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The Irony of Just War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Cian O'Driscoll
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Abstract

By claiming that “just war is just war,” critics suggest that just war theory both distracts from and sanitizes the horror of modern warfare by dressing it up in the language of moral principles. However, the phrase can also be taken as a reminder of why we need just war theory in the first place. It is precisely because just war is just war, with all that this implies, that we must think so carefully and so judiciously about it. Of course, one could argue that the rump of just war scholarship over the past decade has been characterized by disinterest regarding the material realities of warfare. But is this still the case? This essay examines a series of benchmark books on the ethics of war published over the past year. All three exemplify an effort to grapple with the hard facts of modern violent conflict, and they all skillfully bring diverse traditions of just war thinking into conversation with one another.

Keywords

just warrealismMichael WalzerThomas Aquinas
Type
Review Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 227 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ken Booth provides a neat encapsulation of this position. Just war theory, Booth writes, furnishes “a cover for war which allows power to do what power can do.” If this is true, he adds, just war theory is “best seen as a continuation of war by other rhetoric.” Booth, Ken, “Ten Flaws of Just Wars,” International Journal of Human Rights 4, no. 3–4 (2000), p. 316–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Fiala, Andrew, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 There is a parallel here to Wilfred Owen's angry rejection of the idea that it is a noble thing to die for one's country as an “old lie.” Owen, Wilfred, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” in Anthem for a Doomed Youth (London: Penguin, 2015), p. 2–3Google Scholar.

4 Clark, Ian, Waging War: A New Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Three recently published essays draw attention to the importance of how war is conceived in just war theory, and each one also argues in its own way that this fact has not always been adequately appreciated by just war theorists: Clark, Ian, “Taking ‘Justness’ Seriously in Just War: Who Are the ‘Miserable Comforters’ Now?” International Affairs 93, no. 2 (2017), pp. 327–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hutchings, Kimberly, “War and Moral Stupidity,” Review of International Studies 44, no. 1 (2018), pp. 83–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brown, Chris, “Revisionist Just War Theory and the Impossibility of a Moral Victory,” in Hom, Andrew R., O'Driscoll, Cian, and Mills, Kurt, eds., Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 85–102Google Scholar.

6 As Michael Walzer puts it, much contemporary just war theory is not about war, but about moral philosophy. Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 5th Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2015), p. 335Google Scholar.

7 On the nature of Walzer's just war theory, see Brown, Chris, “Michael Walzer,” in Brunstetter, Daniel R. and O'Driscoll, Cian, eds., Just War Thinkers: From Cicero to the 21st Century (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2018), pp. 205–15Google Scholar.

8 Quoted in Best, Geoffrey, Humanity in Warfare: The Modern History of the International Law of Armed Conflicts (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

9 Rengger, Nicholas J., Just War and International Order: The Uncivil Condition in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zehfuss, Maja, War and the Politics of Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a related and very interesting discussion, see Eastwood, James, Ethics as a Weapon of War: Militarism and Morality in Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 On the idea that realism can be treated in relation to political theory, see Molloy, Seán, The Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sleat, Matt, “Legitimacy in Realist Thought: Between Moralism and Realpolitik,” Political Theory 42, no. 3 (2014), pp. 314–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Rosenthal, Joel H., Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

12 Russell, Frederick, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Johnson, James Turner, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

13 Bain, William, ed., Medieval Foundations of International Relations (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2017)Google Scholar.