Revisionist just war scholarship employs the rigors of analytical philosophy to make arguments about the deep morality of war. Accepting the individual and cosmopolitan are paramount to making sense ...of war as many revisionists do, this essay looks outside the just war canon to Montaigne—a sixteenth century French humanist hailed for his exploration of the self and cosmopolitan musings—for alternative insights. It explores how Montaigne was read during the Second World War by three intellectuals to make sense of war: Stefan Zweig, Jean Guéhenno, and François Mauriac. While Montaigne’s skepticism and turn to the self as an act of preservation was, in the 1930s, rejected as a strategy to combat rising authoritarianism in Europe by philosophers such as Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school, the thinkers studied here shed light on Montaigne as a source of active humanism based in reflective action that leads to Resistance. Building on trends in just war thinking that call for paying greater attention to the lived experience of war, the article identifies several psychological and moral processes—the inward turn, the cosmopolitan gaze, casting an existential anchor, and the humanist’s wager—to shed light on the doubt-laden process of making individual moral choices amidst the rising dogmatic forces that war tends to impose.
Limited strikes are arguably different from war insofar as they are more circumscribed, less destructive, and cost less in blood and treasure to employ. However, what they can achieve is also ...considerably more circumscribed than what is set out by the goals of war. How do we morally evaluate limited strikes? As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay argues that we need to turn to the ethics of limited of force, or jus ad vim, to do so. Two moral assumptions that are the keystone to jus ad vim can shed light on the moral imperatives and ethical dilemmas of undertaking limited strikes. First, such strikes should be seen as an alternative to war, and not part of the jus ad bellum last resort process. What I call the “Rubicon assessment” determines at what level force should be used: at the level of war, with all its costs and unpredictability, or at that of the more predictable and less costly limited force. Second, limited strikes should adhere to a “presumption against escalation”; that is, a moral commitment not to escalate to war. This essay highlights these moral principles in five different limited strike scenarios: “hot pursuit,” “red line,” “the last straw,” “the point of no return,” and “the right of retaliation.” The conclusion explores the notion of justice after limited strikes, or what I call jus post vim, to show that while what can be accomplished by limited strikes is inherently constrained, they can, if used morally and in tune with diplomacy, be of service in the quest for peace.
Tensions of Modernity Brunstetter, Daniel R.
2012, 20120523, 2012-06-30, 2012-05-23, Letnik:
44
eBook
Politics today is marked by tension between claims of universal human rights and diversity. From the war on terror to immigration, one of the major challenges facing liberalism is to understand the ...scope of equality in a world in which certain peoples are perceived to reject and/or violently resist democratic principles.
This book revisits Europe's initial encounter with the Native Americans of the New World to shed light on how the West's initial defense of so-called 'barbarians' has influenced the way we think about diversity today, and elucidate the arguments of exclusion that unconsciously permeate the moral world we live in. In doing so, Daniel R. Brunstetter traces Bartolomé de Las Casas's oft heralded defense of the Native Americans in the sixteenth century through the French Enlightenment. While this defense has been rightly lauded as an early example of human rights discourse, tracing Las Casas's arguments into the eighteenth century shows how his view of equality enabled arguments legitimizing the annihilation by 'just' war of those perceived to be 'barbarians'.
This philosophical narrative can be useful when thinking about concepts such as just war, multiculturalism, and immigration, or any area in which politics confronts radical difference.
On January 3, 2020, U.S. president Donald Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani near the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. This limited strike—an act of ...force short of war—is not as unprecedented as one might think. Almost every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan, who conducted a limited strike against Libya in response to a terrorist bombing that targeted U.S. servicemen in a Berlin disco in 1986, has turned to this type of force. Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles against al-Qaeda targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in response to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. George W. Bush, although he largely rejected such limited strikes to combat terrorism, nevertheless contemplated limited strikes to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by drawing up plans to target alleged nuclear reactors in Iran and Syria; ultimately he decided doing so would be too risky. Barack Obama drew the infamous “red line” and threatened limited strikes against the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons during the Syrian Civil War in 2013, but ultimately did not strike. And the United States is not alone: France, Great Britain, India, Iran, Israel, and Pakistan—to name those cases that will be touched upon across this roundtable—have all turned to limited strikes in the past decade.
In this article, I explore the place of the just war tradition in US foreign policy by examining the use of just war language in the presidential debates in 2000 (Bush-Gore), 2004 (Bush-Kerry), 2008 ...(McCain-Obama), and 2012 (Obama-Romney). While critics focus on the use and abuse of just war language as rhetorical gloss to persuade the public an upcoming conflict is morally legitimate while serving the national interest, the debates showcase just war principles as part of a language of critical engagement. Each debate cycle allowed for critical reflection on the foreign policy decisions and just war philosophy of the incumbent president. During the time period I examine, the process of critical engagement identified two moral shortcomings of the past – the failure to act to stop the genocide in Rwanda and the premature use of force in Iraq. These perceived failures catalysed convergence, across party lines, on the way some jus ad bellum principles were understood: Just cause as including the moral obligation to intervene in some way to stop genocide and the renewed salience of the principle of last resort. There remained, however, stark differences in the way legitimate authority was understood.
The use of lethal drones by the United States (US) marks a paradox insofar as the US government claims that these strikes respect human rights, while the human rights community - including Human ...Rights Watch and Amnesty International - raise serious concerns that challenge this claim. Would reconciling these seemingly mutually exclusive human rights narratives regarding drone use lead to the formation of a more robust regime that would provide greater respect for human rights than in the current state of legal and moral ambiguity? In order to explore this question, we examine the evolution of these conflicting discourses through three key frames of legitimation - strategic, legal and normative. We argue that the US government has moved from a strategic-legal framework characterised by a focus on strategic objectives and a permissive view of international humanitarian law to a legal-normative discourse that, by incorporating the principles of just war theory, has restrained the strategic scope of the drone programme while reinforcing the legitimacy of international humanitarian law as the paradigm of choice. Comparatively, we assert that the human rights community has pursued a human rights-centric approach that rejects the more permissive standards of an international humanitarian law-centric legal paradigm, while pushing a normative agenda that seeks to enhance respect for human rights under both international humanitarian law and international human rights law. This includes rejecting the US interpretation of just war principles and appealing to a broader understanding of the right to life norm. Taking these 'right to life' considerations seriously raises concerns about whether drones can ever satisfy human rights. In the conclusion, we explore how combining certain elements of these narratives may contribute to an emerging norm on drone use.
According to US government statements, drones succeed in killing terrorists while minimizing the risk to noncombatants, thus suggesting that they satisfy the jus in bello proportionality criterion. ...Scholars, however, are divided on whether drones are truly proportionate. What does it really mean to say drones are, or are not, proportionate? How are we to judge the proportionality of the CIA's drone program? We expose the fallacy of drone proponents who claim they are proportionate by repudiating what we call proportionality relativism - the use of impertinent comparisons to argue that drones are proportionate because they cause less collateral damage than other uses of force. We then analyze the existing data on drone strikes to expose problematic differences in how the US military and the CIA understand proportionality balancing. Finally, we employ what Walzer calls the category of jus ad vim - the just use of force short of war - to assess the ethics of drones. Jus ad vim demands a stricter relationship between the use of force short of war and the jus in bello principles of proportionality and discrimination, as well as human rights concerns of civilians not usually considered in the proportionality calculus, that severely restricts the scope of proportionality balancing. Assessing the CIA's use of drones in Pakistan according to this standard casts a dark shadow on claims that CIA drones are proportional.
Contemporary just war theory is experiencing a period of renegotiation as scholars grapple with the dimensions the war on terror places on the relationship between justice and war. A closer ...examination of the history of the tradition reveals that such intellectual moments have occurred before, and represent a philosophical heritage which can be probed for insight into current questions. We turn to the 1550–1 Valladolid debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas to gain insight into some of the questions facing just war theorists today because the debates lay bare the logic for expanding jus ad bellum in the case of those perceived to be barbarians, and a compelling counter-argument. Sepúlveda proposes that a more expansive understanding of jus ad bellum is necessary in the case of barbarians, defining just cause in terms of identity and the natural law, balanced by humanitarian ends such as saving the innocent and spreading the natural law. Las Casas illustrates the dangers of Sepúlveda's position and offers an alternative framework of jus ad bellum that focuses on injury and warns against including humanitarian benefits in the just cause criterion. Las Casas' ultimate wisdom lies in arguing for the restriction of jus ad bellum in the face of those who make compelling arguments, draped in moral universals and humanitarian imperatives, for its expansion.
Drones as Aerial Occupation Emery, John R.; Brunstetter, Daniel R.
Peace review (Palo Alto, Calif.),
10/2015, Letnik:
27, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Without "boots on the ground," drones are a manifestation of US presence from above. The near perpetual loitering ability of drones has resulted in what people refer to as "aerial occupation" -- the ...occupation of a geographical space by a foreign power through the constant presence of airborne military force. Implicit in aerial occupation is the ability to use military force against those who resist or oppose it.
This article explores the plight of cultural heritage within the just war tradition. It traces the fate of two cities seen through the eyes of just war thinkers across time: Corinth and Tenochtitlan. ...This provides a useful heuristic tool to explore some of the tensions related to cultural heritage in times of war: the necessity tension (the dilemmas that military planners and soldiers face when deciding whether to destroy or preserve cultural heritage sites to advance toward victory) and the civilizational paradox (who defines which sites are intrinsically valuable), but also the magnanimity principle - the positive effects that could ensue in choosing not to pursue the full range of acts the laws of war permit in times of necessity. The story developed here is largely chronological in nature, spanning ancient Rome to the eighteenth century, and is largely a jus in bello story. However, it follows two distinct streams of just war thought represented by the plight of Corinth and Tenochtitlan that converge with the idea of cultural heritage as we understand it today, articulated explicitly by Vattel in the eighteenth century. It concludes with lessons this genealogy can teach us about the perennial moral dilemmas.
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