Fighting Versus Waging War: Rethinking Jus in Bello After Afghanistan and Iraq

Abstract

Michael Walzer’s seminal book, Just and Unjust Wars, remains a dominant view of just war theory. Despite its significance, there is a gap in Walzer’s treatment of jus in bello: he limits the conduct of war to fighting. The conduct of war, however, involves more than fighting. Wars have to be waged as well as fought. Waging war—determining war aims, deciding upon strategies and policies, planning and executing campaigns, creating and sustaining legitimacy, and other strategic level activities—takes place far from the battlefield, but has a huge impact on the conduct of war. After describing the distinction between fighting and waging war, this chapter presents three war-waging responsibilities—achieve and sustain coherence, generate and sustain organizational capacity, and maintain legitimacy; and suggests five principles that govern those senior political and military leaders with war-waging responsibility—the principles of continuous dialogue, final decision authority, managerial competence, war legitimacy, and resignation. My focus in the chapter is on war waged by the United States, using the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as illustrative cases. The responsibilities and principles identified from these wars can apply more broadly, however, especially for other democracies.