The ethics of war: Second edition

By A. J. Coates

The ethics of war explores the moral limits and possibilities of conflict. The argument proceeds from a just war standpoint which balances rules or principles against the moral capacities and dispositions of belligerents and the particular circumstances in which they act. In this enlarged second edition, a new introduction reflects on the impact of changes to just war thinking and to the practice of war since the book’s original publication. The common criticism that traditional just war theory is incoherent, outmoded and in need of radical revision is resisted, and instead, a case is made for an ethics of war rooted in the historic tradition of just war. The concept of just war is compared with realism, militarism and pacifism; the principles of just recourse and just conduct are examined with the aid of real life examples; and a new third part addresses some of the ethical problems raised by terrorism and counterterrorism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784996024

Book preview

Introduction to the second edition:

Just war, past and present

Though the just war tradition has an ancient pedigree, like any tradition of thought, it is subject to historical highs and lows. After a lengthy period of relative stagnation, the tradition is enjoying a major revival, generating a substantial literature and establishing a virtual monopoly over ethical thinking about war. However, its present hegemony is not of a dogmatic and uncontested kind. On the contrary, those at the forefront of contemporary just war thought are often moved by a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the received state of the tradition. Their criticism takes a dual form, focusing on the perceived conceptual weaknesses of just war thought and on the alleged gulf which has opened up between the theory and the contemporary practice of war. In the view of many this is a theory which is both incoherent and outmoded.

For example, David Rodin has argued that ‘the Just War Theory has betrayed [its] promise’ and is in urgent need of radical revision and restructuring (Rodin 2002, p. 189 and passim; see also Rodin 2006a). Another leading ‘revisionist’, Jeff McMahan, finds some of the theory’s basic assumptions and key principles so unconvincing that, as it stands, ‘the traditional view … has no coherent moral foundation’ (McMahan 2009, p. 1). In like manner, Nick Fotion argues for ‘a new just war theory’ on the grounds that ‘Just War Theory as it is classically understood appears to be too narrowly constructed’ to deal effectively with the challenge of contemporary warfare (Fotion 2007, p. 97), a judgement which invokes the commonly held view that ‘traditional just war theory is highly state-centric: individual states are the sole relevant actors’ (Evans 2005, p. xii).

Such fundamental and widely expressed objections are a clear indication of the critical state of contemporary just war thought. But are they well founded? Though the specific criticisms vary in focus and emphasis, all address the shortcomings of what is referred to as ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ just war theory. They are criticisms that are understood to be applicable to the tradition as a whole (uniformly understood) rather than, more narrowly and exactly, to a particular variant of the tradition. However, in this generalized form many of the criticisms appear to miss their mark.

For example, at the heart of David Rodin’s assessment of just war thinking is a powerful critique of the ‘domestic analogy’, that is, of the justificatory role of the idea of self-defence in ethical reasoning about war. Rodin argues that there is no valid analogy between self-defence and national defence. Though the criticism depends for its force on rigorous conceptual analysis, it includes (in passing) the historical claim that ‘from earliest times, most just war theorists have assumed that a right of national self-defence can be grounded in the individual right of self-defence’ (Rodin 2006a, p. 244). The impression conveyed is that in this fundamental matter the tradition has spoken (more or less) with one voice. Yet one of the earliest and most influential contributors to the tradition, St Augustine, is not only neglectful of the analogy, he deliberately rejects it. For him, the moral reality of war is quite unlike the use of force in self-defence. The defence of others (in a just war) is on a different and higher moral plane from the defence of self: while one aims at self-preservation, the other entails a readiness for self-sacrifice. A just war is consistent with an ethic of love, involving as it does the willingness to die that others might live. By contrast, self-defence is construed as an unloving or selfish action which values one’s own life higher than another’s. So fundamental is the difference in Augustine’s estimation that it leads him to combine the acceptance of a just war with the renunciation of self-defence and a commitment to private or personal pacifism.

Though later thinkers may be more sympathetic than Augustine to the use of force in self-defence, they are still far from viewing it as a moral paradigm for war. In fact, a reverse logic is discernible, one which establishes the moral subordination of self-defence to war, or, more broadly and exactly, to the ‘public’ use of force. For example, Aquinas writes: ‘But since it is only lawful for the public authority to kill a human being for the common good, it is unlawful that human beings other than those vested with public authority intend to kill another in self-defense. And those vested with public authority who intentionally kill a human being in self-defense relate such killing to the public good. This is evident, for example, in the case of soldiers warring against enemies … although even these would sin if they should be motivated by private animosity’ (Regan 2005, p. 68). To be justified, it seems, an act of self-defence must be construable as a ‘public’ act, that is, an act in defence of the community (or of others) rather than of the individual as such. Here, as elsewhere, the historic tradition appears more complex and varied, not nearly as wedded to the ‘domestic analogy’ as critics have assumed.

A similar discrepancy is evident in the attribution to the tradition as a whole of the logical independence of ius ad bellum and ius in bello and the related doctrine of the moral equality of combatants. Of the latter McMahan writes, ‘The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants, with its corollary that combatants on both sides have, as Walzer says, an equal right to kill, is almost universally accepted among those who are not pacifists, and has been for many centuries’ (McMahan 2009, p. 38). Yet, from a historical perspective, it is difficult to see these ideas as ‘orthodox’, or as part of the ‘mainstream’ of just war thought, or as ‘a cornerstone of traditional just war theory’, as McMahan and others have claimed. On the contrary, the moral and conceptual unity of ius ad bellum and ius in bello (and the consequent upholding of a moral distinction between combatants) seems much more in keeping with substantial parts of the historical tradition, particularly those parts which predate the modern ‘legalist’ account and which tend to be ignored or discounted by revisionists.

For much of the historical tradition of just war thought matters of ius in bello have been seen to be firmly grounded in those of ius ad bellum, with the latter determining what rights, permissions and liabilities combatants enjoy. According to this traditional way of thinking, the idea of the moral equality of combatants is incoherent. The rights enjoyed by combatants engaged in an unjust war cannot be the same as the rights of those fighting a just war. To argue otherwise would be to subvert the very idea of a just war. From this perspective what is needed is an account of war which upholds the respective rights of the parties concerned without jeopardizing the claims of justice. Just and unjust combatants are not moral equals in the relevant sense, that is, they do not possess ‘an equal right to kill’. Both have certain rights in war, but the rights held by just combatants are not the same as those held by unjust combatants.

The difference might be expressed as follows. The just belligerent has a ‘right of action’, the right to use force against an unjust aggressor. This right cannot be enjoyed by an unjust belligerent. Yet the latter does enjoy a ‘right of recipience’, a ‘passive’ not an ‘active’ right, not a right to do but to be done to, a right to be treated in a certain way,¹ a right which derives from the duty incurred by the just belligerent to conduct war proportionately and discriminately. In this way the in bello rights of both parties are grounded firmly in ad bellum justice, a position which seems much more in line with traditional ways of thinking than the doctrine of the moral equality of combatants.²

A contestable attribution is evident again in the frequently encountered criticism that the tradition is too state-centric in its basic assumptions, principles and key concepts to deal effectively with such pressing issues as humanitarian intervention or the use of force by non-state actors. That judgement is at odds with the reality of a historic tradition that predates the modern state and that, for the most part, grounds war not in self-defence but in a universal moral order that transcends states, limiting state sovereignty and establishing (in principle) a case for intervention. From this historical vantage point, humanitarian intervention is not the moral anomaly it is claimed to be by critics of the tradition. On the contrary, an ethic of intervention (though not a cosmopolitan ethic) seems wholly in line with the moral universalism that is a common feature of traditional ways of thinking about war. A similar point applies to the case of non-state actors. While a moral presumption in favour of the state’s use of force is prominent in traditional just war thought, it remains just that – a presumption, not an insurmountable barrier to the use of force by non-state actors. That is why though just war thinkers (on the whole) have not been enthusiastic and uncritical supporters of revolutionary warfare, they have been quite prepared to entertain the idea of a just revolution or rebellion, an idea which seems perfectly reconcilable with just war principles.

The problem with all these examples is that their referencing of the just war tradition lacks discrimination and refinement. The tradition is understood ahistorically so that one particular variant or expression of the tradition is made to speak for the tradition as a whole. The variant in question appears to be the conception of just war implicit in international law (particularly in its pre-interventionist phase) and articulated in the work of Michael Walzer, the so-called ‘legalist paradigm’. So successful has Walzer been in the pursuit of his declared aim ‘to recapture the just war for political and moral theory’ (Walzer 1992, p. xxviii) that his own (in many ways rather singular) reading of the tradition has come to define the tradition in the minds of many. It is this version of just war thinking on which critics focus. However, Walzer’s conception (including his use of the domestic analogy, his upholding of the logical independence of ius ad bellum and ius in bello and the moral equality of combatants, and the ‘statist’ direction of his thinking) is not representative of the tradition as a whole. His account is an important, highly illuminating, immensely influential contribution to the tradition but it is far from definitive.

Like any tradition of thought, the just war tradition is varied and complex. Arguably that is its strength. A tradition of thought is never univocal. A tradition that spoke with one voice would cease to be a tradition in any true sense, since it would rule out the conversation (born out of difference within a shared identity) in which a tradition largely consists and without which it is in danger of lapsing into dogmatism. However, the relation between Walzer’s conception of a just war and the diverse tradition of just war thought is of marginal interest to revisionist critics. The reason for this neglect seems clear. Most critics belong to the school of analytic philosophy which has dominated contemporary ethics, including the ethics of war and just war theory. This is a form of philosophy that, like science (which in some respects it may seek to emulate), appears largely indifferent to its history. The past is a matter for the historian not the philosopher. ‘The standard assumption’, writes Bernard Williams, ‘is that philosophical enquiry does not need to bother much with that history: the distinctive business of philosophers is reflection, and reflection, roughly speaking, will see them through’ (Williams 2002, p. 7). The main concern among analytic philosophers is not with the reworking of a historical tradition of thought but with the advancement of what is widely referred to as ‘Just War Theory’, a term the common capitalization of which is indicative of the thinking behind this approach. The starting-point of the analysis is not the historical tradition in its plurality and complexity but the ‘reigning’ or the ‘standard’ theory. In this usage ‘traditional’ just war theory is simply that, the conventional or prevailing version of just war thought. The method puts the dominant theory to the test through sustained conceptual analysis, exposing its logical flaws and, where appropriate, amending or replacing it with a theory that is clearer, more rigorous and coherent, and better able to solve the outstanding moral problems of war. In Rawlsian terms, the aim is to produce ‘the best worked out theory’, thereby achieving ‘reflective equilibrium’.

The progressive assumptions and aspirations at work here seem bound to devalue earlier (very different and now less prominent) ways of thinking. ‘Analytical philosophers,’ writes Richard Rorty, ‘would like, above everything else, to feel that they are adding bricks to the edifice of knowledge … making it unnecessary to revisit that spot on the wall. That sense of definitiveness and finality is what analytic philosophers yearn for’ (Rorty 1999). ‘Definitiveness’ and ‘finality’ are alien and destructive concepts as far as a ‘tradition’ is concerned. Far from breaking with the past, a tradition establishes continuity between past and present, enabling later generations to draw upon the accumulated experience and understanding of earlier generations. In a ‘traditional’ or ‘historical’ approach the past exerts a continuing influence upon present thinking. Reflection draws consciously and deliberately on the complex resources of a tradition, as the persistence of long-lived schools of thought testifies (like the Thomist–Aristotelian school of just war thought). Historical understanding is an essential part of the process of philosophizing. Here the history of just war thought (like that of philosophy generally) is not understood to be one of linear progression and substitution, in which one theory is discarded and replaced by another, but one of change and adaptation generating a complex and living tradition in which the past retains a voice and in critical engagement with which moral reflection about war may be conducted. By focusing attention exclusively on the latest or dominant form of just war thought this valuable resource is lost sight of and the moral outlook on war narrowed as a consequence.

Historical understanding can benefit contemporary moral reflection on war. To begin with, it can help to establish a critical point of reference by uncovering the historicity of current thinking and by revealing what Williams calls ‘a radical contingency in our current ethical conceptions’ (Williams 2004, p. 20). In this way moral reflection on war is exposed to previous thought and practice, to diverse experiences of war and distinctive moral responses, to novel principles and concepts and contrasting values and ideals, to moral agendas that question current priorities and that identify problems and issues that current thinking may obscure. Historical awareness complicates and thereby, perhaps, enriches the moral argument about war.

Despite its ahistorical leanings, much recent criticism of just war thought arrives (via a process of conceptual reasoning rather than a study of history) at positions which sometimes appear akin to those traditional ways of thinking which predate revisionism’s prime target, the modern legalist tradition. As suggested earlier, like much revisionism, the older tradition does not invoke the domestic analogy to justify war; neither does it maintain the independence of ius in bello from ius ad bellum; nor does it uphold the moral equality of combatants; nor is it ‘statist’ in the sense employed in revisionist criticism, excluding neither humanitarian intervention nor the use of force by non-state actors. In these several respects revisionism can be seen to echo (albeit largely unwittingly) earlier ways of thinking. At the same time, this affinity is strictly limited and must not be exaggerated. In other fundamental ways traditional just war thought and contemporary revisionism are very much at odds.

The difference is, in part, a matter of specific principles and concepts, which generate quite different moral perspectives, analyses, and potential practices. For example, differences of a conceptual kind are evident in the respective treatments of the issue of humanitarian intervention. While concurring about the moral permissibility of intervention, the two approaches disagree about the moral grounds of intervention. Typically, the revisionist argument for intervention begins with a critique of realism, aimed at rebutting objections to intervention based on conceptions of state sovereignty, national interest and national defence. This starting-point is significant since it tends to associate the state with ‘statism’ and to give the state a negative moral value as a consequence. Revisionism’s moral appeal is to the rights of individual human beings abstractly conceived, that is, as members of a universal cosmopolis rather than as members of particular communities with distinctive social and cultural identities. The state itself is understood to be without intrinsic ethical significance or value. As a result the moral threshold of intervention is lowered. By contrast, traditional just war thought (with its Thomist–Aristotelian heritage) stresses the social and political nature of humankind, thereby upholding the ethical worth of political communities, not just in the abstract but in their historical plurality and difference. At the same time, this upholding is allied with a conception of a universal moral order that transcends and limits states. It is this universalism which provides the moral basis for intervention but, when universalism takes this ‘political’ or concrete form, intervention is subject to moral restraints that may be lacking in more abstract cosmopolitan accounts.

The resistance of Vitoria (and others) to the Spanish conquest of the Americas was based on reasoning of this kind. Vitoria’s Thomist–Aristotelian principles disposed him to look beyond the alien and alienating appearance of Amerindian societies to perceive their hidden virtues and underlying rationality, a perception reinforced by an open acknowledgement of the vices of his own society. While others argued the right of a ‘civilised’ and Christian Spain to subject the ‘barbarian’ and pagan communities of the New World to its rule, Vitoria invoked the Thomist principle that ‘dominion is based on nature and not on grace’ to defend the right of the non-Christian world to its own jurisdiction. While he accepted that there was a case for forcible intervention of a humanitarian kind to defend the victims of cannibalism and human sacrifice, he sought (but failed disastrously) to limit both the occasion and the extent of intervention.

In both revisionist and traditional accounts of intervention some concept of moral universalism is clearly at work. However, when universalism takes an exclusively individualist and cosmopolitan form, the resulting devaluation of political communities and particular cultures endangers the moral restraints that, arguably, should surround intervention. Contrastingly, ‘political’ universalism raises the moral threshold of intervention by recognising the importance and moral worth of communities and cultures, while acknowledging that ‘the defence of our neighbours is the rightful concern of each of us’ (Pagden and Lawrance 1991, p. 347).³

Conceptual disagreements are evident elsewhere. However, the difference between contemporary revisionism and traditional just war thought goes well beyond conceptual divisions of this kind, important though they are. At issue, more fundamentally, is the method or approach which each adopts along with the ethical agenda which that approach generates.

In keeping with a form of analytic ethics, the main focus of revisionist just war thought is on conceptual analysis with the aim of producing a set of rules or principles which can then be applied to war. ‘The primary task of just war theory,’ writes Helen Frowe, ‘is to determine and explain the rules of war’ (Frowe 2011, p. 1, original emphasis). This task involves an abstract process of moral reasoning based, largely, on the analysis of hypothetical or fictional examples. Historical or real-life cases are deliberately set aside and even the hypothetical constructs themselves often either lack any immediate reference to war or contain features that are difficult to square with the experience of war. Revealingly, the reason given for this methodological preference is that ‘using fictional examples helps us to identify principles that can be obscured by the complexities of historical cases’ (Frowe, p. 2, added emphasis).

A theoretical bias against the historical or contingent is a common feature of revisionist thought. For example, in Just War Theory, A Reappraisal, Michael Evans argues that the construction of a satisfactory theory of the just war is dependent upon abstraction from historical or contingent circumstances.

[T]here is considerable advantage to be gained from stating the theory as a general and timeless set of moral considerations. By abstracting from the conflicting particularities, nuances and qualifications of warfare’s myriad concrete historical instances, we can clear away many potential obstacles to the presentation and analysis of a generalized moral framework which might orient a consistent set of judgements about war wherever and whenever it breaks out. (Evans 2005, p. xi)

Similarly, Coppieters and Fotion write that ‘the moral approach to war as embodied in Just War Theory viewed strictly as a theory … has its roots in trans-cultural experiences, concepts, and principles’ (Coppieters and Fotion 2008, p. x). The absence of a ‘historical’ dimension – of a concern with the contingent – in analytic ethics is a result of its abstract methodology. The pursuit of a ‘Theory’ of the just war militates against attending to circumstances. It seems that history is more of an obstacle than an aid to the kind of moral understanding of war that revisionism seeks.

The reverse is true of traditional just war thought. The ‘historical’ approach which this form of moral casuistry adopts brings the contingent to the fore, gives it a central role in the moral understanding and moral determination of war. Attending to the contingent and variable moral circumstances of war is an essential part of the attempt to make moral sense of war. The ‘complexities of historical cases’, far from being seen in a revisionist way as obscuring moral understanding, are where the moral truth about war is to be sought (a truth that distinguishes not only between the just and the unjust but between the more and the less just).

Viewed from a traditional perspective war is always a moral problem but some wars are more of a problem than others. The moral possibilities of war vary in accordance with circumstances. Compare, for example, the relatively civilized and restrained conduct of German forces on the Western Front in the Second World War with their barbaric and unrestrained action in Eastern Europe,⁴ or the conduct of American forces in the European theatre with their conduct in the Pacific.⁵ Different ‘enemies’ yielded different ‘wars’. Investigating the moral dynamics of different kinds of war and the variables that cause the moral problems of war to wax and wane is an essential part of the ‘historical’ approach to the ethical understanding of war. It is the concrete methodology of traditional just war thought which directs attention to these moral phenomena just as revisionism’s abstract methodology leads to their relative neglect. Fictional or hypothetical cases may well serve the interests of conceptual analysis better than historical or real-life cases, generating greater conceptual clarity and refinement of principles or rules, but do they illuminate the moral experience of war as effectively as the casuistry of traditional just war thought?

Past thinkers were much more economical in their deployment of rules than contemporary just war analysts. The moral focus of Aquinas, for example, is on three basic criteria – legitimate authority, just cause and right intention. Economy here is not (as it is often taken to be) a function of the primitive or undeveloped state of just war thought in Aquinas’s day. It is, rather, a manifestation of a quite different moral approach to war, in the light of which a preoccupation with the construction and application of rules may not be seen as the uniformly progressive development it is often taken to be. Of the three criteria proposed by Aquinas perhaps the most important, in a traditional sense, is the one to which least significance is attached today, namely, right intention. It is the strategic role allotted to this criterion which may account for the economical use of rules in traditional just war thought.

In contemporary discussions right intention is understood to refer to the specific purpose (or purposes) of a belligerent, its principal requirement being that the end which the belligerent intends to bring about is in line with just cause. Some have argued that in this sense the criterion is virtually redundant. At best, all it achieves is to make explicit what is already covered by the criterion of just cause.⁶ This seems a serious underestimate, since, even in this limited sense, the criterion still has useful and important work to do. However, the treatment of the criterion in the first edition of this book failed, by a considerable margin, to do justice to the much fuller understanding of the criterion exhibited within the historic tradition. Though much attention was paid throughout the first edition to the moral dispositions of belligerents (e.g. in the chapter on militarism), the link with right intention was not formally made. This was a mistake.

The central and strategic importance attached to the criterion of right intention in traditional just war thought reflects the conviction that what, above all, determines the justice or injustice of war are the moral dispositions that belligerents bring to war. Virtues and vices, rather than rules and principles, are the real determinants of the moral outcome of war. They represent the moral capacities (or incapacities) of belligerents. They are the moral habits or powers which make up the moral character of the individual and which incline or dispose the moral agent to act in certain ways. Neither just conduct nor unjust conduct can occur without such empowerment.

The formation of the moral character, the determination of what moral capacities or incapacities an individual brings to war, is a social as well as an individual process. Making sense of just and unjust conduct in war requires contextualization. For example, we cannot account for the disparate treatment of Russian and British prisoners of war by German soldiers without reference to the disordered moral environment in which they had been brought up, an environment which had accustomed them to think of some peoples or races as subhuman and which predisposed them to treat such peoples inhumanely. Real belligerents have moral pasts, individual and social histories, in the course of which they have acquired certain habits or tendencies, which incline them to behave (or not to behave) in certain ways. How they fight (for good or ill) will depend on how they have been disposed to fight by their own past actions (of course) but also by the moral cultures to which they have been exposed.

From this traditional just war perspective the moral truth about war is not reducible to a theory or to a set of rules or principles. The moral life generally (and in time of war especially) is too complex to be captured in a rule or code and it is in the interests of the moral restraint of war that its complexity be acknowledged and addressed. Ideally, perhaps, that would be done while retaining the insights afforded by a rule-orientated approach. However, the problem is that the rule-based approach to the ethics of war is not just distinct from the traditional character-based approach. It is, typically, antagonistic towards it.

The emphases placed by ‘traditional’ morality on the dispositions, habits, and characters of moral agents, and (by extension) on the moral communities within which and by which these moral powers are acquired, contrast starkly with the primacy afforded to independent moral reasoning in ‘reflective’ and rule-based morality in which, as Michael Oakeshott argues, ‘not only is the rule the product of reflective thought but the application of the rule to the particular situation is also a reflective activity’ (Oakeshott 1962, p. 66). ‘Reflective’ morality is not just neglectful of, or indifferent towards, the idea of a moral life centred on moral dispositions, it is opposed to it on principle, since ‘the mind without disposition is alone the spring of rational judgement and rational conduct’ (p. 87, emphasis added). Moral conduct is ‘rational’ in the narrowly conceived sense of ‘conduct springing from an antecedent process of reasoning’, excluding conduct which has its source in ‘the unexamined authority of a tradition, a custom or a habit of behaviour’ (pp. 85 and 84).⁷ From a reflective standpoint, the communal and habitual aspects of traditional morality are seen less as sources of moral empowerment than as fundamental obstacles to the achievement of moral autonomy. Moral progress is dependent upon the emancipation of the rational individual from the heteronomous influences of traditional morality.

Whatever their merits in other respects, when it comes to war, one morality stands out as being much more congruent with the experience of war than the other and, therefore, much better equipped than the other to meet the exceptional demands which war places on moral actors. This is something acknowledged, broadly, by Oakeshott, when he describes ‘traditional’ morality as ‘the form which moral action takes (because it can take no other) in all the emergencies of life when time and opportunity for reflection are lacking’ (p. 62). Even John Rawls, who classifies what he terms a ‘morality of authority’ as a primitive or childish stage of moral development (far inferior to the pre-eminent ‘morality of principles’) accepts the need to preserve ‘certain aspects of this morality … for special occasions … when the unusual demands of the practice in question make it essential to give certain individuals the prerogatives of leadership and command’ (Rawls 1973, pp. 462 and 467).

There can be few greater ‘emergencies of life’ than war. The extreme circumstances in which moral agents find themselves in time of war pose a real and major threat to moral agency and to the leading of a moral life. Clausewitz alludes to the nature of the threat in On War: ‘In the dreadful presence of suffering and danger, emotion can easily overwhelm intellectual conviction, and in this psychological fog it is so hard to form clear and complete insights’ (Clausewitz 1993, p. 125). No doubt Clausewitz has more than moral understanding and decision-making in mind but his insistence on the peculiar and compelling pressures that war exerts on its practitioners needs to find a place in any complete ethical account of war.

Traditional morality is much more inclined to recognize the ‘unusual demands of the practice in question’ than reflective morality. Its practical form and bias give it a built-in sensitivity to the particular demands of a practice. This is a concrete form of understanding which searches for moral meaning within an established practice rather than one which seeks to impose a meaning from without through a process of abstract reasoning. Such an approach is essential in dealing with war since, as Clausewitz argues, ‘[in war] the light of reason is refracted in a manner quite different from that which is normal in academic speculation’ (p. 133).

The problem with applying reflective morality’s account of the moral life to war is that war is not a reflective activity. Clausewitz describes the ‘climate’ of war as a realm of danger, of physical exertion and suffering, of uncertainty and chance, in which belligerents are engaged in ‘a relentless struggle with the unforeseen’ (p. 117). As a result,

Action can never be based on anything firmer than instinct, a sensing of the truth … Often there is a gap between principles and actual events that cannot always be bridged by a succession of logical deductions … Frequently nothing short of an imperative principle will suffice, which is not part of the immediate thought-process, but dominates it. (p. 125)

The ubiquity of the unforeseen or unforeseeable impedes reflection and strengthens the claims of traditional morality. As Aristotle argues, ‘Acts that are foreseen may be chosen by calculation and rule, but sudden actions must be in accordance with one’s state of character’ (Ethics, 1117a.20). It is not just the opaque and unpredictable nature of war (the so-called ‘fog of war’) that presents problems. The difficulties of determining the right course of action, moral as well as strategic, are compounded by the sheer immediacy and brutal urgency of combat. ‘During an operation’, Clausewitz observes, ‘decisions have usually to be made at once’ (p. 117). The time or the opportunity for moral, or any other kind, of reflection is mostly lacking and ‘in the rush of events a man is governed by feelings rather than by thought’ (p. 118).

Traditional morality is better equipped to respond to the urgency of war than reflective morality. Among its acknowledged strengths is the power ‘to act appropriately and without hesitation, doubt or difficulty … to meet all situations without the necessity of calling upon reflection’ (Oakeshott 1962, p. 63). Contrastingly, reflective morality is marked by ‘resistance to the urgency of action’ (pp. 66–7). Where its influence is dominant, ‘a loss of spontaneity and confidence’ arises (p. 78). Where reflection fails the moral agent, the virtues (‘those psychical habits which work spontaneously and thus free the moral subject precisely for his great decisions’ (Rahner 1974, p. 109)) empower and sustain him. Moral character comes to his aid as the moral dispositions or moral ‘prejudices’ of the agent come into play, enabling him to respond swiftly and, as it were, instinctively. In the words of Edmund Burke, ‘Prejudice is of ready application in an emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved’ (Burke 1969, p. 183).

The problems of moral agency are volitional as well as cognitive. Even where clarity of moral judgement exists, the will and the resolve to act accordingly cannot be taken for granted. ‘Truth in itself ’, writes Clausewitz, ‘is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability. The most powerful springs of action in man lie in his emotions’ (p. 130, added emphasis). Reflective morality puts its faith in the rule. It neglects the fundamental issue of will and motivation by assuming (wrongly) the self-motivating power of reason. Yet ‘complete mastery of principles may exist alongside a complete inability to pursue the activity to which they refer’ (Oakeshott 1962, p. 101). Conversely, and more significantly, ‘an unexamined life can be virtuous’ (Murdoch 2001, p. 2).⁸

Traditional morality does not take the volitional capacity of the moral agent for granted. It acknowledges that, to be effective, moral judgements require the support of moral dispositions, feelings and inclinations. Traditional morality is an affective morality, which embraces the moral person as a whole (mind and heart) and which, as a socially engaged or situated morality, does not spurn the contingent moral lessons and moral incentives that arise from social attachments. While reflective morality (particularly in its Kantian form) prises duty and inclination apart, traditional morality seeks their ever closer union and on that union the efficacy of the morality of war is made to rest.

The moral regulation of war depends on the recognition of war’s distinctive and complex challenge. Its authoritarian and hierarchical structure is part of that challenge, as the frequent misuse of the claim of ‘superior orders’ exemplifies. How to adjust the moral life to that structure and vice versa is a task more in tune with a traditional (socially orientated) conception of the moral life than with the individualistic conception advanced by reflective morality. War is a collective enterprise in which the role of the individual, as such, is strictly limited. Soldiers do not fight wars as individuals. Both the challenges individuals face and the manner in which they respond to those challenges reflect the collective structure of war. This is evident, for example, in the dominance of the fighting unit or group. The ‘primary’ group (the smallest unit) engenders the fiercest loyalty and exercises the strongest influence. However, other larger and secondary groupings, such as the platoon, regiment or corps, can play an important role.⁹ The decision by an individual to go against the collective action of the group (and of the primary group in particular) is always momentous and never taken lightly. ‘[I]t is extraordinarily difficult’, writes the military psychologist Lt Col. Dave Grossman, ‘for a man who is bonded by links of mutual affection and interdependence to break away and openly refuse to participate in what the group is doing, even if it is killing innocent women and children’ (Grossman 1996, p. 225). The solidarity of the group is the source both of the highest (often heroic and self-sacrificial) virtue and of the most despicable kind of vice.¹⁰ It is a fundamental and inescapable part of the moral life in time of war. In the interests of the moral restraint of war, ways need to be found of strengthening its benign influence while eradicating, or weakening, its malign effects.

The collective determination of individual conduct manifests itself in other ways, both direct and indirect. It is evident, for example, in the manner in which the overall military strategy and tactics can transform the moral attitudes and moral conduct of belligerents. In the Vietnam War, the use of ‘free-fire zones’ and ‘body counts’ did little to sustain the moral sensibilities of US soldiers or to safeguard the moral environment in which and out of which they fought. According to Philip Caputo, ‘the policies … confuse[d] the fighting man’s moral senses’ (Caputo 1978, p. 327). Michael Herr concurs. Of the ‘Search and Destroy’ tactic employed in the war he writes, ‘[It]made it as easy for us to shoot as not to shoot’ (Herr 1978, p. 55).

Indirect, non-military, influences can be just as decisive. The attitudes and dispositions which soldiers have acquired outside war, as a result of social and cultural influences, structure their conduct inside war. In a candid memoir of the Burma campaign against the Japanese in the Second World War, the novelist George MacDonald Fraser comments on the mistreatment of the enemy as follows: ‘It may appal a generation who have been dragooned into considering racism the ultimate crime but I believe there was a feeling (there was in me) that the Jap was further down the human scale than the European … there is no question that he was viewed in an entirely different light from our European enemies’ (Fraser 2000, pp. 185–6). Such cultural and racial prejudices can mean that belligerents come to war with a predisposition to fight unjustly and inhumanely, thereby greatly diminishing the prospects of the moral restraint of war.

In these several respects, traditional morality reflects the experience of war in a way that reflective morality does not and, in its characteristic form, cannot. This is not to say that there is no place for reflective morality in the ethics of war. On the contrary, it plays a vital role. The more ‘traditional’ morality becomes, the more ossified it may become, losing its moral energy and vitality. The critical force of reflective morality can counter this tendency, maintaining the distinction between the ideal and the real, revealing the shortcomings of traditional morality, providing impetus for reform where that is needed. Its articulation of moral principles and rules can improve the moral self-understanding of individuals and societies and facilitate moral communication across cultures. However, an ethics of war in which rule-based moral reasoning is dominant seems radically incomplete. As Alan Buchanan comments, ‘A comprehensive just war theory cannot rely exclusively on philosophical argument as it is usually understood’ (Buchanan 2006, p. 5).

The adoption of a ‘dispositional’ view of ethical life, in which moral character and moral culture play a decisive part, widens and transforms the ethics of war. Moral criticism is informed by an understanding of the contingent and variable circumstances that shape the moral conduct of war, in which the vices of unjust belligerents are of at least as much interest as the virtues of just warriors, being just as germane to the moral restraint of war. The capacity to act unjustly is no more taken for granted than the capacity to act justly. Unjust action in war is not to be seen, simply, as a function of the nature of war, abstractly conceived, as the ‘war is hell’ characterization encourages us to believe. The spring of unjust action lies in the distorted moral dispositions belligerents have acquired in the course of their particular social and cultural formation. In this approach, the conduct of war (whether just or unjust) always implies the presence of a certain capacity or potency to act, an inclination towards some ‘good’. The investigation of that capacity, its nature and its genesis, forms an essential part of the moral enquiry. Practically, the moral restraint of war depends on the curtailment of vice and the advancement of virtue. It is not simply a matter of applying the rules or of appeals to individual conscience. Moral agents first need to be empowered. Principles need to take root in supportive moral cultures.

The call for a new and revised just war ethics is a legitimate one. A tradition without a spirit of renewal and self-criticism is a doomed tradition. However, by turning away from traditional and earlier ways of thinking, contemporary thought deprives itself of a valuable resource, one which can help to correct the imbalance in contemporary ethics caused by an overreliance on abstract processes of moral reasoning. More than thirty years have passed since Walzer expressed the wish ‘to recapture the just war for political and moral theory’. That objective still seems as worthwhile and as pressing as ever.

Notes

1  Cf. Raphael 1990, pp. 105–6; also Raphael 2001, p. 244.

2  For further discussion see Coates (2008).

3  For further discussion see Coates (2006).

4  The treatment of prisoners of war is case in point. While a majority of Russian captives failed to survive the war, allied prisoners (particularly those who managed to stay out of the hands of the Gestapo or SS) could experience remarkably high levels of care. A US pilot, whose plane was shot down on a bombing raid over Germany, recalls the medical care given to himself and fellow airmen by German doctors in the hospital attached to Stalag Luft III: ‘The German orthopaedists were much more advanced than our doctors, and even though he [a British pilot] had 17 breaks … they put him back together with a lot of pins and external steel adjustable rods. They would get him out of bed every morning and make him walk up and down the hall on crutches. The German doctors were very concerned about muscle atrophy … The guy in the bed across from me had a leg broken just below his hip joint. The orthopaedist drilled a hole in the top of his pelvis and drove a steel pin into the broken off ball and into the femur. They had him walking two days after the operation’ (Burwell 1990).

5  See Bartov (1985) and Sledge (1990).

6  For example, see McMahan (2006).

7  John Rawls’s ‘morality of principles’ is a ‘reflective’ morality in this sense. According to Rawls, moralities of ‘authority’ and ‘association’ may have a role to play in the early (primitive or childlike) stages of moral development, but the final aim is to ‘come to hold a conception of right on reasonable grounds that we can set out independently for ourselves’ (1973, pp. 461–76 and p. 516).

8  The case of Harry Stanley is instructive in this regard. Stanley was present throughout the infamous My Lai massacre of 1968, when members of Charlie Company commanded by Lieutenant William Calley slaughtered hundreds of unarmed civilians. Stanley was one of the few who refused to obey Calley’s orders, despite being threatened with a court-martial. In an interview for a TV documentary this is how he accounted for his refusal: ‘Ordering me to shoot down innocent people, that’s not an order, that’s craziness with me, you know, and so I don’t feel like I have to obey it … I feel like it was horrible, you know, just a terrible thing to be going on, and American boys doing this, you know. And I feel like I’m a red-blooded American boy just like any of the rest of the guys that was there, you know … I’m just saying it just seemed like a horrible thing. I’m talking we all came from the same place to me you know, we all came from the same place, and I know that they all had to have the same values that I had somewhere along the line. If it’s they didn’t get it in school, they had to get it in a religion or church or some place, you know. If you didn’t go to school, you know, you could pick it up from a stranger, you know, it’s just simple. But then to go and do something like this, it’s, it’s immoral to me, you know. That’s just the way I feel about it’ (Sim and Bilton 1989).

9  See for example Holmes 2004, pp. 291ff.

10  Of the eight Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to US marines for the action on the Pacific Island of Peleliu in 1944, six were awarded to marines who had thrown themselves on grenades in order to save the lives of their comrades (Holmes 2004, p. 300). At the same time, the battle is infamous for the barbaric treatment of the enemy by soldiers on both sides (see Sledge 1990).

Introduction to the first edition

This is a book about the ethics of war, about war in its moral or normative aspect.¹ The central question that it addresses is how (if at all) moral reasoning might be brought to bear upon the activity of war. The very notion that morality may be applicable to such a destructive enterprise as war will strike some as bizarre, even perhaps as scandalous. The contrary assumption that war lies beyond any moral pale is not only a common one, but one that, particularly in the light of twentieth-century experience, often seems irresistible.² Nevertheless that assumption will be resisted here, even while the dangers of exaggerating the moral potential of war are underlined. The moral regulation or limitation of war, it will be argued, is possible, though it depends in