Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Moral Philosophy: The Ethics of War—Before, During and After

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
War Crimes Trials and Investigations

Part of the book series: St Antony's Series ((STANTS))

  • 514 Accesses

Abstract

Moral philosophy, and the ethics of war and peace more narrowly, support war crimes trials in the aftermath of war. This, alongside fleshing out fuller definitions of what count as war crimes (i.e., violations of any of the principles of jus- ad bellum, in bello, and post bellum) count as the main historical contribution of the discipline to the subject. Realism and pacifism either do not support war crimes trials, or do so only in an indirect sense, whereas the support of just war theory and international law are full-throated, logically mandated, and enthusiastic. Within this chapter, each of the above claims are explored and defended.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Brian Orend, The Morality of War, 2nd ed. (Peterborough: Broadview, 2013), 9–33. In general, the works of James Turner Johnson and John Kelsay are excellent for cross-cultural histories in this regard.

  2. 2.

    Charles A. Smith, The Rise and Fall of War Crimes Trials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  3. 3.

    Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, trans. L.R. Loomis (Roslyn: WJ Black Inc., 1949).

  4. 4.

    Immanuel Kant, On Perpetual Peace, ed. B. Orend, trans. by I. Johnston (Peterborough: Broadview, 2015).

  5. 5.

    Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Classics, 2006).

  6. 6.

    Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), with four further editions since.

  7. 7.

    Mark Day, The Philosophy of History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008).

  8. 8.

    Alexander Gillespie, History of The Laws of War, 3rd ed. (New York: Hart, 2011); Stephen C. Neff, War and The Law of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Gary D. Solis, The Law of Armed Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  9. 9.

    Orend, Morality, passim; Walzer, Wars, passim.

  10. 10.

    Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  11. 11.

    The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Report: The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001); Alex Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (London: Polity, 2009).

  12. 12.

    Martin Cook, Issues in Military Ethics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013); G. Lucas, Military Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  13. 13.

    Jeff McMahan, “Realism, Morality and War,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 78–92. David R. Mapel, “Realism and the Ethics of War and Peace,” in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 180–200. Steven Forde, “Classical Realism,” in Traditions in International Ethics, ed. Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 62–84. Jack Donnelly, “Twentieth Century Realism,” in Traditions in International Ethics, ed. Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 85–111.

  14. 14.

    Henry Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973); George F. Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954); Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940); Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Kenneth Waltz, Man, The State and War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

  15. 15.

    Orend, Morality, 251–273.

  16. 16.

    Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 3.

  17. 17.

    Jan Narveson, “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis,” in Morality and War, ed. Richard A Wasserstrom (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1970), 63–77.

  18. 18.

    Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  19. 19.

    Robert L. Holmes and Barry S. Gan, eds. Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, 2nd. ed. (Long Grove: Waveland, 2005).

  20. 20.

    Walzer, Wars, 329–336; Orend, Morality, 273–297.

  21. 21.

    Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (New York: Penguin, 1995); Michael R. Marrus, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials 1945–6 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

  22. 22.

    It should be noted, as a difficult debate amongst just war theorists, regarding the divide between so-called defensive wars against prior aggression (such ‘classic cases’ as WWII) and, shall we say, non-defensive wars against aggression which is feared yet not realized (such ‘non-classic’ armed conflicts like the invasion of Iraq in 2003).

  23. 23.

    Orend, Morality, 33–70.

  24. 24.

    Orend, Morality, 33–48; Walzer, Wars, Passim; Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, eds., Documents on The Laws of War, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  25. 25.

    Orend, Morality, 48–52.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 52–59.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 59–61.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 61.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 62–63.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., 111–152.

  31. 31.

    W. Michael Reisman and Chris T. Antoniou, eds., The Laws of War (New York: Vintage, 1994).

  32. 32.

    William H. Boothby, Weapons and The Laws of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  33. 33.

    Provided such satisfy the controversial Doctrine of Double Effect. See Orend, Morality, 121–125. Paul A. Woodward, ed., The Doctrine of Double Effect (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

  34. 34.

    Walzer, Wars, 126–140; Orend, Morality, 112–125.

  35. 35.

    Erik Saar, Inside the Wire (New York: Penguin, 2005); Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray, Guantanamo: What The World Should Know (New York: Chelsea Green, 2004); Derek Jinks, The Rules of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

  36. 36.

    Orend, Morality, 125–127.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 125–130.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 130–133.

  39. 39.

    Seymour Hersh, My Lai 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1970); David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and The Failure of The West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).

  40. 40.

    Orend, Morality, 185–215; Brian Orend, “Justice after War,” Ethics and International Affairs 16, no. 2 (2002): 43–57; Brian. Orend, War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000).

  41. 41.

    Note that such an assumption is part of what makes this a theory of postwar justice. This isn’t to deny there aren’t real-world cases where the Aggressor might win, or there might not be a clear cut ‘winner’ at all: merely to note that in either such case—but emphatically the first—this will not be an instance where justice is served at the end of the war. For more on starting assumptions behind postwar justice, see: Orend, Morality, 187–190.

  42. 42.

    For more detail on each of these principles, and some relevant facts and cases, and the complexities of such, see: Orend, Morality, 185–201.

  43. 43.

    Walzer, Wars, 288.

  44. 44.

    Orend, Morality, 185–214; Manfred F. Boemke, ed., The Treaty of Versailles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919 (New York: Macmillan, 2003); James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, eds., Just War and Gulf War (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1991); and Alan Geyer and Barbara G. Green, eds., Lines in the Sand: Justice and the Gulf War (Louisville: John Knox, 1992).

  45. 45.

    Orend, Morality, 215–250; Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and The Remaking of Japan (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989); Eugene Davidson, The Death and Life of Germany: An Account of the American Occupation (St. Louis: University of Missouri Press, 1999); US Government, Afghanistan Reconstruction (Washington, DC: Bibliogov, 2011); US Special Inspector General, Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience (Washington, DC: US Independent Agencies and Commissions, 2009).

  46. 46.

    Orend, Morality, 215–250.

  47. 47.

    Walzer, Wars, 288.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 292–301.

  49. 49.

    Walzer, Wars, 319–322; Reisman and Antoniou, The Laws of War, 337–350; Yuku Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Timothy P. Maga, Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trial (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001).

  50. 50.

    Reisman and Antoniou, The Laws of War, 332–333.

  51. 51.

    Admittedly, however, there was a 100% conviction rate in the Tokyo trials, which rightly raises eyebrows. See Maya, Judgment, passim.

  52. 52.

    Walzer, Wars, 292–296; Reisman and Antoniou. The Laws of Wars, 318–337; Persico, Infamy, passim; Marrus, Nuremberg, passim.

  53. 53.

    Victor Peskin, International Justice in Rwanda and The Balkans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Richard H. Steinberg, Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY (London: Brill Academic, 2011); Gerald Gahima, Transitional Justice in Rwanda (London: Routledge, 2012).

  54. 54.

    William Schabas, The International Criminal Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  55. 55.

    Brian Orend, Introduction to International Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), chapter 5, “International Law and Organization.”

  56. 56.

    Brian Orend, Human Rights: Concept and Context (Peterborough: Broadview, 2002).

  57. 57.

    Smith, Rise and Fall, passim; Walzer, Wars, 309–316; Reisman and Antoniou, The Laws of War, 357–370; Peter A. French and Jane Sternett, eds., Individual and Collective Responsibility: The Massacre at My Lai (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: Harper Collins, 2004).

  58. 58.

    Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).

  59. 59.

    Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, Logic and Scientific Method (New York: Simons, 1934). See Orend, Human Rights, 155–190, for an extended discussion of the related accusation that human rights values are ‘Western’ and thus purportedly objectionable on that basis.

  60. 60.

    Ping-Cheung Lo and Sumner B. Twiss, Chinese Just War Ethics (London: Routledge, 2015).

  61. 61.

    Reisman and Antoniou, eds., The Laws of War, 18–23.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Brian Orend

Authors
  1. Brian Orend
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Orend, B. (2018). Moral Philosophy: The Ethics of War—Before, During and After. In: War Crimes Trials and Investigations. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64072-3_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64072-3_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64071-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64072-3

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation