Symposium: Responding to Terror

Abstract

IN this article, I will articulate a traditional version of just war theory and apply it to the case of a polity’s response to terrorist actions by groups that are not themselves polities. I will argue that, according to just war theory, defending against this sort of terrorism is a just cause; that within significant constraints sovereign political authorities can have authority to undertake military actions for the sake of this just cause, notwithstanding the nature of organization of the terrorists; and that a political community can pursue such a cause with right intention, even though in the world as it is military efforts to defend against terrorism may well not meet this condition. In this introduction I will define key terms; in the second section I will provide a formulation of just war theory, and in the last section I will apply its conditions for the permissibility of waging war to the case of responding to terrorism by groups that are not states. Traditional just war theory has some potential to illumine issues raised by the response to terrorism because, on the one hand, it is related historically and conceptually to the forms of just war thinking embedded in international law, and on the other, it is rooted in a normatively richer and distinctive conception of practical life than is current just war doctrine. The difference pointed to by my distinguishing current from traditional just war doctrine is in the rationale for the judgments made within each. There will certainly be disagreements about theory and particular judgments in both; but in current just war theory, the project of seeking agreement within the common moral world by careful casuistry from broadly acceptable paradigms, often embodied in international law and agreements, is central. By contrast, in traditional just war doctrine, the consensus is not so central, and the project of determining a war’s justice by application of a conception of morally good social living to the bellicose The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 11, Number 2, 2003, pp. 153–170