Forging new just war principles for the virtuous war era

Abstract

The Just War ethic, with its two pillars jus ad bellum and jus in bello, is central to the evaluation of the morality of entering into and the conduct of war. Whether grounded in custom and tradition, or based on developments in divine, natural, international, or positive law, the Just War ethic exists as a model capable of defining the bounds of the morality of going to and waging war in a just manner in specific social and political contexts. The ethic developed in response to technological, social, and paradigm shifts tied generally to five historical periods: (1) antiquity; (2) the late Hellenistic/early medieval period; (3) medieval period; (4) the early modern period; and (5) the late-modern contemporary period. The world is experiencing another paradigm shift: virtuous war. Professor James Der Derian coined the phrase to describe conflicts where technological mastery by digitally advanced states has removed their death from their calculation of whether there is just cause to intervene and just means for how to do so, and those technological capabilities are deployed with an ethical imperative for global humanitarian engagement. Strictly construed, the contemporary formulation of the Just War ethic is insufficient to address the moral, political, and legal dimensions of virtuous war. But the ethic is supple; its history replete with reformulations. It is also versatile enough to permit improvement through assimilation of a new, more contemporary set of principles mined from the historical record and forged into a new model capable of meeting the virtuous war moment. Doing so will (1) improve international relations discourse, (2) make international conflict debate more precise during an era where technological capability lowers barriers to intervention while humanitarian crises command it, and (3) improve collective security by striking the appropriate balance between humanitarian exigencies and traditional Westphalian sovereignty norms. This thesis identifies new moral principles and forges them into a new Just War ethic capable of being adopted by actors (individuals and states) to meet the virtuous war moment. The thesis first analyzes the evolution of the moral rules from antiquity to the modern period, focusing on the development of the Just War ethic. Starting from the beginning provides contour for a broader discussion of virtuous war, how it differs from prior periods and thus requires new rules, and how the Just War ethic makes room for those new rules. Principles imported from the jus ad pacem, jus in pace, and jus post bellum academic discourses are discussed to address conceptual confusion and bring coherence to virtuous war’s new moral territory. The thesis continues with a discussion of recent engagements that create a genetic through-line describing how the West moved toward and adopted virtuous war. This discussion is organized around “failed,” “rogue,” and “inept” states, starting with Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya, and concluding with the recent jus cogens intervention in Syria. The thesis concludes with a discussion of how international norms and legal frameworks should respond to meet the moral challenges imposed by virtuous war, and then closes with a proposed international scheme in the form of a proposed Model United Nations Resolution that adopts the newly forged Just War principles grounded in jus ad pacem, jus in pace, and jus post bellum.