Just War and Human Rights

Just War and Human Rights PDF

Author: Todd Burkhardt

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2017-02-21

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1438464045

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Discusses how just war theory needs to be revised to better secure and respect human rights. Warfare in the twenty-first century presents significant challenges to the modern state. Serious questions have arisen about the use of drones, target selection, civilian exposure to harm, intervening for humanitarian reasons, and war as a means of forcing regime change. In Just War and Human Rights Todd Burkhardt argues that updating the laws of war and reforming just war theory is needed. A twenty-year veteran of the US Army, Burkhardt claims that war is impermissible unless it is engaged, fought, and concluded with right intention. A state must not only have a just cause and limit its war-making activity in order to vindicate the just cause, but it must also seek to vindicate its just cause in a way that yields a just and lasting peace. A just and lasting peace is motivated by the just war tenet of right intention and predicated on the realization of human rights. Therefore, human rights should not only dictate how a state treats its own people but also how a state treats the people of other countries, insulating them and protecting innocent civilians from the harms of war. Todd Burkhardt is Professor of Military Science at Indiana University at Bloomington.

America and the Just War Tradition

America and the Just War Tradition PDF

Author: Mark David Hall

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2019-03-30

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0268105286

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America and the Just War Tradition examines and evaluates each of America’s major wars from a just war perspective. Using moral analysis that is anchored in the just war tradition, the contributors provide careful historical analysis evaluating individual conflicts. Each chapter explores the causes of a particular war, the degree to which the justice of the conflict was a subject of debate at the time, and the extent to which the war measured up to traditional ad bellum and in bello criteria. Where appropriate, contributors offer post bellum considerations, insofar as justice is concerned with helping to offer a better peace and end result than what had existed prior to the conflict. This fascinating exploration offers policy guidance for the use of force in the world today, and will be of keen interest to historians, political scientists, philosophers, and theologians, as well as policy makers and the general reading public. Contributors: J. Daryl Charles, Darrell Cole, Timothy J. Demy, Jonathan H. Ebel, Laura Jane Gifford, Mark David Hall, Jonathan Den Hartog, Daniel Walker Howe, Kerry E. Irish, James Turner Johnson, Gregory R. Jones, Mackubin Thomas Owens, John D. Roche, and Rouven Steeves

Arguing the Just War in Islam

Arguing the Just War in Islam PDF

Author: John Kelsay

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 067403354X

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Jihad, with its many terrifying associations, is a term widely used today, though its meaning is poorly grasped. Few people understand the circumstances requiring a jihad, or "holy" war, or how Islamic militants justify their violent actions within the framework of the religious tradition of Islam. How Islam, with more than one billion followers, interprets jihad and establishes its precepts has become a critical issue for both the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. John Kelsay's timely and important work focuses on jihad of the sword in Islamic thought, history, and culture. Making use of original sources, Kelsay delves into the tradition of shari'a--Islamic jurisprudence and reasoning--and shows how it defines jihad as the Islamic analogue of the Western "just" war. He traces the arguments of thinkers over the centuries who have debated the legitimacy of war through appeals to shari'a reasoning. He brings us up to the present and demonstrates how contemporary Muslims across the political spectrum continue this quest for a realistic ethics of war within the Islamic tradition. Arguing the Just War in Islam provides a systematic account of how Islam's central texts interpret jihad, guiding us through the historical precedents and Qur'anic sources upon which today's claims to doctrinal truth and legitimate authority are made. In illuminating the broad spectrum of Islam's moral considerations of the just war, Kelsay helps Muslims and non-Muslims alike make sense of the possibilities for future war and peace.

Just War and Human Rights

Just War and Human Rights PDF

Author: Todd Burkhardt

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13:

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Under the nonideal conditions of our world, war is sometimes morally permissible, perhaps even required. Just war theory aims to make sense of this. It does so, on my view, by allowing war only if pursued with 'right intention.' In order permissibly to go to war, a state must not only have a just cause and limit its war-making activity to that necessary to vindicate the just cause, both required in order to engage in war with 'right intention,' but it must also seek to vindicate its just cause in a manner likely to yield a 'just and lasting peace.' To fight without or unconstrained by this latter aim is to fight without the required 'right intention.' A lasting peace is not possible unless certain standards of basic justice are secure. These include those given by human rights, by principles of political self-determination and international toleration, and by the recognition of international responsibilities to protect. I argue further that these norms governing 'right intention' should be realized as international legal norms. My aim is to make the case for some needed reforms to just war theory in order to give more adequate content to the idea that war is impermissible unless it is engaged and fought and concluded with 'right intention.' Aligning the just war tradition with human rights is essential because human rights constitute the core of international justice. Securing and respecting human rights; protecting noncombatants from the residual effects of war during the postwar period; tolerating illiberal but decent regimes; allowing for reasonable political self-determination; establishing when military intervention in accordance with the Responsibility to Protect is required; and updating, facilitating, and adjudicating a revised Fourth Geneva Convention that better protects civilians, can all be argued for as necessary if force is to be governed by a 'right intention' oriented toward peace with justice.

Killing in War

Killing in War PDF

Author: Jeff McMahan

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-04-23

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0191563463

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Killing a person is in general among the most seriously wrongful forms of action, yet most of us accept that it can be permissible to kill people on a large scale in war. Does morality become more permissive in a state of war? Jeff McMahan argues that conditions in war make no difference to what morality permits and the justifications for killing people are the same in war as they are in other contexts, such as individual self-defence. This view is radically at odds with the traditional theory of the just war and has implications that challenge common sense views. McMahan argues, for example, that it is wrong to fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause.

How We Fight

How We Fight PDF

Author: Helen Frowe

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-04-17

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0191022780

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How We Fight: Ethics in War presents a substantial body of new work by some of the leading philosophers of war. The ten essays cover a range of topics concerned with both jus ad bellum (the morality of going to war) and jus in bello (the morality of fighting in war). Alongside explorations of classic in bello topics, such as the principle of non-combatant immunity and the distribution of risk between combatants and non-combatants, the volume also addresses ad bellum topics, such as pacifism and punitive justifications for war, and explores the relationship between ad bellum and in bello topics, or how the fighting of a war may affect our judgments concerning whether that war meets the ad bellum conditions. The essays take a keen interest in the micro-foundations of just war theory, and uphold the general assumption that the rules of war must be supported, if they are going to be supported at all, by the liability and non-liability of the individuals who are encompassed by those rules. Relatedly, the volume also contains work which is relevant to the moral justification of several moral doctrines used, either explicitly or implicitly, in just war theory: in the doctrine of double effect, in the generation of liability in basic self-defensive cases, and in the relationship between liability and the conditions which are normally appended to permissible self-defensive violence: imminence, necessity, and proportionality. The volume breaks new ground in all these areas.

Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War

Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War PDF

Author: Fritz Allhoff

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 605

ISBN-13: 1136260994

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This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: • What role do the traditional elements of jus ad bellum and jus in bello—and the constituent principles that follow from this distinction—play in modern warfare? Do they adequately account for a normative theory of war? • What is the role of the state in warfare? Is it or should it be the primary actor in just war theory? • Can a just war be understood simply as a response to territorial aggression between state actors, or should other actions be accommodated under legitimate recourse to armed conflict? • Is the idea of combatant qua state-employed soldier a valid ethical characterization of actors in modern warfare? • What role does the technological backdrop of modern warfare play in understanding and realizing just war theories? Over the course of three key sections, the contributors examine these challenges to the just war tradition in a way that invigorates existing discussions and generates new debate on topical and prospective issues in just war theory. This book will be of great interest to students of just war theory, war and ethics, peace and conflict studies, philosophy and security studies.

Upon the Altar of the Nation

Upon the Altar of the Nation PDF

Author: Harry S. Stout

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-03-27

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1101126728

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A profound and timely examination of the moral underpinnings of the War Between the States The Civil War was not only a war of armies but also a war of ideas, in which Union and Confederacy alike identified itself as a moral nation with God on its side. In this watershed book, Harry S. Stout measures the gap between those claims and the war’s actual conduct. Ranging from the home front to the trenches and drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Stout explores the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield. At a time when our country is once again at war, Upon the Altar of the Nation is a deeply necessary book.

Justice and the Just War Tradition

Justice and the Just War Tradition PDF

Author: Christopher J. Eberle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-05

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1317297407

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Justice and the Just War Tradition articulates a distinctive understanding of the reasons that can justify war, of the reasons that cannot justify war, and of the role that those reasons should play in the motivational and attitudinal lives of the citizens, soldiers, and statesmen who participate in war. Eberle does so by relying on a robust conception of human worth, rights, and justice. He locates this theoretical account squarely in the Just War Tradition. But his account is not merely theoretical: Justice and the Just War Tradition has a variety of practical aims, one of the most important of which is to serve as an aid to moral formation. The hope is that citizens, soldiers, and statesmen whose emotions and aspirations have been shaped by the Just War Tradition will be able to negotiate violent communal conflict in ways that respect the demands of justice. So Justice and the Just War Tradition articulates a theoretically satisfying and practically engaging account of the reasons that count in favor of war. Moreover, Eberle develops that account by engaging contemporary theorists, both philosophical and theological, by according due deference to venerable contributors to the Just War Tradition, and by integrating insights from military memoire, the history of war, and the author's experience of teaching ethics at the United States Naval Academy.