War Doctrine Research Articles

Cold Start: The Life Cycle of a Doctrine

India's conventional war doctrine has been extensively discussed over the past decade. It has been dubbed Cold Start, though the term has been dropped from usage recently. The article discusses India's limited-war doctrine in its origin, impetus behind it, tenets, and reasons for the current distancing from the doctrine. The doctrine was India's rekindling of its conventional deterrent in the face of Pakistani subconventional proxy warfare. Its implications in terms of escalation possibilities to the nuclear level attracted considerable attention. Its “quick on the draw” nature added to concerns on crisis stability. These conspired to shift the latest doctrinal movement in India away from default reliance on traditional conventional operations to a proactive strategy that includes in addition punitive military response options.

Only the King Can Do It: Adaptation and Flexibility in Crusade Ideology in Sixteenth-Century Spain

Reforming efforts at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the challenges of Protestantism, the rise of national states, and the reassessment of just war doctrine, had initiated a moment of crisis for crusading by the mid-sixteenth century. Indeed, historians have described these trends as signaling the end of the movement. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings deployed by an elite group of Spanish theologians and churchmen in May of 1567 to shore up their monarch's claim to a lucrative version of the crusade indulgence granted by popes since the fifteenth century. By rehearsing traditional arguments, eschewing those they saw as obsolete, and deploying new ones, these theorists expose the remarkable adaptability of crusading. The integrity of papally sanctioned holy war against the enemies of the faith collapsed in later centuries with the rise of international law and recognition of permanent divisions within therespublica Christiana. Yet, the ability of sixteenth-century Spanish theorists to recast ideology in the face of shifting intellectual, cultural, and social tides indicates the continuing viability of crusading during a period of inchoateness.

WAR AND MILITARY DOCTRINE IN THE YEARS 1921-1939

Theoretical military thought from the interwar period pointed towards the issues of war and war doctrines many times. The views of the nature of future war developed in the context of real conditions, formed after World War I. Many interpretations of war and military doctrine were developed, including their objectives. The main goal was to leave the idea of positional warfare. It has been suggested that future war would be maneuvering, coalitional and total.Among military theorists, and not only, the opinion prevailed that the effectiveness of military doctrine, and also the effectiveness of war, will depend on the organization of armed forces. This means the principles and methods to change the forms of living and material forces of the nation into national defense. The war was not anymore among the armed forces but it became the war of the nations. It was important to find ways and methods to defend the nation, using not only armed forces, but also all the areas of life of the nation. It would mainly depend on the co-operation between civilian and military authorities.

Pourquoi intervenir ? Le critère de la cause juste dans la théorie de l'intervention humanitaire armée

In general, the humanitarian justification for military intervention adopts the criteria of traditional just war doctrine : just cause, legitimate authority, good intentions, positive effect, last recourse and proportionality. There are at least three ways of approaching the first of these criteria, that of just cause. Some authors formulate it in terms of rights : since humanitarian intervention is defined as aiming to prevent or put an end to massive violations of human rights, determining the just cause is ultimately a matter of stating what rights are in question. Most authors formulate this in terms of acts of violence : they prepare a list of crimes that in their view constitute just causes of intervention. The third approach consists of phrasing the question in terms of harm, without necessarily specifying what rights have been violated or what crimes have caused harm. This position falls within the framework of a consequentialist perspective.

WAGING DEFENSIVE WAR: THE IDEA AND ITS NORMATIVE IMPORTANCE

During the 20th century some versions of just war doctrine came to restrict the condition of just cause to defense, that is, these just war doctrines now hold it to be a necessary condition for the moral justifiability of any war that it be undertaken for defensive purposes. These purposes need not be self – defensive but may be defensive of the welfare and legitimate rights of other polities and groups. Some reasons for war are obviously not defensive, for example, the acquisition of territory or the assertion of imperialist control. But the boundaries of defensive warfare are unclear. I will consider two important cases in which this lack of clarity is proving to be morally significant: namely, preventive and punitive warfare undertaken for the sake of the goal of defense. I will argue that the normative rationale for limiting just cause to defense does not allow these as legitimate forms of defense. That rationale moves towards the view that one should not intend the deaths of enemies but only the restraint of their wrongdoing, and preventive and punitive warfare appear to involve intending the deaths of enemies.

Just War: Catholicism’s Contribution to International Law

THAT THE MORAL AND THEOLOGICAL ISSUES discussed in what follows are not academic matters, we are reminded by an exchange that moved theater-goers four centuries ago. KING HENRY Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company,--his cause being and his quarrel honourable. WILLIAM That's more than we know. BATES Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough if we know we are the king's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us. WILLIAM But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, We died at such a place; some swearing; some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Shakespeare, King Henry V, iv. i. Origins of Just War Theory It has become a commonplace to assert that just war arose from a Christian tradition formulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. This half-truth conceals both the indebtedness of each to earlier thinkers as well as the profound differences between them that have important consequences. It is also often claimed that war theory has been developed in order to justify wars favored by authors of the theory. This claim is confuted by the historical circumstances in which Christian thinking on this subject reached its fullest development. In what follows, I hope to stimulate constructive doubt about these opinions. I wish to indicate that as war doctrine matured it also progressively departed from Augustine's point of view. Augustine makes a significant contribution to moral wisdom about war, but he does not contribute to a theory of war's justice. I shall also suggest that war doctrine was both a distinctively Catholic achievement and one that could, for that very reason, be appropriated by all conscientious persons. Fatuous as it may be to assign provenance to great movements in human thought, international law has been repeatedly assigned either of two originators. more widely known is the seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinist scholar, jurist, and diplomat, Hugo Grotius. (1) other candidate is the sixteenth-century Spanish Dominican philosopher and theologian, Francisco de Vitoria. (2) By a winsome irony there exists at Hague a plaque dedicated to The Founder of International Law. plaque was erected by the Grotius Society. person it honors is Vitoria. My present interest in this amicable question of origins is the symbolic focus it provides. For between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a progressive though erratic Catholic doctrinal development reached its maturity. It subsequently shed its ecclesiastical particularities and entered upon a new tradition, secular and juridical. (3) Finally, after two world wars, the theory has gained firmer footing in practice through the League of Nations and the United Nations. I hope to indicate two things in this condensed account: first, how war theory originated as a moral doctrine; and second, how it was modified by the principles of authoritative thinkers and refined in controversy generated by unforeseen events. I shall stop at the period commonly labeled Renaissance and Reformation because it was then that war theory, in essence nearly complete, ceased to be part of specifically Christian intellectual history and became part of the new jurisprudence of international law. After that time, Catholic war theory participated in a general stagnation of post-Reformation Catholic moral and political thought that continued to the nineteenth century. During the same period, mainstream Protestant religious thinkers paid it little attention beyond insisting, against Protestant pacifists, that wars certainly could be and--at least when conducted by Protestant rulers--were best presumed to be so. …

Surfing on the edge of chaos: Nonlinear science and the emergence of a doctrine of preventive war in the US

This article argues that during the 1990s, military professionals and civilian defense experts in the US used concepts and metaphors from nonlinear science to translate tenets of 1980s battlefield strategy and tactics into theories of international politics and foreign policy that posited the necessity of speed and offense in the face of a supposedly more chaotic and dangerous post-Cold War world. Ultimately, the most militaristic of the lessons supposedly learned from and justified by the ‘new sciences’ made their way to the highest reaches of the US Department of Defense under President G.W. Bush, and served as a foundation for acting quickly and preventively against ‘gathering threats’. In addition to allowing us to understand better the origins of the ‘Bush Doctrine’, this paper improves our understanding of the relationship between the sciences and the state/military in the post-Cold War US — in particular the role of scientific metaphor in national security discourses that have focused on the challenges and opportunities of new information and communication technologies.

Towards a Proactive Military Strategy: ‘Cold Start and Stop’

The article reviews the Cold Start doctrine in light of the limited war doctrine. It argues that the launch of strike corps entails a risk prone war expansion. War termination should therefore be short of the launch of strike corps offensives. It suggests a ‘Cold Start and Stop’ strategy with limited offensives by integrated battle groups being used to coerce Pakistan. Pakistani amenability to Indian war aims would be dependent on India offering incentives diplomatically alongside. India's limited war doctrine, currently not articulated, must be informed by such a war waging strategy. Making force usable in the nuclear age requires certain doctrinal and organisational changes suggested in the article.

Historisitas Doktrin Konflik dan Integrasi Sosial dalam Al-Qur'an

Academic findings show that there is a clear distinction between Muslims and Orientalists when they learn al-Qur'an on social conflict and integration. Muslims employ legal and theological perspective that results in normative doctrines. As an internal study, it claims superiority and excellence over non-Muslims studies. According to Muslim scholars, conflict and peace is inseparable. Conflict is a price to uplift peaceful agendas. On the contrary, orientalists who make use socio-historic approach expose the dominance of conflict doctrines in Al-Qur'an over its instruction about peace. Islam is a religion that legalizes violence in its spread. This article is an attempt to make a bridge between the two perspectives to uncover socio-theological facts which trigger the doctrine of war in Islam.

Fuller’s theory of war and the changes in the concepts of warfare in the second half of XX century: The rise of "creative" war

Current scientific and scholarly discourse on war, which represents the legitimate knowledge and theory on war today, has been narrowed to the topics and issues related to war doctrine and technology of war. It has become reserved for the privileged ?green collars?, highly skilled professionals and officers inside the military structure, which act in cooperation with the political and economic elites, forming the triumvirate of power in contemporary world. The opportunities for civil critique of military politics and strategies of wars have been decreased enormously, in spite of the fact that contemporary wars have spread deeply into the civil sector of society. By looking into the social context and political background of the knowledge reserved for the military experts, we can develop insights into the process of the ideological framing of wars today, marked by naturalization and purposeful interpretations of wars, as if they are fought in the name of democratization of global world. At the same time, the image of the importance of human factor in war has been decreased, as much as responsibility for causalities. Citizens have been pacified for the silent acceptance of military politics promoted in their countries.

‘Cyberation’ and Just War Doctrine: A Response to Randall Dipert

In this essay, I reject the suggestion that the just war tradition (JWT) does not apply to cyberwarfare (CW). That is not to say CW will not include grey areas defying easy analysis in terms of the JWT. But analogously ambiguous cases have long existed in warfare without undercutting the JWT's broad relevance. That some aspects of CW are unique is likewise no threat to the JWT's applicability. The special character of CW remains similar enough to other kinds of warfare; the distinctions are more differences of degree than of kind.

Religion, World Order, and Peace: Christianity, War, and Peacemaking

Religion, World Order, and Peace: Christianity, War, and Peacemaking James Heft All religions need to examine how they contribute to the common good, which includes more people than those who follow a particular religion. The United Nations Secretary General’s recent invitation to all religious and spiritual leaders to examine how they contribute to creating a culture of justice and peace for the world community provides an ideal opportunity for that examination. A central part of that culture for Christians is their attitudes toward war and peacemaking. Those attitudes have evolved dramatically over time, especially in the last century. Christianity has gone through many changes with regard to war and peacemaking, beginning with the first few centuries when Christians refused to join Rome’s Imperial Army, to the first elaborations of the Just War doctrines beginning in the third century, to the Crusades in the medieval period, and to the present day when the largest single group of Christians, Roman Catholics, officially have made the criteria for a just war more difficult to meet than ever and have begun to elaborate the requirements for peacemaking. Among themselves, however, the world’s over two billion Christians continue to disagree on these matters, with some groups supporting preemptive military actions and others pacifism. Historically speaking, the position of Christians in the world has no doubt affected their understanding of the morality of war and peacemaking. The New Testament texts themselves never directly address the morality of war, although the example of Jesus, especially as he faced his own death, suggests a strong non‐violent attitude. The earliest Christians, a small minority tucked into the seams of the huge Roman Empire, could adopt (without much notice) a pacifist position. But with the passage of time, however, Christians entered the military, and religious leaders were forced to reflect more systematically on the morality of armed conflict. Once Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, Augustine (354–430) elaborated a theory about when war could be “justified” morally: namely as a response of love to a neighbor who has been threatened by force. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) developed the idea of the “just war” further by legitimating self‐defense as a reason for war. Throughout the Middle Ages, however, popes themselves not only called for the Crusades to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims, but also did not hesitate to use force to protect their interests and to enforce their policies. It was not until the papacy was forcibly stripped of the papal states by Italian nationalists in 1870 that the pope’s exercise of power shifted dramatically to the moral and spiritual dimensions of leadership. Pope Benedict XV (1914–1922) tried unsuccessfully to end World War I and to create an international alliance among the nations of the world. In 1944, a year before President Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb over Japan, an influential Jesuit moral theologian published an article that condemned saturation bombing. Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) initiated a richer and broader vision of war and peacemaking when he reiterated in a fresh and compelling way the need for an international body with responsibility for defining and defending human rights. Just two years after Pope John’s death, his successor, Pope Paul VI (1963–1978) spoke before the United Nations and cried out, “No more war, war never again!” One of the documents of Vatican II (1962–1965) flatly condemned total war and called for political leaders, indeed all people of good will, to approach war with a totally new attitude; that text (Gaudium et spes) also endorsed non‐violent resistance. In later encyclicals, Pope Paul identified the work for justice as the basis for a lasting peace. From 1870 to 1978, therefore, a profound shift had begun to take place in the Catholic teaching about war and peacemaking. More than any other pope in modern history, Pope John Paul II (1978–2005) reshaped the Catholic Church’s understanding of the just war theory. As first and foremost a social philosopher, Pope John Paul II based his rethinking of “Just War” on his understanding of the freedom and dignity of the human person, the centrality...

The Platonic roots of just war doctrine: a reading of Plato’s Republic

Plato arguably stands as one of the precursors to what we today know as the Just War Tradition, and he has more to say about ethics and the use of force than what is often acknowledged. In this article I try to show, by analyzing selected passages and perspectives from the Republic, that Plato regards the role of military ethics as crucial in the construction of the ideal city, and he sees limitation of brutality and more generally a philosophical approach to the use of force as crucial elements of the city’s approach to warfare. Military power and, indeed, harsh preparations for it do occupy a central position in Plato’s political thought, but use of armed force is at the same time closely linked to the virtue of justice as well as the other virtues.

Justice, War and Inequality. The Unjust Aggressor and the Enemy of the Human Race in Vattel's Theory of the Law of Nations

AbstractThis article discusses the well-known verdict of Vattel's legal positivism in relation to concepts of modernity and the European State System (Schmitt, Remec) and aims at a re-interpretation of Vattel's understanding of the modern state, just war and the international order. It wants to show that even though States and individuals do not obey the same logic and reason, Vattel was neiter a Hobbesian thinker nor, as Kant claimed, a 'sorry comforter'. The main reason for this is that Vattel's doctrine of the war en forme does not imply a break with the tradition of just war. Instead, it should be read as a reformulation of the inegalitarian notion of the enemy as proposed by just war doctrines. Pointing out to the persistance of a jusnaturalistic framework, the article shows that Vattel's concept of justus hostis is built on the same conceptual framework as the concept of the enemy of the human race.

Du radicalisme à l'extrémisme animalier

Peter Singer claims that human beings have at least a duty to be vegetarians, given their moral duty to maximise general utility. Tom Regan thinks that “subjects-of-a-life”, be they humans or animals, have the right to live and not to suffer damages, and our duty is to respect them. Steven Best and Mark Bernstein justify direct actions for the liberation of animals and economic sabotage in the name of legitimate defence and the just war doctrine.

“Terrorists Are Human Beings”: Mapping theu.s. Army's “Human Terrain Systems” Program

This article puts an emerging war doctrine archive through the paces of its philosophical analogues. Establishing in the first part of the article the “weaponizing of culture” (a now-common U.S. military phrase), which is occurring autogenically, that is, within and without the remnants of the liberal representative state, the author argues that war is now a fully operational part of the organizational work that terms like community, culture, and humanity are now doing (and doing differently than before). War in the sense invoked here is activated at various levels of intensity and visibility (think Katrina, the Patriot Act, Wall Street) as a civil or civilian war within the United States that is everywhere present but is hardly recognizable as such. In addressing one essential area of governmentality—demographics—the author makes the case for a change in liberal governmental reason that is evident in the U.S. Census 2000, concluding that demography has taken a uniquely post–civil rights turn in the unprecedented context of a coming U.S. white minority. Categorical self-identification within the permeable race and ethnic categories that the state now endorses paradoxically releases it from whatever previous civil-rights obligations the state may have had. In unpacking how this process works—call it autogenic violence at the level precisely of “recognition”—this article revisits Habermas's reliance on a juridically grounded base for intersubjectivity. Habermas extends the appeal for liberal international law to an updated endorsement of Kant's quest for perpetual cosmopolitan peace. With the problem of history and the relationship between temporality and the “cultural” disciplines such as philosophy in mind, the author updates Habermas's updating of Kant in a context of perpetual war that neither figure is willing to imagine.

THE WAR CONVENTION AND THE MORAL DIVISION OF LABOUR

My claim is that despite powerful arguments to the contrary, a coherent moral distinction between the jus in bello code and the jus ad bellum code can be sustained. In particular, I defend the traditional just war doctrine according to which the independence between the in bello and ad bellum codes reflects the moral equality between just and unjust combatants and between just and unjust non-combatants. In order to establish this, I construe an in bello proportionality condition which can be satisfied by just and unjust combatants alike.

The Future of Preventive Wars: the case of Iraq

Eight years have past since the devastating September 11 attacks, and the USA has engaged in two wars in the name of uprooting global ‘terrorism’ and providing security to American citizens. The Bush administration bequeathed a legacy of two ongoing wars and growing threats emerging from ‘terrorist’ acts. This article analyses the future of the preventive war doctrine, formulated by the Bush administration, under international law. The article thus explores whether the preventive war doctrine has the potential to set a customary precedence, or whether it merely constitutes a breach of international law.

Peace or Pax Americana? US Middle East policy and the threat to global security

This paper examines US policy in the greater Middle Eastern region in the aftermath of the September 2001 al-Qaida attacks on the United States. The paper argues that the US Administration had engaged in a series of policy initiatives which have posed a direct challenge to the post-World War II international legal order. The doctrine of preventative war, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, threats against Iran, the aggressive counter-insurgency operations and air campaigns in Afghanistan, the backing for some of the more militaristic and expansionist elements in Israel, and related policies have served to alienate the United States from Middle Eastern states and even traditional European and Asian allies whose cooperation is needed in the struggle against international terrorism. The overemphasis on military means to address complex political, social and economic problems in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran has emboldened extremists and weakened moderate voices and have resulted in a more anarchic international order which makes legitimate counter-terrorism efforts all the more difficult.

Ethics Appropriate for an Empire: A Question Whose Time Has Come

This article offers a Christian ethical commentary upon the debate over the contemporary "American Empire." While many decry unprecedented US global dominance based on various secular standpoints, few have articulated religiously-grounded perspectives on this new US relation to the world. The task of mustering religious objections to openly imperial ambitions looms particularly large in light of prominent unabashed defenses of US global hegemony. The paper has three parts: (1) preliminary clarifications regarding terminology and context; (2) a survey of policies (e.g., unilateralism in foreign policy, interventions, a doctrine of pre-emptive war, diminished regard for international institutions) that reflect imperial ambitions and conflict with mainstream Christian perspectives on global justice and self-determination; and (3) a tentative listing of seven criteria appropriate for the pursuit and exercise of power on the part of global hegemons, in light of Christian principles. The constructive task is aimed at offering ethical constraints, such as the judicious correlation of means and ends in foreign policy. We will evaluate the contributions of Catholic social thought and the school of Christian realism on key questions: Is the notion of empire ever morally acceptable? Is "benevolent hegemony" possible in our times? If so, on what terms?