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The article explores the role of intelligence in ethical considerations about the principles of just war, the law of armed conflict and other standards of international humanitarian law. It discusses the justification for the invasion of Iraq presented by U.S. President George W. Bush. The performance of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) in dealing with conflicts is discussed, as well as the gathering of intelligence by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the war.

Suppose that you are trying to pursue a morally worthy goal, but cannot do so without incurring some moral costs. At the outset, you believed that achieving your goal was worth no more than a given moral cost. And suppose that, time having passed, you have wrought only harm and injustice, without advancing your cause. You can now reflect on whether to continue. Your goal is within reach. What's more, you believe you can achieve it by incurring—from this point forward—no more cost than it warranted at the outset. If you now succeed, the total cost will exceed the upper bound marked at the beginning. But the additional cost from this point is below that upper bound. And the good you will achieve is undiminished. How do the moral costs you have already inflicted bear upon your decision now? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we assess American public attitudes toward the just war principles of proportionality, due care and distinction. Consistent with the logic of proportionality, we find that Americans are less willing to inflict collateral deaths on foreign civilians when the military advantage of destroying a target is lower. Most Americans also are willing to risk the deaths of American soldiers to avert a larger number of collateral foreign civilian deaths, which accords with the due care principle. Nevertheless, we find that the public's commitments to proportionality and due care are heavily biased in favor of protecting American soldiers and promoting US national security interests. Moreover, we find little evidence that the majority of the public supports the principle of noncombatant immunity, and, contrary to just war doctrine, Americans are more likely to accept collateral deaths of foreign civilians when those civilians are described as politically sympathetic with the adversary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the dynamics of hostile takeovers (HT's) as a form of corporate warfare. There are a number of compelling reasons for believing this to be an accurate approximation to corporate reality and therefore an appropriate analogy. In circumstances where it is all-too easy for either of the protagonists to act unethically (Berle and Means, The modern corporation and private property, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1991), there is an evident need for an appropriate template through which to analyse and evaluate the ethical dilemmas that HT's inevitably raise (Armour and Skeel, Georget Law J 95:1727, 2007)-whilst also, where possible, employing its prescriptions as a means of corporate conflict resolution. This paper evaluates just war theory (JWT) as one such template. In seeking a conceptually adaptable framework for analysing, interpreting and articulating antagonistic behaviour during a HT, it became apparent in the course of the research that JWT provided a potentially useful and viable template within which to pursue the above. The research questions centre not necessarily on whether this template could in some way be a substitute for statutory and regulatory constraints on unethical conduct but, rather, whether it might better inform all stakeholders of the importance of ethically informed restraint in the interest of the greater good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the challenges facing teachers when discussing the ethical importance of Just War principles and stipulations in the school classrooms in warn-torn Palestine. He adds that the classroom discussions will have to insist on defining terrorism not by identity of the perpetrator or the types of weapons used, but by moral criteria and standards. He asserts that scholars have social, political, and moral responsibilities for what they conceptualize through various means.

This article contributes to the current discussions concerning an adequate framework for intelligence ethics. The first part critically scrutinises the use of Just War Theory in intelligence ethics with specific focus on the just cause criterion. We argue that using self-defence as justifying cause for all intelligence activities is inadequate, in particular in relation to the collection and use of intelligence for preventive purposes. In the second part of the paper, we tentatively suggest an alternative moral framework for preventive intelligence, understood as intelligence activities with no specific suspicion or aggressor. We suggest that the moral permissibility of such activities requires a civilised moral framework, in which openness, transparency and informed consent constitute crucial elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes findings from a survey of high school students in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, regarding their views of war and wartime policy. The survey is drawn from, and correlated to, elements of the Just War doctrine, a philosophical framework which forms the basis of most international law, treaties, and conventions. The survey results indicate that students tend to adhere to traditional moral norms regarding the conditions for engaging in war, but have considerable divergences from internationally-held principles regarding how a war is waged. The findings indicate that social studies instructors face impediments in helping students acquire high-level, meaningful conceptions of war as a topic of study. The article describes the necessity of moral and critical inquiry in social studies education and the value of the Just War doctrine as pedagogical tool towards that end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thejus ad bellumcriterion of right intention (CRI) is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, which, left unresolved, leaves us without a plausible interpretation of the CRI. This constitutes a significant and novel reason for leaving the CRI out of the international law of armed conflict (LOAC). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Those of us who are not pacifists face an obvious challenge. Common-sense morality contains a stringent constraint on intentional killing, yet war involves homicide on a grand scale. If wars are to be morally justified, it needs be shown how this conflict can be reconciled. A major fault line running throughout the contemporary just war literature divides two approaches to attempting this reconciliation. On a 'reductivist' view, defended most prominently by Jeff McMahan, the conflict is largely illusory, since such killing can be justified by aggregating individuals' ordinary permissions to use force in self- and other-defence. In opposition, a rival 'nonreductivist' approach holds that these considerations are insufficient for the task. One prominent version of non-reductivism grounds the permission to kill in combatants' membership in certain kinds of group or association. The key claim is that participation in certain morally important relationships can provide an independent source of permission for killing in war. This paper argues that non-reductivism should be rejected. It does so by pushing a dilemma onto non-reductivists: if they are successful in showing that the relevant relationships can generate permissions to kill in war, they must also jettison the most intuitive restrictions on conduct in war-the constraint on intentionally killing morally innocent non-combatants most saliently. Since this conclusion is unacceptable, non-reductivism should be rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist philosophers Judith Butler and Margaret Urban Walker suggest an approach to the study of ethics that allows for critical attention to the role of power--something critics like Talal Asad argue has been missing from modern ethics--while preserving the possibility of normative argument. In this paper, I consider how this approach might be employed in relation to the tradition of just war reasoning. In particular, I focus on the just war criteria of right authority, just cause, and discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. I argue that recognition of the influence of power on just war reasoning suggests new ways of acting to fulfill these criteria in order to achieve a fair distribution of responsibilities and vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an exploration of method through a comparative study of Thomas Aquinas and Muhammad al-Shaybani on war, law, and statecraft. Through a close read of a select number of texts, it seeks to establish two points. First, that both Aquinas and al-Shaybani's positions on war are entrenched within their respective positions on statecraft and the law. And second, to initiate the conceptual and theoretical framework that will help illume the moral wisdom (both shared and contested) contained in each tradition that can generate a baseline for additional research related to contemporary problems in the ethics and law of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the use of just war theory as the principal framework for ethical assessment of the use of drones for targeted killing is hampered by the absence of a spatial dimension. Drawing on critical political geography, the article develops a concept of “distant intimacy” that explores the spatial characteristics of the relationship between drone deployers and their targets, revealing that the asymmetry of this relationship extends beyond conventional analysis to establish “dronespace” as a place where the autonomy of the target and the possibility of reciprocity are structurally precluded. This extends ethical critique of drone use beyond established concerns and establishes the importance of space and spatiality to the possibility of ethics in a way that just war theory has, to date, been unable to fully appreciate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I propose analysing the concepts of discovery and conquest, especially the latter, because its use varies in legal documents, which started with the Reyes Católicos, concerning the treatment of Spaniards toward Indians. The crucial point in my analysis will concern the discussion about the nature of the concept of conquest, its relationship with that of just war and the ethics of its application by the participants in the Controversia de Valladolid (1550-51): Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The end point of my analysis is 1563, in the reign of Philip II, and the analysis is based on the lexical uses of these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain how Elizabeth Anscombe understands the principle of double-effect proposed by Thomas Aquinas in order to solve issues such as the legitimacy of killing in self-defense or of defensive war. The basis of this principle in Aristotle's philosophy is analyzed, especially the difference between willing per se and willing per accidens. Finally, some difficulties o f implementing the principle of double effect are highlighted: particularly the distinction between intended and unintended but expected consequences of action, and the importance of distinguishing the harm caused by oneself and the harm caused by somebody else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an explanatory account of a central class of moral rights; their normative grounding, the conditions for their possession and forfeiture, and their moral stringency. It argues that interpersonal rights against harm and rights to assistance are best understood as arising from reciprocity relations between moral agents. The account has significant advantages compared with rivals such as the interest theory of rights. By explaining the differential enforceability of rights against harm and rights to assistance, the reciprocity theory helps to refute an argument made by Cecile Fabre that the poor may have a justification for engaging in war against the affluent to compel them to fulfil their duties of assistance to the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arab Spring has generated a variety of responses from the West. While broad political support was voiced for uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, the responses to protests in Bahrain and Morocco were muted. The swift decision to intervene in Libya stands in marked contrast to the ongoing hand-wringing on Syria. While political realists might see these contradictions as evidence that geopolitical concerns determine foreign policy, from an ethical point of view these responses also reveal a fundamental tension in Western thinking about rebellion. On one hand, rebellion is viewed with a distrustful eye—as a disruptive, chaotic force that threatens to destroy the day-to-day order on which civilization is built. On the other, rebellion is perceived more optimistically—as a regenerative, creative force that can leave a better civilization in its wake. These two radically disparate ways of thinking about rebellion have deep philosophical and theological roots. The pessimistic view has historically dominated just war thought, as James Turner Johnson's contribution to this roundtable illustrates; whereas the perspective of Enlightenment liberalism offers a more optimistic judgment, as found, for example, in the works of Locke and Rousseau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary West is biased in favor of rebellion. This is attributable in the first place to the dominance of liberal political philosophy, according to which it is the power of the state that always poses the greatest threat to human well-being. But it is also because of consequent anti-imperialism, according to which any nationalist rebellion against imperial power is assumed to be its own justification. Autonomy, whether of the individual or of the nation, is reckoned to be the value that trumps all others. I surmise that it is because in liberal consciousness the word “rebel” connotes a morally heroic stance—because it means the opposite of “tyrant”—that Western media in recent years have preferred to refer to Iraqi opponents of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and Taliban opponents of the ISAF in Afghanistan not as “rebels,” but as “insurgents.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gregory Reichberg's argument against my reading of the classical just war theorists falsely assumes that if just cause is unilateral, then there is no moral equality of combatants. This assumption is plausible if we assume an individualist framework. However, the classical theorists accepted quasi-Aristotelian, communitarian social ontologies and theories of justice. For them, the political community is ontologically and morally prior to the private individual. The classical just war theorists build their theories within this framework. They argue that just war is only waged by supra-individual political communities for irreducibly social ends. War by private individuals for private ends is always unjust. The ends sought in just war presuppose the justice of a hierarchy of authority over war such that the soldier is obligated to serve in war upon the command of his or her legitimate authority. In this way, the classical theorists accept a unilateral theory of just cause and a division of authority over war that entails the possibility of the moral equality of combatants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay distinguishes two main forms of pacifism, personal pacifism and political pacifism. It then contrasts the views on self-defense of political pacifism and just war theory, paying special attention to notions of the state and sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to “epistemic-based contingent pacifism” a) there are virtually no wars which we know to be just, and b) it is morally impermissible to wage a war unless we know that the war is just. Thus it follows that there is no war which we are morally permitted to wage. The first claim (a) seems to follow from widespread disagreement among just war theorists over which wars, historically, have been just. I will argue, however, that a source of our inability to confidently distinguish just from unjust wars lies in how we evaluate “morally heterogeneous” wars—i.e., wars with just and unjust aims. Specifically, the practice of reaching a univocal evaluation of a morally heterogeneous war as a whole by aggregating the evaluations of that war’s just and unjust aims is wrongheaded, because it undermines the action-guiding character of jus ad bellum. We ought instead to adopt what I call the “disaggregate approach” to jus ad bellum, according to which we evaluate the various aims of a war individually, without aggregating them into an evaluation of the war as a whole. Adopting this approach will eliminate a source of our disagreement over which wars have been just, and will ipso fact eliminate a basis for epistemic-based contingent pacifism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has witnessed an attempt to solidify debate on war around the dichotomy of just war and holy war. In this dichotomy, the just war has increasingly been depicted as the progressive secularised opposite to holy war's antiquated religious fundamentalism. While wars argued for under the just war banner have been extensively critiqued and protested against, the rights based language of just war theory has largely escaped critical evaluation. Michael Walzer has emerged as a pivotal figure in just war theory's modern, secular rebirth within the discipline of International Relations. Walzer's theory argues the language of just war theory provides an effective means for us to engage with the moral reality of war. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida this article investigates the construction of Walzer's moral language and its ethical implications. The first section focuses on Walzer's moral language; its structure, inconsistencies, and theological underpinnings. The second section addresses how Walzer employs this language to justify the sacrifice of combatants in defence of non-combatants. The central arguments presented in this article are that Walzer's theory is inconsistent in itself, and that the sacrifices initiated by this language constitute the unjustified sacrifice of just war theory's own ethical principles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on Information Warfare-the warfare characterised by the use of information and communication technologies. This is a fast growing phenomenon, which poses a number of issues ranging from the military use of such technologies to its political and ethical implications. The paper presents a conceptual analysis of this phenomenon with the goal of investigating its nature. Such an analysis is deemed to be necessary in order to lay the groundwork for future investigations into this topic, addressing the ethical problems engendered by this kind of warfare. The conceptual analysis is developed in three parts. First, it delineates the relation between Information Warfare and the Information revolution. It then focuses attention on the effects that the diffusion of this phenomenon has on the concepts of war. On the basis of this analysis, a definition of Information Warfare is provided as a phenomenon not necessarily sanguinary and violent, and rather transversal concerning the environment in which it is waged, the way it is waged and the ontological and social status of its agents. The paper concludes by taking into consideration the Just War Theory and the problems arising from its application to the case of Information Warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concepts of just war and the use of war as punishment, focusing on whether punishment is a just cause for war as well as political theorists' shift from accepting retributive war to rejecting it. Collective guilt, asymmetric war, and the culpability of enemy civilians are also discussed. Winston Churchill, World War II, and the morality of war as punishment are also discussed.

Some contemporary Just War theorists, like Jeff McMahan, have recently built upon an individual right of self-defense to articulate moral rules of war that are at odds with commonly accepted views. For instance, they argue that in principle combatants who fight on the unjust side ought to be liable to punishment on that basis alone. Also, they reject the conclusion that combatants fighting on both sides are morally equal. In this paper, I argue that these theorists overextend their self-defense analysis when it comes to the punishment of unjust combatants, and I show how in an important sense just and unjust combatants are morally equal. I contend that the individualistic and quid pro quo perspective of the self-defense analysis fails to consider properly how the international community, morally speaking, ought to treat combatants, and I set forth four elements of justice applicable to war, which, together, support the conclusion that in principle the international community should not take on the activity of punishing combatants solely for fighting on the unjust side. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Robin May Schott criticizes leading proponents of just war theory and introduces the notion of justifiable but illegitimate violence. Instead of legitimating some wars as just, it is better to acknowledge that both the situation of war and moral judgments about war are ambiguous. Schott raises the questions: What are alternative narratives of war? And what are alternative narratives to war? Such narratives are necessary for addressing the concepts of evil and of witnessing in the ethical discourse after Auschwitz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, Ben-Porath begins from the assumption that just war theory should be extended to include a jus post bellum component. Postwar conduct should be significantly informed by a care ethics perspective, particularly its political aspects as developed by Joan Tronto and others. Care ethics should be extended to the international postwar arena with one significant amendment, namely, weakening the aim of ending dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just war theory has been criticized since it so often is employed by governments and political leadership to justify uses of violent force for nationalistic, political self-serving or otherwise non-moral reasons. This paper acknowledges that reality but argues that just war thinking exemplifies a non-absolutist mode of moral thinking that actually sets a high bar for morally justifying any use of force. The paper argues that just war thinking must be based on the presumption that force ordinarily ought not be used to settle conflicts. To make the point the author examines Gandhi's satyagraha, which Gandhi understood as a use of nonviolent force. The paper demonstrates how Gandhi implicitly appealed to the various criteria of just war in thinking about satyagraha. The author concludes that just war theory is not an enemy of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the morality of war. Basic tenets of the just war theory; Proponents of the theory; Changes in the principles of the just war theory; Discussion on the impact of war on the civilian population; Argument against utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory; Assessment of the morality of war through the concept of utilitarianism.

Argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. Use of humanitarian principles to justify military intervention in other countries; Basic features of casuistry; Relationship between casuistry and humanitarian intervention; Difference in motives behind just war and humanitarianism.

The article focuses on the just war doctrine. It identifies that the doctrine is about war and its teachings deals on force and its political use. Moreover, it notes that the teachings reflects a form of statecraft and is preceded on view of human nature, the relation of the person to his family, the utilization of force as a disciplined instrument of love and the value of the state and political community. It mentions the statement of American theologian John Courtney Murray that the doctrine seeks to carry out its function to condemn war as evil and to humanize its behavior.

The article discusses the philosophical concept of the just war doctrine. Topics discussed include the moral content of war, the just war doctrine as similar to deontology which is the study of duties, differences between killing and murder, murder as the universally prohibited act in keeping with just war doctrine and philosopher Immanuel Kant's contention of all wars as immoral.

The article discusses the geopolitical climate of the post-cold- war era. It discusses the tradition of just war, terrorism and the discourse that social scientists build around it to justify the hegemony of the US. The article is an introduction to a section in the journal that deals with the concept of just war