What critiques of just war theory can teach us about Rita Floyd’s theory of morally mandatory securitization

Clausewitz’s interpretation of war has retained at least some relevance in the face of hyper-modern war, anti-modern war and the technological and political transformations of modern war. Can it survive other challenges which are yet more fundamental? Three in particular are worth examining: the contemporary challenge to realism; the possible decline of the state; and the assumption of rationality in war. All three seek to knock away the underpinnings of Clausewitz’s theory of war – indeed, of all theories of modern war.

Looks at the role of 3 theories – cosmopolitanism, internationalism and political realism – in armed conflict The ethics of peace and war is one of the central ethical issues in International Relations today. Arguing in favour of cosmopolitanism, with its emphasis on the equal worth of all human beings, Iain Atack shows this theory has a vital role to play in international politics in light of changing conceptions of peace and security, the prevalence of civil wars over international wars and the increasing emphasis on justifying military force as humanitarian intervention. Key Features Examines two contrasting positions on the ethics of war and armed conflict: pacifism and just war theory Analyses contemporary issues and debates including postmodern and asymmetrical war, and peace-building and conflict prevention Unpacks the ambiguous role of the state in controlling and justifying the use of military force and in constructing a new cosmopolitan world order

Unlike the wide swath of ‘realists’ who claim Just War Theory (JWT) serves little purpose as political agents simply act from or only have an obligation to act from either their individual or group interests, this paper begins with the assumption that the development of the concepts, principles, and arguments of JWT can provide useful critical tools for attempting to place limits upon resorts to political violence. However, there is significant disagreement within contemporary JWT as to how the field ought to focus its critical endeavour. This paper will consider two sources of such disagreement and attempt some recommendations. The first controversy is over the relevance of ideal theory within JWT. Some just war theorists seek moral truths about war and its justifications under ideal circumstances, e.g. when citizens and military personnel are fully informed about the reasons for entering war or when combatants can detect the moral culpability of their opposition and their citizens. In contrast, a pragmatic JWT acknowledges that war creates special circumstances wherein one cannot always apply such ideal moral truths. The second and somewhat overlapping controversy is concerned with the moral responsibility for war and can be seen in three contrasting positions: 1) given that individuals do not declare war, JWT ought to provide critical principles for holding states responsible for these decisions; 2) since states have taken up JWT as mere rhetoric, JWT ought to hold citizens responsible for their state’s activities; and 3) since individuals are the proper locus of moral responsibility, JWT ought to hold individual soldiers responsible for determining their target’s liability to attack. The paper concludes by recommending a pragmatic JWT that shifts the focus to ask why a state has authority to command its citizens to fight and die on its behalf.

Kant’s Just War Theory Brian Orend Kant is often cited as one of the first truly international political philosophers. Unlike the vast majority of his predecessors, Kant views a purely domestic or national conception of justice as radically incomplete; we must, he insists, also turn our faculties of critical judgment towards the international plane. When he does so, what results is one of the most powerful and principled conceptions of international justice ever constructed. Kant’s central concept, that it is a demand of our own practical reason that we forge a cosmopolitan federation of free republics, based on the rule of law, human rights, and cultural and commercial development, still resonates today as a plausible and hopeful prescription for humanity’s future. Much of Kant’s international theory has recently received searching analysis and evaluation. But the bulk of this consideration has focused on Kant’s descriptive, as opposed to prescriptive, claims. Lavish attention, for example, has been showered on his assertion that perpetual peace is inevitable—that our natural antagonism will irresistibly incline us, after many failures, to establish an international juridical condition. Comparatively little has been done on thoroughly evaluating Kant’s normative claims of international justice, particularly with regard to his ideal corpus of international law and his concrete recommendations for moving from a global state of nature to a cosmopolitan civil society.1 In this paper, I would like to contribute to the latter task by focusing on the moral problem that war poses as, arguably, the most frequent and severe cause [End Page 323] of ruptures in the functioning of the international system.2 In particular, I would like to argue in favour of the controversial, and original, thesis that Kant has a just war theory.3 I would then like to develop that theory in some detail and to explain its strength and suggestiveness. The focus on war seems both helpful and timely. It is helpful in that it provides a specific, graphic example with which one can apprehend more clearly the abstract architecture of Kant’s international vision. It is timely in that, in the wake of the very recent conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda, and in light of the subsequent formation of the International War Crimes Tribunals at The Hague, renewed attention has been paid to considering what, if anything, constitutes a just war and what is permitted, and what punishable, in terms of conduct in war. A rigorous consideration of what one of the true giants of moral philosophy thought about these issues can only serve to illuminate our understanding of these current events. 1. THE TRADITIONAL READING OF KANT: NO JUST WAR Nearly every commentator on Kant’s international theory of justice who discusses the problem of war in any detail believes that Kant not only has no just war theory, but that he is, moreover, a vicious critic of the core propositions of classical just war theorists, such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Grotius. Howard Williams, for example, says that “Kant has no theory of just war … (j)ustice and war are in conflict with one another and it is our duty as human beings to try to overcome war.” Fernando Teson contends that “Kant dismisses the idea that there could be a just war” and Georg Geismann asserts that, for Kant, “there is no such thing as a just war.” Similarly, W. B. Gallie asserts that “Kant agreed … that nothing but confusion and harm resulted from regarding any wars as just … ” There is a bevy of quotes in the Kantian corpus to support this reading.4 One prominent anti-just war quote occurs in Perpetual Peace, when Kant [End Page 324] reflects on the contributions of traditional just war theorists and arrives at the following judgment: It is therefore to be wondered at that the word right has not been completely banished from military politics as superfluous pedantry, and that no state has been bold enough to declare itself publicly in favour of doing so. For Hugo Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel and the rest (sorry comforters as they are) are still dutifully quoted in justification of military aggression, although their philosophically or diplomatically formulated codes do not and...

This article deals with the critique of Just War Theory (JWT) which appeared in the works of Carl Schmitt. JWT was revived in the middle of 1900s and was treated as an absolutely secular direction for military ethics. However, being Christian in its origin JWT retained a certain religious reasoning. This call for political morality could be compared to an appeal to divine law, but outside of the Christian context it loses its validity and weight. These features of JWT were noticed by Schmitt who offered the concept of bracketed warfare instead. The bracketing of war was an essential component of jus publicum Europaeum and it presupposed the recognition of an enemy as equal. Bracketed war was defined in political and legal terms and did not presuppose moral or religious evaluation of armed conflicts. In the 20th century bracketing of war was replaced with discrimination of war as morally and legally unacceptable act. JWT served as a theoretical foundation for this change. Though it is the prerogative of JWT to prove itself as an attempt at humanism, the invasion of morality into politics, from Schmitt’s perspective dehumanizes the enemy and increases the totality of a conflict. Schmitt insisted on purifying the political sphere from all moral constituents in order to make it more balanced. A mere political approach to war made Schmitt’s theory of bracketed war more humane and reasonable than JWT.

Contributions to Illuminations: A Scarecrow Press Series of Guides to Research in Religion provide students and scholars, lay readers and clergy, with a road map to research in key areas of religious study. All commonly constructed with introductions to the topic and reviews of key thinkers, concepts, and events, each volume includes surveys of the primary and secondary sources, with critical evaluations of their places in the canon of thought and research on the topic. Focusing primarily on the knowledge required by today’s students and scholars, each guide is a must-have for any student of religion. The twentieth century saw an explosion of wars and an accompanying explosion of literature on the morality of war. Thinking among Christian clerics and scholars on the idea of “just war” shifted with developments on the battlefield. Alternatives to just war theory, such as pacifism and realism, found new proponents in the published work of the neo-Anabaptists and Niebhurians. Meanwhile, proponents of Christian just war theory had to address challenges from competing ideologies as well as ththose presented by the changing nature of warfare. Modern Just War Theory: A Guide to Research, by scholar and librarian Michael Farrell, serves as a manual for students and scholars studying Christian just war theory, helping them navigate the wealth of just war literature produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Farrell’s guide provides an introduction to the major developments of just war theory in the twentieth century, including sections on how to research just war theory, an overview of some of the most important theorists and developments of the twentieth century, and discussions of key search terms and related topics. Farrell then surveys and evaluates key primary and secondary sources for researchers on just war theory, as well as related sources on Christian realism and the responses of just war theorists to proponents of pacifism and secular just war theories. Modern Just War Theory will appeal to students and scholars of theology, military history, international law, and Christian ethics

Since the end of the world wars, the demise of the Cold War and the end of liberation wars in Africa, the changing character of warfare has given birth to uncertainties about how states will respond to acts of aggression in the face of ethics of war, or the moral rules of war. It has become difficult for states to conduct permissible self-defence and other-defence against non-state actors or sub-state groups, which do not have a sovereign (political and territorial integrity) to protect. In the face of this reality, it is not known how much knowledge military personnel world over have on ethics of war, what their attitude towards ethics of war is, and how they practice these ethics of war during war and operations other than war. Research was therefore conducted to assess knowledge of, attitudes toward and practices of the ethics of war of officers and soldiers of the Zambia Army. A mixed method research was undertaken using explanatory sequential approach. A sample of 420 participants was drawn from officers and soldiers serving in the Zambia Army. Questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data, while focus group discussions and interviews were undertaken to collect qualitative data. The findings from the focus group discussions and interviews provided depth and understanding about how the officers and soldiers felt about ethics of war. The findings of focus group discussions and interviews also helped to explain the findings from the quantitative data. Quantitative data were analysed at two levels. The first level of analysis comprised descriptive statistics in the form of frequency distribution tables, means and percentages. The second level involved inferential statistics by applying the chi-square test in order to determine the relationship, if any, between the independent variables and the dependent variables using the Statistical Packaging for Social Sciences. Further, the research used Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient to measure the strength and direction of association between two ranked variables. Analysis of qualitative data begun during the data collection exercise by arranging the field notes according to salient themes in relation to the objectives. This was followed by pinpointing, examining and recording patterns within the data collected. The conclusion of the study showed that, at the time, the majority of the Zambia Army officers and soldiers were reasonably acquainted with the knowledge of ethics of war. The study further concluded that Zambia Army officers and soldiers held very strong and positive attitudes towards the ethics of war at the time. In addition, the officers and soldiers also widely accepted and supported the ethics of war, as they considered them beneficial. It was evident from the research that the Zambia Army soldiers and officers practiced the ethics of war extensively and regularly during both local and international operations. However, more needs to be done to increase knowledge levels.

1. INTRODUCTIONAt the moral core of the Just War Tradition (JWT) is the claim that a just war must have a just cause, where a just cause involves the commission of some grave moral wrong. As a matter of sociological and psychological fact, victims of wrongdoing are inclined to take umbrage at the injustices inflicted on them and to take the violations inflicted on them to permit some appropriately vigorous response. Other things equal, the more egregious the violation, the stronger the victim's inclination to respond. As a matter of brute sociological and psychological fact, then, the members of a community that has been victimized by wrongdoing that is grave enough to satisfy the just cause requirement will likely be inclined to respond in a most ?vigorous' manner. Correlatively, many will find alien-and perhaps even offensive-the demand that they restrain themselves from taking the means necessary to respond to the egregious violations to which they have been subjected. But the possibility that those who belong to a violated community must exercise just this kind of restraint is a clear implication of any adequate understanding of the JWT. For fundamental to the JWT is the claim that a community can have a fully sufficient just cause to respond to an enemy attack and yet be morally forbidden to do so.1 This is, I think, one of the most difficult holdings of the JWT.The JWT's ad bellum proportionality requirement (ABP) captures that fundamental, difficult truth. According to the ABP, a community may wage war in response to a violation that satisfies the just cause requirement only if the relevant goods achieved by so responding are proportionate to the relevant evils caused thereby. My main aim in this paper is to engage recent work by Thomas Hurka regarding what makes certain goods and evils relevant to a proportionality assessment. A secondary aim is to specify the place of the ABP in the JWT's overall justificatory architecture. Given these two rather limited aims, it should be clear that I do not pretend to provide a complete account.2. AN INITIAL EXPLICATION OF THE PROPORTIONALITY REQUIREMENTLet me begin by providing a brief explication of the ABP. Basic to the moral vision of the JWT is the claim that human beings naturally and properly belong to various communities each of which is presumptively prohibited from attacking any another. This presumption against war can be overcome only when one community violates another in some egregious respect(s). But the moral standing of a given war cannot be entirely a function of the normative relations between violators and violated. This is because the morally relevant consequences of war are seldom, if ever, limited only to those who commit the violation that provides for a just cause. Far from it: in the actual world, the deployment of military violence in response to an egregious wrong will typically have dire consequences for human beings who play no role at all in committing that violation. Such 'innocent' human beings must be given their normative due. The primary function of the ABP in the JWT's overall justificatory framework is to formalize that requirement: the JWT permits war only when some particular community commits a relevantly egregious violation, but assesses that prima facie permission in light of the consequences of war for all innocents, irrespective of communal membership. If the consequences of waging a given war are ?excessively bad,' then that war is ?disproportionate' and so morally impermissible.Of course, we need to provide this rather unspecific understanding of the ABP with a bit more granularity. To that end, note, first, that although the ABP implies that every war ought to be assessed in light of relevant consequences, it does not mandate anything like a global consequentialist assessment. That is, it does not require us to agglomerate all of the goods and evils that result from Cl's war with C2, compare that result with the agglomerated goods and evils of the various alternatives to Cl's waging war with C2, and conclude that Cl's war is permissible only if its net result is higher than all of the alternatives. …

In this article, I intend to explore the normative relation(s) between “God” and “war.” A bit more precisely, I intend to explore the normative relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence. Even more precisely, I intend to explore the relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence as judged by the so-called Just War Tradition (JWT). Properly interpreted, I take the JWT to provide the best available account of the morality of war. The JWT is not perfect and is bedeviled by serious problems, but it is the best available nonetheless. So, when I reflect on the morality of war, and thus on the normative relation(s) between religion and war, I do so from the perspective of the JWT.Now this might seem to portend a very brief discussion. As we will see in detail, contemporary adherents typically construe the JWT in resolutely secular terms. Perhaps in order to compensate for its religious prehistory, most insist that the JWT has outgrown its religious provenance and may not be used to legitimate a crusade, ajihad, a holy war, or anything of the sort. In so doing, they align the JWT with the commonplace, endemic to contemporary liberal democracies, that religious wars and religious justifications for war lay far, far beyond the moral pale.

In 2021, Dr Igor Kopõtin, currently Lead Research Fellow at the Estonian Military Academy, initiated the research project “Estonian Military Thought 1920–1940,” based on research contributions from scholars of the Estonian Military Academy, the Estonian War Museum – General Laidoner Museum, the Estonian Maritime Museum, and the University of Tartu. The aim of the project was to explore the factors that influenced the content and development of Estonian military theory and art of war. The work resulted in several studies on Estonian national art of war and theory of war, focusing primarily on analyses of research papers on warfare by Estonian higher and senior officers, written in the period between the two wars. Some studies were published in the “Occasional Papers” series of the Estonian Military Academy. Two of these are examined below.

Introduction. I. THE JUST WAR TRADITION. 1. The Just War in Antiquity. 2. Christianity and the Just War. 3. Saint Augustine and the Tradition of Just War. 4. Secularization of the Just War Tradition. II. THE LEGAL POSITION OF WAR. 5. Hugo Grotius: Father of International Law. 6. Hugo Grotius and the Just War. 7. Problems for International Law. III. MORAL ISSUES IN WAR. 8. The Responsibility for War Crimes. 9. Military Necessity. 10. Reprisals. 11. Terrorism and War. 12. The Just War and Weapons of Mass Destruction. IV. PROFESSIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN OBLIGATIONS. 13. The Military as a Profession. 14. Unjust Wars and Professional Responsibility. 15. The Role of the United Nations. Glossary. Selected Bibliography. Index.

Contents: Introduction, Richard Sorabji and David Rodin. Part I Traditions: Just war from ancient origins to the Conquistadors debate and its modern relevance, Richard Sorabji The just war of Eastern Christians and the holy war of the Crusaders, Angeliki Laiou Conceptions of justice in war: from Grotius to modern times, Karma Nabulsi Arguments concerning resistance in contemporary Islam, John Kelsay War and reason in Maimonides and Averroes, Noah Feldman The ethics of war: Judaism, Norman Solomon Just war in the Mahabharata, Nick Allen. Part II Contemporary Problems: The ethics of asymmetric war, David Rodin Preventive war and the killing of the innocent, Jeff McMahan War, humanitarian intervention and human rights, Richard Norman Culture, the enemy and the moral restraint of war, Anthony Coates Application of just war criteria in the period 1959-89, Richard Harries Britain's wars since 1945, Michael Quinlan Index.

This article analyses current trends in and future expectations of nanotechnology and other key enabling technologies for security as well as dual use nanotechnology from the perspective of the ethical Just War Theory (JWT), interpreted as an instrument to increase the threshold for using armed force for solving conflicts. The aim is to investigate the relevance of the JWT to the ethical governance of research. The analysis gives rise to the following results. From the perspective of the JWT, military research should be evaluated with different criteria than research for civil or civil security applications. From a technological perspective, the boundaries between technologies for civil and military applications are fuzzy. Therefore the JWT offers theoretical grounds for making clear distinctions between research for military, civil security and other applications that are not obvious from a purely technological perspective. Different actors bear responsibility for development of the technology than for resorting to armed force for solving conflicts or for use of weapons and military technologies in combat. Different criteria should be used for moral judgment of decisions made by each type of actor in each context. In addition to evaluation of potential consequences of future use of the weapons or military technologies under development, the JWT also prescribes ethical evaluation of the inherent intent and other foreseeable consequences of the development itself of new military technologies.

Most contemporary advocates of the Just War Tradition (JWT) condemn religious war. If they are correct, waging war should be a secular affair, fully justifiable on non-religious grounds. This secularized understanding of the JWT draws on normative commitments that lead many political theorists to advocate in favor of a secularized politics in western liberal polities. As a matter of historical fact and contemporary commitment, many Muslims have rejected the secularized conception of the morality of war found in contemporary conceptions of the JWT. I argue that, given appropriate distinctions between relevantly different kinds of religious war, advocates of the JWT have excellent reason to rethink their antipathy to religious war. Specifically, I argue that distinct kinds of religious war can enjoy differential normative standing and that there is no compelling reason to believe that religiously justified wars must be waged in a morally improper manner, viz., in a way that violates the JWT's in bello requirements.

Francisco de Vitoria (1483/1486 – 1546), a Spanish Dominican friar and the dean of the School of Salamanca, developed a comprehensive theory of just war. In this theory, he addressed ius ad bellum, ius in bello, and ius post bellum. His interpretations of ius in bello – the rules for waging a just war by a just side against an unjust side – are particularly useful, even to this day. This paper briefly analyzes these rules and the solid, yet heterogeneous arguments Vitoria used to prove their validity and correctness. Vitoria’s ius in bello corresponds to his understanding of a just war as the judgment of an unjust side by a just side for harm caused. Thus, it primarily regulates the conduct of the just side in an ongoing just war, giving it superiority over the unjust side. Conversely, it restricts the just side’s use of military force against the unjust side, a concept that is a precursor to the modern law of war.