Just War

Points out how religion is power; power will be used by others--even the non-religious; when things go awry, then, religion is then blamed, often by the same ones who have exploited its power. This calls for critical and wary analysis of the rhetorical use of religion as a pawn, followed by its being blamed as a scapegoat.  Published in The Destructive Power of Religion; Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by J. Harold Ellens (4 volumes, Westport/London: Praeger Publishers, 2004), Vol. 2, 265-83.

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia typifies the “modern” starting point of state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention within conventional historical treatments of International Relations (IR) theory. The treaties ending the Thirty Years’ War signaled the dawn of an international society after medieval Latin Christendom with new diplomatic arrangements that assigned legitimate autonomy to specific European states independent of Roman imperial and papal authorities. The ideological archetypes of Westphalia for IR theory during the twentieth century were contemporaries Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) the realist and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) the rationalist. Each of them powerfully envisioned a modern form of international relations: Hobbes accented sovereign political independence and international anarchy between states whereas Grotius affirmed a worldwide association of states absent a global authority yet still regulated by norms of universal law to justify war and intervention. Hobbesian sovereignty and Grotian international law produce the dynamic tension and terms of modern international relations. Yet the turn to the global history of international law has challenged the conceptual parameters of the IR Westphalian narrative focused on intra-European relations between sovereign states. In particular, attention to the constitutive role of imperial expansion and colonial settlement outside Europe offers a richer scope for analyzing the development of “modern” international relations and its legal-political concepts such as the state of nature, the law of occupation, and the law of nations.

The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits."""

Parmi les différentes conceptualisations dont le phénomène de la guerre a pu faire l’objet, l’œuvre de Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) et celle de Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) se sont souvent trouvées rangées, depuis le développement du champ disciplinaire des relations internationales en particulier, parmi des auteurs dits « réalistes » tels que Thucydide ou Machiavel notamment. Or leur pensée respective semble échapper à toutes les formes de catégorisation : ni pur « réalisme », ni bellicisme, ni pensée de la « raison d’État », d’une part, ni idéalisme, « pacifisme », ou pensée de la guerre juste, d’autre part, l’œuvre de Hobbes et celle de Clausewitz occupent une place à part parmi ceux qui, semblablement à eux, ont pris la guerre pour objet de leur réflexion. Malgré les deux siècles et bien d’autres choses qui les séparent, une pensée hétérodoxe de la guerre se fait ainsi écho à travers elles. Hobbes comme Clausewitz s’efforcent en effet d’appréhender la guerre, non point en juristes, tel Hugo Grotius, ni même en spécialistes de l’art de la guerre, comme Machiavel, ou bien encore en moralistes, tel Juste Lipse, mais bel et bien en tant que théoriciens soucieux de saisir la logique présidant aux rapports conflictuels entre les êtres humains, c’est-à-dire à la fois la suite des causes et des effets conduisant à la guerre et l’ensemble des règles commandant le déroulement de cette dernière une fois enclenchée. Le tableau de la guerre qu’offrent par conséquent Hobbes et Clausewitz à leurs lecteurs, bien qu’il puisse paraître sombre ou cynique, n’est pas celui de la déraison ou d’une hybris totalement déchaînée : loin de présenter la guerre comme un phénomène inextricable, chacun s’efforce, à sa façon, de rendre intelligible le phénomène guerrier, d’en mettre à nu les principes et les ressorts à la fois passionnels et rationnels, nécessaires et contingents.

Violent conflict among human beings is, unfortunately, one of the great constants in our history as a species.  As far back as we can see, the human species has engaged in war and other forms of organized violence.  But it is equally true that, as far back as human culture and thought have left written records, humans have engaged in thought about morality and ethics.  Although cultures vary widely in how they interpret death and killing from a moral and religious perspective, every human culture has recognized that taking human life is a morally grave matter; every human culture has felt the need to justify taking of life in moral and religious terms.

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns
over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a general duty to protect an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent’s ability to act justly. UAVs can afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems for a justified mission if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter’s operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using
such technology can be, in fact, obligatory.

A new powerful military weapon has appeared in the skies of world and with it a new form of warfare has quickly emerged bringing with it a host of pressing ethical questions and issues. This book brings together some of the best scholars currently working on these questions and provides timely and important arguments on many of the most significant and previously unexplored areas of this recent debate. Essays range from broad theoretic questions regarding the moral permissibility of killing by drones to specific examinations of particular uses of unmanned weapons such as their role in counterinsurgency operations, humanitarian interventions, and their controversial use in “targeted killings.” Some scholars engage remarkably vexing issues such as what happens to classic military virtues such as bravery for the warriors who fly remotely controlled drones from complete safety, half a world away from the combat in which they operate. Others wrestle over the future of such technology and...

This paper assesses the impact of the current changes in international conflicts on the ethics of war. It shows how the fact that interstate wars tend to be superseded by irregular wars is both a moral and political challenge that democracies now have to face. The effects of the changes in international law on the ethics of war will also be analysed. The "Grotian" law of war, based on the theory of the just war inherited from ancient times, initially put limits to resorting to strength while considering the war death toll. The armed conflicts law, which is a specific part of the international humanitarian law, regards war as a pathology which may justify military intervention if it is motivated by humanitarian reasons. Two logics are here confronted : they correspond to two different definitions of the just war. According to the classic approach which was developed by Grotius, the war is just when it complies to a number of normative criteria, and implies a conflict waged according to set rules between states which recognise one another as lawful entities. In the new approach, the war is just if it means an intervention where human rights and democracy are under threat. The armies of democratic states gradually have to adjust to this new state of affairs. The traditional soldier's ethics, which used to be grounded in the chivalry ideal and the virtue-theory now competes with a deontology applied to the war-waging profession, according to which moral dilemmas are solved by a discourse on professional competence.

In this paper, I tackle a difficult question about "enemy love," with C.S. Lewis as a primary guide. In the Christian political tradition, can the command to "love thy enemy" be reconciled with the military task of killing one's opponent in war? After defining love, enemy, and enemy love, I move on to violence, particularly lethal violence. I disagree with perceptive contemporary Christian political ethicists Nigel Biggar and Marc LiVecche insofar as they argue that the killing of one's enemy can be "an expression of love" towards them. Such language obscures its moral ambiguity and is strictly speaking false. One may perhaps love one's enemy despite killing them, not by killing them. Lewis's conceptual distinction between "absolute" and "relative" love helps to untangle the knotty nature and limits of enemy love.

Parmi les projets de Rousseau figurait un ouvrage intitulé “Principes du droit de la guerre”. On a longtemps cru cet ouvrage perdu ou resté à l’état d’ébauches fragmentaires. Or un travail sur des manuscrits (jusqu’alors publiés séparément et dans le désordre) a permis de reconstituer un texte très abouti, qui est manifestement la première partie de cet ouvrage. La redécouverte de ce texte et son rapprochement avec les écrits sur le “Projet de paix perpétuelle” de l’abbé de Saint-Pierre, sur lesquels Rousseau a travaillé immédiatement après, éclairent d’un jour nouveau sa conception des rapports entre les États. Les commentaires proposés dégagent l’originalité et l’actualité des questions posées par Rousseau sur la nature et la genèse de la guerre et sur le statut d’un droit inter-étatique. L’État est-il ce qui empêche les hommes de se faire la guerre ou est-il la cause de l’apparition de la guerre ? La guerre peut-elle être soumise à des règles de droit ? Peut-on espérer une fin de toute guerre ? A quelles conditions une forme d’institution confédérale pourrait-elle assurer, par le droit, une paix perpétuelle ?
Ce volume est une œuvre collective du Groupe Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In this paper, a two-fold strategy is carried out for gaining conceptual clarity in response to the question: What is terrorism? The first stage is to defend a broad working definition of terrorism that emphasizes the instrumental employment of terror or fear to obtain any number of possible ends. As proposed in this paper, Terrorism is an act or threat of violence to persons or property that elicits terror, fear, or anxiety regarding the security of human life or fundamental rights and that functions as an instrument to obtain further ends. This instrumentality relies upon either an explicit or implicit threat of separate acts of future violence. It is argued that such a functionalist approach to defining terrorism captures the core qualities that unite the broad family of both political and nonpolitical terrorist actions. At the same time, the proposed definition avoids the problems associated with other approaches that either focus upon the terrorist’s ‘unconventional’ tactics, or the ‘innocence’ of their targets, or their coercive intentions. The breadth of the proposed definition allows for the more nuanced typological analysis in the second stage. The typology is primarily an analysis of the modes of terrorism’s instrumentality. Thus, the broad phenomenon of terrorism is divided according to factors of targets, the degree of force employed, agency, and the geographic context of the action. It is only by drawing out the diverse types of terrorism that the projects of morally evaluating terrorism and formulating a just response to terrorism can take place in a concrete and meaningful way.

The Caspian Project is a weekly digital magazine organized by the online analytical resource, Modern Diplomacy. Dr. Matthew Crosston is the Senior Editor of the project, which aims to acquaint people with this critically undervalued region of the world. The analyses go far beyond the standard issue of energy and encapsulates economics, politics, culture, religion, global affairs, conflict and peace.

This edition of the Caspian Project testifies to the enormous wealth of analytical opportunity seen all across the region. While in the past we have enjoyed producing single-issue specializations (which we did over the past two weeks with The Russian Debate and The Persian Gambit, to great fanfare and applause), the true essence of the Project is to have great diversity for the readers every issue. No. 11 as it turns out is something of a hybrid of these two aspects: readers with this issue get quite a bit of diversity while also getting to enjoy a mini-specialization, as a number of the articles inside deal with different aspects of the Russian intelligence community, namely, the Federal Security Service or FSB.

So, on top of some very thought-provoking and hard-hitting articles dealing with the ethics, surveillance, and transnational activities of Russian intelligence, readers ALSO get to learn more in this issue about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Turkmenistan’s human rights record, and Kazakhstan’s entrance into the WTO. It is an issue, therefore, that cuts across domestic politics, global affairs, security, economics, and international organizations. This is something we at Modern Diplomacy hold dearly when it comes to the Caspian Project: so much that is happening in the world today, affecting so many countries, transects in one way or another the greater Caspian sea region. It shall always be a hub of activity and importance, far beyond the standard call about energy and natural resources.

A majority of people in the world regard the American Revolution as a just war. The overall consensus of the justness of the war appears to never have been questioned, and the lack of scholarly articles on the unjustness of the American Revolution supports this claim. In fact after hours of research the only scholarly article found that was on this topic was an article written by Georgetown University Professor Dr. John Keown which was published in the Journal of Catholic Social Thought and the article was titled America’s War of Independence Just or Unjust? This paper will join the ranks of Dr. Keown’s work in suggesting that the American Revolution was in fact not a just war, in accordance with Catholic just war theory. This paper will rely heavily on Catholic sources, and Dr. Keown’s work in analyzing the claim that the American Revolution was not a just war. This paper will break down what the U.S. Catholic Bishop’s Pastoral Letter of 1983 listed as the seven requirements justifying the recourse to war (ius ad bellum), and applying these seven requirements to the American colonists actions leading up to the war to determine why the revolution was unjust.

“Crusading as an act of vengeance” is a new paradigm proposed by Susanna A. Throop. In this study I will focus on the question of whether the Wendish Crusade supports an “act of vengeance” paradigm. The study shows us a new understanding of how crusading was conceived as an act of vengeance in the context of the twelfth century. Through textual analysis of medieval sources it has been possible to clarify the course of the concept of divine vengeance, which often used human agents in its execution, as well as the idea of crusading as an act of vengeance. In primary sources which emphasize the necessity of a Holy War against the Wends, the concept of vengeance was intimately connected with the ideas of human justice and divine punishment. Most of these sources are clerical writings which contain biblical allusions in order to justify their aims. This paper shows how the concept of divine vengeance was perceived as an expression of both secular and religious authority, embedded in a series of commonly understood emotional responses in medieval society, and also as a value system compatible with Christianity.

În cazul venzilor, ideea cruciadei ca răzbunare divină a apărut pentru prima oară în așa-zisa Scrisoare din Magdeburg redactată în 1107/1108. Planul unei cruciade împotriva venzilor s-a concretizat abia în 1147. Refuzul ducilor saxoni de a participa la eliberarea comitatului Edessa este pus pe seama faptului că nobilimea saxonă a fost interesată în recucerirea teritoriilor venzilor. Acest context l-a forțat pe Bernard de Clairvaux să definească expediția împotriva venzilor ca o luptă împotriva dușmanilor creștinismului. Astfel, papa Eugeniu al III-lea a fost nevoit să le acorde saxonilor aceleași privilegii pe care le-au avut cruciații în Țara Sfântă.

Vocabularul răzbunării poate fi întâlnit într-un spațiu geografic larg, ce cuprinde o mare parte a creștinătății latine. Treptat, alături de păgâni, în categoria celor care trebuie pedepsiți au intrat și apostații, ereticii și schismaticii. Astfel, „răzbunarea divină” a constituit elementul central al retoricii cruciadei împotriva venzilor din 1147. Atât pentu nobilimea saxonă, cât și pentru clerici, pedepsirea venzilor a fost un act de „justiție umană”.