Quo Vadis? On the role of just peace within just war (original) (raw)

Changing the Rules of the Game: A Just Peace Critique of Just War Thought

ABSTRACTAn essay on the criticism of the just peace theory under the just war tradition is presented. It explores the theoretical relationship between just peace and just war traditions. It stresses that the doctrine of just peace is a reaction to specific assumptions within the just war theory. It claims that the evolution of war have influenced the changes in the just peace doctrine.

The Blurry Boundaries Between War and Peace: Do We Need to Extend Just War Theory?

Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie

Saint Augustine, being seen as one of the first just war theorists, famously stated that the true object of war is peace. 1 And while just war theory is often said to be the leading position on the morality of war, today, it is struggling to keep up with the changing international reality. It is premised upon a certain conception of war-as armed conflict between two states-and on a clear demarcation line between the situation of war and the situation of peace. This however, seems to no longer fit the political reality. More often than not, we find ourselves in a grey area. This 'new' political reality, the changed character of war(fare), and the often blurry boundaries between war and peace, pose serious challenges to just war theory. This paper ana lyzes one solution: an extension of the bipartite conception of the theory. A branch called jus ante bellum, preventive peacemaking, is sometimes suggested to precede jus ad bellum. And jus post bellum, justice after the war, is the welcomed branch that could provide post war guidance. This paper explores what it means to adopt these branches. What does it bring us to extend the theory? It is presumed that it would benefit the goal of just war theory, that Augustine already pointed at: limiting war and realizing a 'just and durable peace'. But is an extension really a good idea? There are several reasons why we should be careful to regard these arguably important issues within the parameters of just war theory.

The Ethics of War up to Thomas Aquinas

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2015

This chapter explores major developments in concepts of justified warfare and norms of military conduct over nearly 2,000 years. From at least the first millennium BC, ideas about the justice of war and customary norms regulating combat were developed by Western societies. Throughout the ancient and medieval worlds, war was subjected to varying degrees of ethical analysis, as well as being influenced by social pragmatism. Examining a variety of evidence, this chapter argues that the two branches of just war doctrine, jus ad bellum and jus in bello, developed hand-in-hand and should be seen as an integrated whole. This intermingling of jus ad bellum and jus in bello concerns produced a sophisticated and complex body of ethical thought about war—embodied in the systematic analysis of medieval canon lawyers and theologians—and ultimately provided the essential building blocks for modern just war doctrine.

In Defence of Just War: Christian Tradition, Controversies, and Cases

De Ethica. A Journal of Philosophical, Theological and Applied Ethics, 2015

This article presents four controversial issues that are raised by the articulation of just war thinking in my book, In Defence of War (2013, 2014): the conception of just war as punitive, the penultimate nature of the authority of international law, the morality of national interest, and the elasticity of the requirement of proportionality. It then proceeds to illustrate the interpretation of some of the criteria of just war in terms of three topical cases: Britain’s belligerency against Germany in 1914, the Syrian rebellion against the Assad regime in 2011, and Israe’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza in 2013. It is often claimed that just war thinking has been rendered obsolete by novel phenomena such as nuclear weapons, wars ‘among the people’, war-by-remote-control, and cyber-aggression. The presentation of issues and cases in this article, notwithstanding its brevity, is sufficient to show that just war thinking continues to develop by wrestling with controversi...

The Catholic Presumption against War Revisited

International Relations, 2020

One of the most contested arguments in contemporary just war thinking has been the question of the right starting point of analysis. On one side of the argument, one finds Catholic Church officials who argue for a ‘presumption against war’ as jumping-off point. On the other, one encounters critics of that position, led by James Turner Johnson, who defend a ‘presumption against injustice’ as the correct point of entry. Interestingly, both sides refer to St Thomas Aquinas, the key figure in the systematisation of the classical just war, as giving support to their respective position. While Johnson was vindicated as far as Aquinas’s historical starting point is concerned, debate about the contemporary purchase of the presumption against war has continued until the present day. Historical just war thinkers like Johnson have criticised the Church not only for turning the logic of the just war tradition on its head by reversing the inherited hierarchy between the so-called deontological and prudential criteria, but have also questioned the empirical evidence that has put the Church on this trajectory. In this article, I explain how the debate about the presumption against war continues to be relevant by engaging with the general direction the Catholic Church has taken up until Pope Francis and by investigating the particular example of its position on drone warfare. I point out that while the presumption against war runs counter to what Aquinas wrote during his days, Thomistic virtue ethics is generally open to development. The Church may thus claim a Thomistic patrimony in advocating for a presumption against war, but, as I demonstrate, the just war thinking that results, often referred to as modern-war pacifism, struggles to address important moral issues raised by contemporary warfare.

Jus Post Bellum: Just War Theory and the Principles of Just Peace

International Studies Perspectives, 2006

What happens following a war is important to the moral judgments we make concerning warfare, just as the intentions going in and the means used are. There has, however, been inadequate attention paid to considerations of jus post bellum in the just war tradition. This essay seeks to contribute to recent efforts to develop jus post bellum principles by first noting some of the ways that jus ad bellum and jus in bello considerations serve to constrain what can legitimately be done after war. We argue, however, that the constraints grounded in traditional just war theory do not offer sufficient guidance for judging postwar behavior and that principles grounded in the concept of human rights are needed to complete our understanding of what constitutes a just war. A just peace exists when the human rights of those involved in the war, on both sides, are more secure than they were before the war.