Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers

by David Rodin (Editor)

Can a soldier be held responsible for fighting in a war that is illegal or unjust? This is the question at the heart of a new debate that has the potential to profoundly change our understanding of the moral and legal status of warriors, wars, and indeed of moral agency itself. The debate pits a widely shared and legally entrenched principle of war-that combatants have equal rights and equal responsibilities irrespective of whether they are fi ghting in a war that is just or unjust-against a set of striking new arguments. These arguments challenge the idea that there is a separation between the rules governing the justice of going to war (the jus ad bellum ) and the rules governing what combatants can do in war (the jus in bello ). If ad bellum and in bello rules are connected in the way these new arguments suggest, then many aspects of just war theory and laws of war would have to be rethought and perhaps reformed.

This book contains eleven original and closely argued essays by leading figures in the ethics and laws of war and provides an authoritative treatment of this important new debate. The essays both challenge and defend many deeply held about the liability of soldiers for crimes of aggression, about the nature and justifiability of terrorism, about the relationship between law and morality, the relationship between soldiers and states, and the relationship between the ethics of war and the ethics of ordinary life.

This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 17, 2008

Reviews

[Clay Slate · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do we judge what a soldier does in a war, both morally and legally? How does that soldier measure herself or himself? For the ends of military and political leaders who wage wars, it is convenient to propagate a simple answer, that the morally and legally correct thing for a soldier to do is to follow orders, and that this will produce the best outcome for each soldier’s nation. Each soldier is thus expected to submit to the authority of others as to important matters about killing, and although the nation waging war, and those carrying out its campaigns and strategies and tactics, may be seeking ends that are questionable, or even demonstrably vile, any soldier who has followed orders, and acted within the “rules of war,” is said to be honorable. Though the inconsistencies and tragic results of this threadbare ethical construct have been painfully clear worldwide for many lifetimes, it still is defended by the most powerful interests, of every religion and ideology and culture. The leaders of all of those groups may despise each other, but they are unified and unyielding in their efforts to perpetuate this doctrine.

The eleven brilliant essays in this book tease out every factor of what is at stake. No author aligns with the other ten, but there are no manipulative cynics; all are serious and thorough. The matter is so complicated that the book is not written for young recruits and draftees. Although there is no eighteen year old recruit or draftee who could fully appreciate the moral and legal jungle into which he or she is being thrust, as a soldier, amongst them they will be faced with all of the terrible choices, and doubts, and possibilities that a moral agent, with both rights and responsibilities, will come up against as a soldier in a war. Not every situation, every dilemma, can be covered in a book, but the coverage of issues and points of view in this book is impressive.

Every time a war begins, and especially those wars with well-organized armies backed by nation-states, justifications (some of them in public forums) are offered about whether the undertaking is good, or legal, or practical. These factors are all argued out by generals, and politicians, and diplomats, and warmongers and peaceniks. These are the issues about the correctness and practicality of a nation, as a nation, waging war. This book is about the right and wrong and practicality of what each soldier does, an issue that is distinct, but broadly and deeply overlapping. Any one of the publicly political actors participating in decisions about war who has not seriously considered all of the dynamic ethical and legal and practical concerns for each individual soldier that are raised in this book cannot be considered to be offering wise input.

Each essay goes to about 25 pages, densely argued. Each author is well prepared as to the practical implications, in terms of both justice and human misery, of every ethical challenge a soldier faces. No author says that any soldier has the time or opportunity to think through all of these matters. For that reason, leaders and citizens and lawmakers must study these matters deeply, and all of us must work to make discussion of these matters broadly practiced. The leaders are the ones legitimizing war, and the soldiers are always being chewed up by it. There are military and political who are not be interested in this material. Driven by ambition and competitive tribalism, they will be very interested in war, but not in its ethical complexities. Those who read this book will be in a much better position thereafter to act as a counterweight to that group.

These authors reveal every twist and turn of how war, the massive institutionalization of killing, places every individual soldier, and even those of us who fund war, in the pincers of painfully contorting ethical conundrums. They can’t and don’t offer answers to each problem, but they do offer many concrete ways for us to think about how to progress, internationally, nationally, and personally. Every chapter, and nearly every sentence, is rich in analysis and possibility. Ethics and legality are approached from many perspectives; at every point, the moral nitpicking of the peacenik scold is constantly made to confront whatever doubt and purportedly practical concern can be raised by those who believe that armies are necessary and that war-making can be justified. This confrontation is the very site at which soldiers are judged, the very place they are thrown into the meat grinder. No discussion of right and wrong is more important.