Just War Research Articles

A threshold account of last resort in the ethics of war

This study aims to demonstrate the essential role that the condition of last resort plays in determining when waging war is exceptionally justified. In recent years, this condition has been criticised despite being considered an indispensable condition for just war. According to the commonly accepted Exhaustion View, the last resort occurs after all other options are exhausted. However, the categorical precedence of non-military measures may exacerbate the situation. In order to address this issue, this study presents an alternative Threshold View of last resort. According to this view, the last resort indicates when a certain threshold is crossed, and the initial presumption against war is overridden by more stringent justifications for waging war. By presenting and defending this view, this study addresses the various objections directed at the last resort condition without undermining the requirement of lastness embedded in it.

The Church and Violence During Multiparty Elections in Kenya from 1992 to 2017

Violence fastened with the passion of religion predominantly continues cloaking the world at an alarming rate because violence does not only belong to everyone but it is also at the heart of the consecrated. It is no surprise therefore that violence in Kenya recurs virtually during every election resulting into polarization and tensions along religious and ethnic affiliations or both. The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between the Church and violence during multiparty politics in Kenya. This paper analyzed the role the church played in specific violent events during multiparty politics since 1992 up to 2017 in Kenya. In this regard the study responded to the question; what was the role of the church in the violent events during elections in multiparty politics since 1992 in Kenya? To answer this question the study investigated the role of the church in the specific violence which occurred during elections in 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2013 and 2017 election years in Kenya inferring that their roles influenced the occurrence of violence from time to time. The study was conducted through qualitative research method using historical research designs. The study established that the churches in Kenya played various roles in the violence; some of the churches kept quiet as violence flourished in their areas of jurisdiction because they conceived it as punitive and ungodly and in that way, they were in coordinated efforts; while some other churches condoned and extenuated circumstances that led to violent acts because they had a passive attitude towards the government authority having been part and parcel of it in calling for social changes; whereas some churches were not only complicit but endorsed and exhorted violence particularly by blessing youth warriors before going to fight in ethnic violence, believing that it was their religious duty to extirpate injustices and subdue evil in the sinful world using strategic acts of violence as necessary means of deterring large acts of violence and that they had the divine authority to legitimize violence so as to uproot the political evils bedeviling Kenya. In view of all these, the study concluded that the churches were metaphysically, morally, politically and criminally culpable for the violence during multiparty politics in Kenya. Consequently the study maintains that the church in Kenya, like it is with religion in general, is intrinsically violent in the version of a raging cosmic battle between “order” and “disorder” akin to the cosmic war theory as advanced by Mark Juergensmeyer. Often it is the boundary between ‘this world’ and the ‘other world’ that is blurred by church during electioneering period so that the supposedly cosmic battle becomes a real war when people shed real blood and die. The study recommends that it is important to understand the dynamics of the roles played in violence by other religious organization in multi religious nations like Kenya. The degree to which other faiths influence political views in Kenya with regard to election violence is critical. The issue of how the church can mitigate against the cyclic political violence in Kenya kept on evocating in the study. It is important to understand the remedies that the church can put in place to alleviate violence during elections in Kenya.

Assessing War Crimes Accountability Through Just War Theory: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Abstract: With the great power games and the continued escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the international community has paid great attention to the issue of war crimes, prompting the war crimes accountability mechanism to become an important topic in the field of international law. This new type of war crimes accountability mechanism is an intertwining of the theory of just war and the applicability of international law, reflecting the complex global scrutiny of legal responsibility and moral constraints in conflicts under the current complex geopolitical factors. Against this backdrop, the International Criminal Court (ICC), national courts, and relevant institutions are attempting to build an effective accountability network to pursue war crimes through legal means. How to assess the accountability mechanism for war crimes through the just war theory and how the applicability of international law affects the justice of war will become an important factor in promoting universal adherence to international law and upholding the justice of war.

Park on the social sciences and the consequences of war

Robert Park’s response to the First World War can only be understood by considering his body of work extending from before the outbreak of that war to publications written near the end of his life. Park and his son Edward had contemplated writing a book on the nature of war, but it never came to fruition. His wrote sparingly and unsystematically—but insightfully—on the topic. His first publication on the topic appeared in a 1900 journalistic article on “The German Army: The Most Perfect Military Organization in the World.” In it, he pointed to the uniquely destructive potential of modern warfare. In a second article he speculated about the impact of the First World War on the social sciences and in a third he explored the impact—potential and real—of the First World War on immigrant communities in the United States. During the Second World War, Park published an article on “The Social Function of War: Observations and Notes” that serves as his most systematic effort at articulating a theory of war. His final publication, refracted through the Nazi idea of the master race, explored the potential for racial ideologies to foster racial conflict and violence in the future.

Veblen’s quadripartite response to the First World War

Prior to the First World War, Thorstein Veblen wrote extensively about economic theory, formulating the tenets of an evolutionary and institutional economics, and criticizing the static and atomistic premises of classical and marginalist economics, particularly the marginalist theory of distribution, which, in his view, wrongly saw wealth as a reward for productive human labor, rather than a result of the unproductive conduct of parasitic elites. In this period, Veblen devoted relatively little attention to the topics of war and peace. As well, he held that social-scientific inquiry is disinterested: a value-neutral search for knowledge of empirical facts and the theories that explain them. However, during the War, Veblen, while retaining the economic principles of his prewar writings, increasingly combined his emphasis on economics with greater attention to political and cultural factors. Simultaneously, he abandoned his prior insistence on value neutrality to become an activist critic of the War and of Germany’s role in fomenting and perpetuating it. This shift led him to develop: (1) a policy-laced theory of war and peace; (2) practical proposals for building an international organization to promote world peace; (3) specific measures to alleviate wartime food and labor shortages in the U.S.; and (4) a sweeping plan for postwar social “reconstruction.” As Veblen developed these four sets of ideas, he continued his opposition to static and atomistic forms of analysis as well as his commitment to an evolutionary and institutional approach, which saw economic life, along with war and peace, turning on a divide between productive human beings and unproductive parasitic elites.

Blood Rites Theory: Is it an Alternative to Hegemonic War Theories?

Developing a history of socialization to warfare, Ehrenreich reminds us of the possible roots that made humans turn from prey to predators. using the prehistorical sociopolitical developments initially from bands, tribes to chiefdoms and states, Ehrenreich tries to link the causes of war to these social mutations linked to symbolism and “blood rites” portraying it as a males’ activity. Although it seems that the approach is appealing as a constructivist or a social teleology with a feminist affinity, it fails however to grasp the causes of hegemonic wars. this paper addresses this dimension while defending the idea that the (neo)realist approach is still of relevance when approaching causation of modern warfare.

Environmental Just Wars: Jus ad Bellum and the Natural Environment

ABSTRACTWar is bad for the environment, yet the environmental ramifications of warfare have not been widely addressed by just war theorists and revisionist philosophers of war. The law and legal scholars have paid more attention to protecting nature during armed conflict. But because the law focuses invariably on rules mitigating the conduct of hostilities rather than on objective justice of cause, environmental jus ad bellum has been explored even less extensively than environmental ethics in war. Setting out with the presumption against the use of force and its exceptions, this article considers whether environmental harm can trigger a new justification for war, at whose behest, and what might be a proportionate response to aggressive or negligent harm to nature. Force is clearly justified against military attacks. Where environmental harm is not caused by military aggression, proportionality points towards a response short of war. Full‐scale warfare will likely be counterproductive in protecting nature. This is less true if war is fought by drones destroying specific targets, or by cyber‐war, or by alternatives (or supplements) to war such as boycotts, ‘lawfare’, and ‘information/media warfare’. Responding in ways that minimize harm to nature also helps demonstrate ‘right intention’.

In Between Digital War and Peace

ABSTRACT The world can be divided into a digital sphere and a physical sphere. Within the realm of the physical sphere, Michael Walzer’s Just War Theory stands as a prominent framework for understanding the ethics of warfare. Is his theoretical framework also applicable to the digital sphere? This article studies whether elements of Walzer’s theory can be adapted to the context of digital conflict. Walzer divides countries into zones of peace, zones of war, and in-between zones. A country could then, for example, be a physical zone of peace but a digital zone of war. This article explores in which ways the defining characteristics of the different zones can be found in the digital sphere. It concludes that the digital sphere should mostly be seen as an in-between zone, with the problem of very unclear borders. Regarding Walzer’s theory, while it offers valuable insights when applied to the digital sphere, difficulties arise, underscoring the necessity for further research to refine the principles of just war within the digital sphere.

War and Socio-Ecological Implications in the Poetry of Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin

This paper examines the horrors of war on man and the environment and holds that there is no justification for war. The paper maintains that those who encourage war have generally never experienced its disastrousness. From a New Historicist perspective, the paper explores how survivors or victims of war become indifferent and develop attitudes of apathy towards life as they are continually haunted by the fear of the imminent outbreak of another war in which they could die. Consequently, these war victims develop a pessimistic perception of life and contravene its norms. From an ecocritical standpoint, the paper explores how these survivors ruthlessly exploit nature, out of frustration, and deliberately carry out activities that endanger the flora and fauna.

Decentring the West? Civilizational solidarity and (de)colonization in theories of the Russia-Ukraine War

ABSTRACT Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a growing literature promoting the Ukrainian national cause, framed in decolonial terms, has influenced public discourse about the Russia-Ukraine War in the West. Filtered through the activist interpretation of cultural epistemologies, with their emphasis on the centring and decentring of knowledges, the war has been imagined primarily as a colonial emanation of a Russian narrative. We argue that the heavily moralized notion of epistemological and mental decolonization has impeded critical investigation into the degree of responsibility for, and the NATO powers’ involvement in, the Russia-Ukraine War. In order to attain a rigorous analysis of all actors’ motives and rationalities, we argue for the need to understand the conflict's structural and historical dimensions, and thus to draw from the classical, structural approaches to analysing imperial power that predate the cultural turn.

A Return to Right Intention in the Just War

ABSTRACT It has been argued that the criterion of right intention adds nothing in just war theory – that it is subsumed by other conditions on just war. It has also been argued that there is no tenable reading of the criterion at all, and in particular that taking it as a positive requirement on the state's motives is after all incoherent in a way that would make it impossible to satisfy. This article gives an action-theoretic analysis of (one central understanding of) the criterion and uses it to examine arguments that have been offered for the strong negative claims above. It is shown that none of these arguments succeed. Our endeavor brings welcome clarity and understanding to our own ideas about the criterion.

Islam and the Ethics of War: Deconstructing Jihad through the Principle of Humanism in Theological Discourses

Islam and the Ethics of War: Deconstructing Jihad through the Principle of Humanism in Theological Discourses

The ethics of war and peace settlement: Philosophical approaches in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War

The ethics of war and peace settlement: Philosophical approaches in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War

КОНФУЦИАНСКАЯ ЭТИКА ВОЙНЫ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ДРЕВНЕКИТАЙСКОГО МИФА О ТРАНЗИТЕ ВЛАСТИ

The paper analyzes ethical views on war held by the authors of the classical Confucian treatises, Lunyu and Mengzi, in the context of their attitude towards the characters of the ancient Chinese power transition myth. In terms of ethics of war, Mengzi differs from Lunyu in the following aspects: prioritization of justice over political order; emphasis on legitimacy, not legality; people-orientedness over norm-orientedness; development of the jus in bello discourse; permissibility of rebellion, which entails positive assessment of Wu-wang’s campaign, and critique of its objectors, Boyi and Shuqi.

Evaluation Of The 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation in The Light of Jus Cogens Rules

Shortly after the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, the events initiated by Makarios’ attempts to amend the constitution, which escalated into internal conflicts and external interventions, culminated in Turkey’s military intervention. The effects of this intervention continue to persist today. Due to this characteristic, it has been the subject of many studies; however, it has not been evaluated in terms of the jus cogens rules, which express the universally accepted principles of international law, and the stages of the just war theory. To address this need, the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation, a long-standing international issue, has been examined within the framework of the jus cogens rules of international law, considering the three phases of just war theory: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. This examination aims to determine the level of compliance with jus cogens international law norms in the historical and political context of the Cyprus issue, as well as the developments before, during, and after the 1974 Peace Operation. Consequently, it has been determined that the 1974 Peace Operation adhered to the jus cogens rules of international law to the maximum extent. In the source review, a balanced selection of sources was made to objectively evaluate the assessments of both the Turkish and Greek Cypriot sides on the issue. This study is qualitative in nature, employing both inductive and deductive methods.‎

Gender, War, and Religion: Feminist Perspectives on Pathways to Just Peace

Starting with clashes between Western and Ukrainian feminists, this article discusses basic questions from an intersectional perspective on the relation between gender, war and religion. In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, how should a gender-sensitive peace ethics look? Among feminists, as in religious communities, we find radical pacifist positions next to and sometimes conflicting with approaches that draw on traditions of “just war” and/or “just peace.” After discussing the different approaches in Christian tradition, including Eastern traditions, and describing the imperialist nature of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the author highlights the importance of engaging feminist theories of war and militarism in the analysis and how they resonate with practices on the ground in Ukraine. The feminist lens demands attention for the full reality of war, for women’s multilayered agency in war, and for the genderedness of discourses and practices surrounding war heroism and war traumas. Based on such considerations and arguments, the article proposes five “principles” for a feminist political theology on war and peace, as a contribution to the ongoing scholarly debate. Markers on a feminist-theological pathway to just peace may include: reconsidering the notion of sacrifice; fearlessly bringing theology into religious diplomacy; nothing for Ukraine without the voices of Ukrainian women; embracing a paradigm of human security instead of state security; and the remaining challenge to imagine a common future with the enemy beyond the current evil of destruction.

Can Two Opposing Narratives Be Equally Valid? Reflections on Zreik’s Reflections on the War in Gaza

Abstract The article critically examines the arguments of Raef Zreik regarding the 2023 war in Gaza. It first analyzes the use of the concept of narrative in defending political causes and actions. It shows that due to their subjective nature two opposing narratives can be equally valid as long as they satisfy conditions of internal coherence and fidelity to the facts. It then shows that Zreik’s argument of ‘fragmentation’ is double edged and cannot be used for laying full responsibility on Israel. It then proceeds to criticize the claim that Zionism is a colonialist enterprise and shows that Zionism does not consist of all the basic characteristics of colonialism. Finally, it analyzes the common argument of self-defense as the only justification of starting a war and shows the limitation of such an argument in a theory of war, mainly because in most wars both sides have the right to defend themselves, including the allegedly unjust party. All that remains after showing the weakness of most arguments for this or that side to the conflict is the conclusion that compromise is the only way out of the deadlock, having the virtue of being pragmatic rather principled.

PUTIN AND BIDEN’S SPEECHES ON THE RUSSIAN INVOLVEMENT IN UKRAINE: DIALOGUE AND POLEMICS

Throughout the world’s long tradition with war, it has often been raised as a question whether any war was worth waging, and if so, when and how? The reply to this philosophical maze of extreme convictions differs depending on whom you ask. In this present article, we tackled the ideological differences that lead to the discrepancies between answers given by Russia and the United States of America. For this, we took as primary sources the speeches of 24 February 2022 that Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden made on Russia’s immediate involvement in Ukraine. We tried to look for dialogic clash over the choice of diction as a major ideological stance, relying on Michael Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and his notions of hidden polemics and parody to illustrate the condemnation of the war on one end and its justification on the other. The aim was to extrapolate the themes tackled and their sequence by referring to the just war theory in its three divisions jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum which together structure the ancient practice of the art of war in its distinct phases. Biden and Putin heavily bid on these notions to give their viewpoints legal and ethical legitimacy and convince the international community of their just causes. Through this study, we found that the presidents stylized their speeches to follow each other’s, giving responses in an implicit and tacit manner, which we uncovered as hidden polemics in their styles of diction. We have also discovered that both presidents evoked their nemesis’ violation of the just war theory and defended their own just cause and respect for international regulation. This study falls within the field of discourse analysis that is a key element in understanding politics on the levels of presidential speeches.

Theories of War and the African context: Whither strategic theory?

Theories of War and the African context: Whither strategic theory?

The Good Muslim as a Quest for Jus Post Bellum in a Nation in Transition

This paper explores the search for justice after the war in Tahmima Anam’s novel, The Good Muslim. The novel deals with the aftermath of ‘the Liberation War of Bangladesh’ in the 1970s and early 80s, when the country was gravely suffering from famine, consecutive murders of their prominent leaders, political upheavals, natural disasters, and paralyzed democratic norms in the hands of a Dictator Hussein Muhammad Ershad. In such a context, Maya Haque, the protagonist of the novel, and an erstwhile freedom fighter continues writing and fighting for modern education, justice for the rape victims of the war, and democracy in the country. The study analyzes narrative data from the novel to see how the female characters struggle for justice after the war. For this purpose, it uses Larry May’s insights on ‘jus post bellum’. May has proposed six criteria for post-war justice, including ‘reconciliation’ and ‘rebuilding’, to maintain lasting peace in a post-war society. The novel entails these conditions and brings transitional justice to the fore of discourse through the literary creation. The paper claims that the protagonist is not only raising her voice for certain characters in the novel, rather she is constantly contributing to the broader issue of jus post bellum, which has been the most important, yet the most ‘neglected’ topic in just war theories. The article concludes with the idea that a fictitious work like The Good Muslim can be a good voice for the voiceless and a loud and clear advocacy for justice after the war. It can contribute to maintaining law and order and build up lasting peace preventing further violence in a postwar society.