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1103, Moral Problems: War
Two Questions:
(i)
Under what conditions is the waging of war morally justifiable?
(ii)
By what means is it justifiable to wage war?
According to pacifism, the
answers are (i) never, and (ii) none.
Deliberately killing a person
in an everyday situation would be wrong Ð it would be murder.
Making a formal declaration
of war cannot make a morally significant difference to this.
Therefore, killing in war
must be murder too.
It is morally wrong to kill
innocent persons.
But it is not wrong to kill
aggressors in self-defence, or in defence of othersÕ lives. When people
are aggressively attacking, they are no longer
innocent.
It may be permissible to kill
enemy soldiers in defence of oneÕs own or another country against
aggressive attack. It is absolutely prohibited, however, to target civilians.
According to this just war
tradition, questions (i) and (ii) have been answered by giving five conditions
for the rightness of going to war, and two conditions for its right conduct:
Jus ad Bellum:
1) The war must be a defence of oneÕs own or another
state against unjust aggression.
2) It must be waged by a legitimate authority.
3) The motive in waging the war must be right.
4) It must be a last resort.
5) There must be a reasonable chance of success.
6) Discrimination Ð the innocent (i.e. non-combatant
civilians) must not be targeted.
7) Proportionality.
Condition (1) is an
expression of the idea that the justifiability of war is based on the right of
individuals to defend their own lives. A stateÕs waging war is morally
defensible when it
amounts to the exercise by its individual members of
their right of self-defence.
Condition (2) says that the
decision to go to war must properly represent the views of the people
on whose behalf the war is being waged.
Condition (3) prohibits wars
which use self-defence (having provoked an attack) as a cloak for
pursuing other ends.
Conditions (4) and (5)
reflect what we say about the right of an individual to kill in self-defence.
According to (6), it is wrong
to intentionally kill civilians, though it may be permissible to
perform self-defensive actions that foreseeably lead
to civilian casualties. This
relies on the
doctrine of double effect, according to which there is
an important moral distinction between
foreseen and intended consequences.
According to (7), the minimum
necessary force must be used, and it must be proportionate to the
threat.
This, again, reflects what we say about the right of an individual to
kill in self-defence.
The Consequentialist
Theory of Just War
A war is just if it is the only way of
averting consequences that are even worse.
Jus in Bello:
The just means of waging a war are
whatever minimise the overall number of casualties on
both sides.
Some Consequentialist
objections to traditional just war theory:
Versus (1):
It is too narrow. It may be right to go to war to protect civilians from serious rights violations
(such as genocide) at the hands of their own
government.
Versus (6):
i. It is not possible to divide civilians and
soldiers into the innocent and guilty, respectively.
ii. There is no morally relevant distinction
between foreseen and intended deaths.
We
should take full responsibility for both.