundamentally; it is no longer merely a question of which outcome would be worse." (p. 124). [Qualified Absolutism] - "*In the final analysis, I believe that the dilemma cannot always be resolved*. While not every conflict between absolutism and utilitarianism creates an insoluble dilemma, and while it is certainly right to adhere to absolutist restrictions unless the utilitarian considerations favoring violation are overpoweringly weighty and extremely certain -nevertheless, when that special condition is met, it may become impossible to adhere to an absolutist position. What I shall offer, therefore, is a somewhat **qualified defense of absolutism**. I believe *it underlies a valid and fundamental type of moral judgment, which cannot be reduced to or overridden by other principles*. And while there may be other principles just as fundamental, it is particularly important not to lose confidence in our absolutist intuitions, for they are often the only barrier before the abyss of utilitarian apologetics for large-scale murder." (p. 126) - *"I do not suggest that some form of absolutism can account for them all, only that an examination of absolutism will lead us to see the complexity, and perhaps the incoherence, of our moral ideas*." [Cont.] - "**Absolutism does not, of course, require one to ignore the consequences of one\'s acts. It operates as a limitation on utilitarian reasoning, not as a substitute for it**. An absolutist can be expected to try to maximize good and minimize evil, so long as this does not require him to transgress an absolute prohibition like that against ***murder***. But when such a conflict occurs, the prohibition takes complete precedence over any consideration of consequences. Some of the results of this view are clear enough. It requires us to forgo certain potentially useful military measures, such as the ***slaughter*** ***of hostages and prisoners*** or indiscriminate attempts to reduce the enemy civilian population by ***starvation***, ***epidemic infectious diseases*** like anthrax and bubonic plague, or ***mass incineration***." (p. 128) [The Law of Double Effect] - In war some innocent people will die. If the absolutist prohibition forbade the deaths of innocent people, then nothing one could do to allow for a just war. - **The Law of Double Effect:** - "This problem is avoided, however, because what absolutism forbids is *doing* certain things to people, rather than *bringing about* certain results. Not everything that happens to others as a result of what one does is something that one has done to them. Catholic moral theology seeks to make this distinction precise in a doctrine known as *the law of double effect*, which asserts that there is a morally relevant distinction between ***bringing about the death of an innocent person deliberately***, either as an end in itself or as a means, and ***bringing it about as a side effect of something else one does deliberately***. In the latter case, even if the outcome is foreseen, it is not ***murder***, and does not fall under the absolute prohibition..." (p. 130) [Cont. ] - "Briefly, the principle states that one is sometimes permitted knowingly to bring about as a side effect of one's actions something which it would be absolutely impermissible to bring about deliberately as an end or as a means." - "In application to war or revolution, the law of double effect permits a certain amount of civilian carnage as a side effect of bombing munitions plants or attacking enemy soldiers. And even this is permissible only if the cost is not too great to be justified by one\'s objectives." (p. 130) [The Problem with the LDE] - "However, despite its importance and its usefulness in accounting for certain plausible moral judgments, *I do not believe that the law of double effect is a generally applicable test for the consequences of an absolutist position*. *Its own application is not always clear, so that it **introduces uncertainty where there need not be uncertainty***." - "In Indochina, for example, there is a great deal of ***aerial bombardment, strafing, spraying of napalm, and employment of pellet- or needle-spraying antipersonnel weapons against rural villages*** in which guerrillas are suspected to be hiding, or from which small-arms fire has been received. The majority of those killed and wounded in these aerial attacks are reported to be women and children, even when some combatants are caught as well. However, the government regards these civilian casualties as a regrettable side effect of what is a legitimate attack against an armed enemy." (p. 131) [Avoiding Murder at All Costs] - "For if that were all, then one could presumably justify one such murder on the ground that it would prevent several others, or ten thousand on the ground that they would prevent a hundred thousand more. That is a familiar argument. But if this is allowable, then there is no absolute prohibition against murder after all. Absolutism requires that we ***avoid*** ***murder*** at all costs, not that we ***prevent*** it at all costs." [The Positive Account] - **An Absolute Principle**: "A positive account of the matter must begin with the observation that ***war, conflict, and aggression are relations between persons***. The view that it can be wrong to consider merely the overall effect of one\'s actions on the general welfare comes into prominence when those actions involve relations with others." (P. 133) - Absolutist restrictions in warfare appear to be of two types: 1. The restrictions on the **class of persons** at whom aggression or violence may be directed 2. The restrictions on the **manner of attack**, given that the object falls within that class. [Restrictions on Class of Persons] - ***"Hostility is a personal relation***, and it must be suited to its target. One consequence of this condition will be that ***certain persons may not be subjected to hostile treatment in war at all***, since nothing about them justifies such treatment." (p. 133) - "A coherent view of this type will hold that extremely hostile behavior toward another is ***compatible with treating him as a person- even perhaps as an end in himself**.* This is possible only if one has not automatically stopped treating him as a person as soon as one starts to fight with him." (p. 134) - "Absolutism is associated with a view of oneself as a small being interacting with others in a large world. **The justifications it requires are primarily interpersonal**." (p. 137) [Cont. ] - "There seems to be a perfectly natural conception of the distinction between **fighting clean and fighting dirty**. To fight dirty is to direct one\'s hostility or aggression not at its proper object, but at a peripheral target which may be more vulnerable, and through which the proper object can be attacked indirectly. This applies in a fist fight, an election campaign, a duel, or a philosophical argument. If the concept is general enough to apply to all these matters, it should apply to war-both to the conduct of individual soldiers and to the conduct of nations." (P. 134) - "...**that hostility or aggression should be directed at its true object**. This means both that it should be directed at the person or persons who provoke it and that it should aim more specifically at what is provocative about them." (p. 135) [The Innocent and War] - "In the absolutist position, the operative notion of innocence is ***not moral innocence***, and it is not opposed to moral guilt. If it were, then we would be justified in killing a wicked but non-combatant hairdresser in an enemy city who supported the evil policies of his government, and unjustified in killing a morally pure conscript who was driving a tank toward us with the profoundest regrets and nothing but love in his heart. But moral innocence has very little to do with it, for in the definition of murder "innocent" means "***currently harmless***," and it is opposed **not to "guilty" but to "doing harm"** (p. 139) [Restrictions on Manner of Warfare ] 1. Children, women, and elderly people (non-combatants). 2. The special status of *medical personnel* and the wounded in warfare. 3. Farmers, food suppliers, and those who assist the combatants like cooks, drivers, etc. 4. Prohibitions against certain particularly *cruel weapons*: starvation, poisoning, infectious diseases (supposing they could be inflicted on combatants only), 5. *Weapons designed to maim or disfigure or torture* the opponent rather than merely to stop him. 6. Hostility should limit the scope of attacks on an enemy *country: its economy, agriculture, transportation system, and so forth*." [Conclusion] - Nagel's essay concludes with the idea that maybe it's impossible to reconcile the two schools and that sometimes, through no fault of one's own, there is no good choice to make. - "Given the limitations on human action, it is naive to suppose that there is a solution to every moral problem with which the world can face us. We have always known that the world is a bad place. It appears that it may be an evil place as well." (p. 144) [DEMOCRATIC VALUES AND THE LIMITS OF WAR] [Christopher Kutz] [The question] - **The Question:** - *"Does democracy as an ideal have an affinity for war?"* (p. 214) - "Among those questions: how should we, as citizens, think about our responsibility for killing done in our name? Do democracies face special constraints in the kinds of weapons or tactics they can use, independent of the conventional law of war? Do democracies have a right or even an obligation to aid other peoples in achieving democratic governance, through force rather than example? Does the legal requirement that combatants be uniformed in order to be able to kill in war have any rationale beyond protecting civilians?" (p. 215) [The thesis] - "My aim in this chapter is to introduce readers animated by the values of democracy to the ways in which those values can threaten to disrupt or subvert the delicate and incomplete historical achievement of finding ethical limits to war. This is not to argue against democracy, nor to challenge democracy's value as the ultimate ground of political legitimacy. Non-democracies fare far worse along these dimensions. Indeed, I argue that if we look to the values internal to democracy properly understood, as a kind of collective political agency manifesting mutual respect, we can provide surer footing for many of these concerns. As honest democrats, we must be prepared for an intimate critique of democracy in its relation to war, so that we can resist the temptation of too easily making the case for democracy's resort to violence." (p. 216) [Success of democracy ] - "...democracy is seen as a source of both domestic and international flourishing. Democracy, understood roughly for now as a political system with wide suffrage, in which power is allocated to officials by popular election, can solve or help to solve a host of problems with stunning success." (p. 214) 1. "It solves the problem of **revolutionary violence** that condemns autocratic regimes, because mass politics can work at the ballot box rather than the streets." 2. "It can help solve the problem of **famine**, because the systems of free public communication and discussion that are essential to democratic politics are the backbone of the markets that have made democratic societies far richer than their competitors." 3. "It can help solve the problem of **environmental despoliation**, which occurs when those operating polluting factories... do not need to respond to harms visited upon a broad public. 4. "...democracy has been famously thought to help solve the problem of **war**, in the guise of the idea of the "**peace among democratic nations**" -- an idea emerging with Immanuel Kant in the Enlightenment..." (p. 214) [ ] [Democratic peace ] - "The "democratic peace" thesis, which holds that mature democracies rarely fight each other, has held up well as a correlation, even under sceptical scrutiny." - "But closer scrutiny has also brought to light doubts about any broader, happy connection between war and democracy per se." - E.g., "...emerging democracies are more likely than other kinds of states to go to war, often as a means of securing internal support and legitimacy (and in the process often stalling further democratic progress). Notable examples include France, Russia, Iran, and (former) Yugoslavia." - E.g., "... mature democracies have shown great willingness to go to war against non-democracies, whether as part of colonialist and imperialist agendas, or for reasons of local or regional self-defence -- think of the Spanish-American war, the Crimean War, the Iraq Wars, and the Balkan Wars." [Key elements of democracy] - "Democracy refers to more than the institution of direct balloting and majoritarian-premised popular control over political office." 1. "More grandly, it names an ideal of universal and **equal respect for all persons**, for their right to direct themselves collectively and individually, including the right to get important decisions wrong." 2. It rejects any claim of power founded on **irrational tradition or force**. 3. "The pre-requisites of effective democracy are the **free movement** of people and ideas, as well as institutions built to accommodate and -- ideally -- enhance the openness of each to the other, as we determine our projects together. 4. "Such institutions are the basis of the value of ***security***: the confidence, embodied in such concrete institutions as police and fire departments, medical systems, armies and communications networks, that we will be able to execute the plans we make, to lead the lives we want to live. 5. Closely linked to security is **stability**, and linked to both is **dignity**: the interest of each individual in having a life worth living, a life at least partly of one's own creation, proceeding along a predictable and self-planned path. 6. A final element in this constellation of democratic values is ***community***: the good of living together, sharing tradition and meaning over past and future. (p. 216) [Theories of War: regular War] - There are two general stories of the history of the ethics of war. 1. "Around the fifteenth century, with the preceding rise in a system of mutually recognised absolute sovereignty, begins to emerge a **de-moralised picture of war**, essentially as a prerogative of the sovereign who is not to be judged by any further terrestrial body, but only in the forum of victory." 2. "The second strand, already present in the medieval **chivalric tradition**, but gaining force with the professionalised militaries of the eighteenth century, is a professional ethic of the warrior." - "Both strands crystallise in the eighteenth century, the first in the work of Emerich de Vattel, the writer primarily responsible for the idea of "**regular war**" (*la guerre reglée*) or wars whose legitimacy comes from their form, rather than the justice of their cause. Vattel's work, which marks the essential break from a philosophical-theological tradition to a less normative "legal science," sets the scene for the theory of war that dominated thought from the Treaty of Utrecht to the end of the Cold War. This is the idea of a "regular war", or War in due form: a war waged between two public sovereigns, each asserting a right (to punish, to defend, and so on). (p. 217) [Humanitarian Intervention] - The great break in this tradition followed World War II, with the UN charter and its restriction of war to self-defence, and the concomitant emergence of a conception of international human rights (which intersects in complex ways with international humanitarian law)... the system, at least conceptually, has one great advantage: it permits a uniform set of humanitarian norms to apply to soldiers and civilians alike, with -- in principle -- gains in the reduction of suffering. - "the post-millennial politics of humanitarian intervention, under the rubric of the "Responsibility to Protect", or R2P, has caused a fundamental shift in post-WWII international conflicts... The effect is a gradual **moralisation of international politics**, a breaking of a fragile consensus around the limitation of the use of force to circumstances of strict **self-defence**. " (p. 218) [Democracy and Violence] - "And, indeed, mature democratic states have, over time, an outstanding record at rejecting violence in favour of dialogue, **within their domestic spheres" (p. 219)** - "But the **global record is less reassuring**, whether as a product of colonialism, ideological conflict, or -- most recently -- a missionary conception of democracy, with the aim of seeding it as widely as possible. Democracies have, of course, the same **instincts of self-defence** as other regimes, as well as the same expansive capacity to understand the interests worth defending through resort to violence." (p. 219) - "Whether the trigger for war is naked colonialism, more subtle calculations of balances of power, the entanglements of treaties with democratic allies, or a universalist rhetoric of the defence of human rights, **democracies use war as a routine and internally acceptable instrument of foreign policy**." (p. 219) [Cont. ] - "Democracy celebrates the **politics of cooperation: the fusion of individual wills in crafting a common space**. Put another way, it is the value of politics as such -- the fusion of goals and wills in pursuit of a common system of civil life -- that provides the legitimacy of non-state actors who are on the road to building democratic institutions." (p. 221) - This **fusion of self in collective is the source of the violent threat posed by democracy**. The very celebration of collective agency can lead to an overly permissive attitude towards collective violence. (p. 221) [Democratic ethics of war] - "**Democratic values should be seen as constraints** on both the forms and ends of collective violence, not as a new source of war's legitimacy." (p. 221) - "... if **democracy is valued intrinsically**, as the only way in which we can be both ruled and self-rulers, then its **propensity for violence must be tamed**." (p. 222) - "The first is making sense of a political community's claim to be able to deploy violence in its name and for its ends, while restricting private violence among its members. This **distinction between public and private violence** (or between war and crime, in modern discussions) is fundamental to the nature of the state, sovereignty, and the conception of violence in human affairs." (p. 223) [Conclusion ] - "This is my central claim: the conception of personhood that animates democracy demands a humility in the face of conflict, rather than the imperial assertiveness that has characterised so much democratic rhetoric, from the French Revolution to the Second Iraq War." (p. 223)