Naming Violence by Thaler Mathias

Author:Thaler, Mathias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC

4.1.2. REDESCRIBING INNOCENCE FROM A MORALIST STANDPOINT

One reason why this definitional strategy has proven so successful is that it appeals to the deeply ingrained norm that noncombatants ought to be spared from violence. This idea is today enshrined both in international law and in the moral reflection on the permissible use of force more widely. To put the basic principle in a nutshell, in a Just War, soldiers and only soldiers can be the legitimate targets of attack. While an exception exists for situations in which noncombatants are nonintentionally killed,31 discriminating between those who are directly involved in wartime activities and those who are not is one of the most important pillars of Just War theory.32

Some analytical philosophers, however, with Jeff McMahan at their helm, have recently started to question the conventional equation of innocence in war with the status of noncombatants. The statements of these so-called revisionist Just War theorists have caused a deep-reaching shift in the discussion around the ethics of war—away from a more traditional framework, in which a country’s population can be relatively neatly split into combatants and noncombatants, toward a more individualistic one, in which rights provide the cornerstones of the normative edifice.33

McMahan’s widely debated argument is driven by the motivation to transform one of the main pillars of traditional Just War theory—the so-called moral equality of soldiers, which underwrites the principle of discriminating between combatants and noncombatants. The traditional idea that soldiers are “morally equal” suggests that, in any given conflict, combatants on both sides have a right to use lethal force against one another. This means that there is, from the viewpoint of traditional Just War theory, nothing objectionable about killing an enemy combatant, so long as the act of killing occurs within what one could call the “moral realm” of war. This view implies that, within that realm, those who are not embroiled in warfare—noncombatants—must be shielded from intentional attacks; they are considered “innocent” by virtue of being not harmful, or by virtue of not posing any threat. On this view, “noncombatant” is equivalent to “innocent.”34

So much for the conventional story, which remains predicated on a profound discontinuity between ordinary ethics, where killing is impermissible (with the exception of cases of self-defense and perhaps other-defense under specific circumstances), and the ethics of war. Revisionists suggest that this picture, along with the implied criterion for identifying who may legitimately be killed, is radically flawed. McMahan and others argue that the moral equality of soldiers cannot be upheld in situations where one party is engaged in an unjust war. For the purpose of brevity, an unjust war can here be defined as lacking a just cause. McMahan thus submits that, once we examine the claim to justice of each party to the conflict, our assessment of the ethics of warfare must necessarily change.

While traditional Just War identifies “being harmful” or “posing a threat” as the criteria for legitimate targets in war, revisionists shift attention to individuals’ moral responsibility for war. Those who can be

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