Principles of self-defence require an unjust agent, who loses their claim to a right to life, and can thus be killed justly. Based on my argument that all warring combatants are just, principles of self-defence cannot be applied to morally justify killing between soldiers. Hence we need something more than traditional justifications for the use of force, including theories of the just war. As Lazar correctly asserts if an individual is to lose their individual human right to life, it should be tied to something intrinsic, unique or special about that individual Therefore while I concede that killing in wartime can at times be necessary[4], it can never be morally justified.
Bellamy, Alex. International Affairs 80 5 : In An Introduction to International Relations, 2 nd ed. Devatak, A. Burke and J. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Finlay, Christopher. The Political Quarterly 81 1 : Gertz, Nolen. Journal of Military Ethics 7 4 : Howse, Robert. The European Journal of International Law 24 1 : Lazar, Seth.
Ethics 4 : Linklater, Andrew. Utilitas 7 2 : Parsons, Graham. Social Theory and Practice 38 4 : One common specification of the latter claim is that deep personal relationships give special access to the needs of some others, enabling us to advance their well-being in ways non-associates cannot e.
Goodin, This opens up two broad camps within the teleological justification of associative duties: instrumentalists will argue that some relationship is conducive to well-being, and the duty conducive to the relationship; constitutivists will argue that these relationships are constitutive components of well-being, and the duty partly constitutive of the relationship. Hybrid theories will be constitutivist on one point, but instrumentalist on the other. In contrast with this approach, some have advanced a nonteleological alternative.
To show that a relationship x grounds associative duties, then, we need to show first that its properties, x 1-n , could directly give weighty reasons for action, independently of any other properties to which they conduce. This is similar to saying that they are non-instrumentally valuable.
This is, first, because otherwise the reasons grounded in x 1-n would not necessarily retain their force when overridden. If x 1-n only give reasons insofar as they conduce to y, then if some z better serves y, but at the expense of x, there is no cost in ignoring the reasons given by x 1-n.
Second, if x 1-n do not directly ground moral reasons, then those reasons are properly attributed to the properties that do in fact ground them. If special relationships were only important insofar as they contributed to economic growth, for instance, then any reasons they could give would derive from the importance of economic growth, not from their own properties. Third, since duties are very weighty reasons, both demanding of their bearer, and potentially overriding or excluding other moral reasons, for a relationship to ground duties it would have to be of significant moral importance and thus able to give direct, strong moral reasons.
Second, we need to show that recognising an associative duty counts as the appropriate response to those non-instrumentally valuable properties. My own view is that the nonteleological justification for associative duties is much more successful than the teleological alternative, and as such I assume the nonteleological approach throughout the rest of this paper. However, the task of identifying an associative duty on either view is similar: first one must show that the relationship has properties that are of significant non-instrumental value i.
As such, most arguments to show that there are associative duties on the nonteleological approach will work equally well for the teleological approach. Though the subsequent discussion will presuppose the truth of the former account, it will not be parochial—the arguments could be recast in the teleological idiom for those who prefer it.
I think this objection is mistaken. When considering costs to myself, it would indeed be churlish to keep score, like a friend who, after an evening of shared rounds, tots up what you paid and what he paid, and demands the difference from you. But when weighing duties owed to my son against commitments I owe to others, in particular when offering arguments to justify treating my son preferentially, the appeal to the value of the relationship is not one thought too many, but rather a necessary part of the justification.
The next step is to identify the properties of our deepest relationships that ground strong, direct reasons for action. My focus in this paper is exclusively on the deep relationships that are most commonly thought to ground associative duties—those between lovers, parents and their children, friends, and comrades-in-arms.
The qualities of these deep relationships are perhaps immediately perspicuous. Nonetheless, it is worth dwelling on them briefly. Although our most intimate relationships can sometimes cause unbearable sadness, particularly when they end, they also can bring great pleasure—both the fun and hilarity of good times, and solace and relief in times of difficulty. Part of being in a valuable intimate relationship is that each makes the other feel better.
Each inspires in the other positive mental states. Besides these affective properties, there are also other more complex components. Take, for example, the special understanding of one another possible in our deepest relationships. This understanding has at least two dimensions, one grounded in shared experience, the other in openness.
For example, my wife knows me better than anyone else does because she has shared my experiences, living through them with me. She knows every challenge that I have faced, every triumph, every defeat, every success or embarrassment; trivial and significant.
She has watched me mature as we have become parents. She has inspired and influenced me, and in doing so has shaped my choices, as I have shaped hers. Our lives are intertwined. Nobody could know me as she does, because nobody has shared my life as she has. As well as in shared experience, understanding derives from openness. In everyday life we all except in Camus novels adopt different personae in different contexts.
It is only with those closest to us that we present ourselves whole, or at least nearly whole, without the veneers we habitually erect when among strangers. Openness and shared experience are constitutive parts of our most intimate relationships, and engender a special form of communication particular to those relationships and not present in our dealings with strangers or acquaintances.
They are a bulwark against solipsism and existential angst. Intimate relationships are deep sources of value and meaning. They are worth protecting. Besides giving us joy, solace, and the sense that we are not alone in the world, our deepest relationships may also inspire what is best in our characters.
While there are many historical examples of extraordinary altruism wherein one person has made great sacrifices for strangers, these acts tend to be performed only by an exceptional few. This is more obviously true in poorer countries, where millions of men and women endure long days in unsafe factories for pitiful wages to provide for their families.
For every family that has been lifted out of poverty, there are parents who have struggled their whole lives to give their children a better future. Even in the comparative comfort of modern liberal democracies, we still face difficulties; not least the universal problem of grief.
We show strength for one another in the hardest of times, holding back our own fears and despair so that we can look after our loved ones. Many parents still spend a lifetime working for their children. Many sons and daughters do the same for their parents, in their old age.
Our deep personal relationships are sites of the noblest and bravest deeds that most of us ever do. This too is worth protecting. I will not try to define love, except to say two things. Love probably comprises the parts already discussed—the joy and solace, understanding and openness, devotion and sacrifice; it probably also amounts to more than these things.
It is one of the worthiest things of which we are capable. These properties of our deepest relationships are eminently deserving of protection—they give strong, direct reasons for action. Of course, people will often have relationships with friends, family, and lovers, which evince few of these properties. Close relationships can be the site of what is worst, as well as what is best, in human nature.
My argument is confined to the good exemplars of our deep personal relationships. The fellowship of arms could simply be folded into the broader discussion of deep personal relationships—many of the properties just described, in particular the mutual affection and shared understanding, are also fundamental to the relationship between comrades-in-arms.
However, the significance of the fellowship of arms to the self-understanding of participants in combat see the Introduction makes it worth addressing on its own. Despite this, its role in the ethics of war is rarely discussed. There seem to be three reasons for this. First, while combatants often do form powerful bonds with one another, they also seem uniquely adept at bullying some of their number e. Norton-Taylor, Second, and relatedly, there is undoubtedly a risk of over-romanticising this fellowship.
Finally, fellowship, or at least a desire to conform to the standards of the group, was a notorious factor in the commission of atrocities in twentieth century wars, in particular Vietnam Bourke, , ch. What properties of special relationships between comrades are worth defending? We can identify at least three key features: shared experience, self-sacrifice and teamwork.
Combatants who have trained and fought together have shared some of the most challenging moments in their lives Ninh, , p. They can empathise with one another in a way that they cannot with people who have not had these experiences. It is important to recall the extent to which the conduct of war differs from ordinary life. Most of us have never even been in a fistfight, let alone a situation where a large number of people are concertedly trying to kill you, and you them.
The experience of war is life-altering. Combatants share these experiences, and can correspondingly achieve a unique mutual understanding. Combatants who fight together also routinely perform acts of courage and self-sacrifice for the sake of one another unlikely to be replicated in ordinary life Ninh, , pp. They take huge risks with their own lives to save others. This loose reciprocity of heroism is unique to the context of combat. The scale and pervasiveness of lethal threats make individual courage and self-sacrifice a necessary condition for group survival.
Lastly, combatants who fight together are part of a team, carefully organised to achieve common goals Gray, , pp. For many people, being part of a team affords a sense of identity, purpose, and power: as a team, they can achieve far greater feats than they could ever do separately. This, then, is an indicative, but by no means exhaustive, list of some properties of our deepest relationships, which I suggest can ground direct reasons for action: joy, solace, affection, mutual understanding, shared history, self-sacrifice and teamwork.
In other words, recognition of which duties is either constitutive of the relationship, or a necessary condition of it obtaining? The special relationship acts as a moral amplifier.
But what does it mean to say that duties are amplified? The strength of duties varies along at least two dimensions: the costs they can justify imposing on the duty-bearer; and their relative weight when they clash with other moral reasons.
The next section focuses on substantiating the second claim. Here I will illustrate the stringency claim. Suppose that A is at the beach and sees B struggling in the water, looking likely to drown. If A had no connection with B, then he might be required to take on x cost in order to save him. But if B is someone with whom A shares a valuable relationship—his son, say—then the cost that he ought to bear will be greater than x.
So, suppose B is caught in a rip, and A judges that he would be risking his life to try to save B. This would not be morally required were B a stranger suppose , but may be required if A is his father, and they have a valuable relationship. Special relationships might generate other duties which cannot be analysed in this way, but these amplifying duties are sufficient for the purposes of this paper.
What explains this amplification? Suppose you fail to perform a duty owed to your associate which you would have owed even in the absence of the relationship. But you have also betrayed a friend and disregarded the value of the relationship between you. This additional reason amplifies the force of the reasons you already have. Acknowledging these duties constitutes an appropriate response to the valuable properties of our deep personal relationships.
They might also be necessary conditions of the relationship obtaining—not least when our associates need to be protected against potentially lethal threats. The next task is to show that the threat of war can engage specific duties that we owe to our family, friends, and comrades-in-arms to protect them from harm.
Later in the paper, we will consider precisely how these duties are transferred to combatants fighting on our behalf; here I show that these relationships can ground moral reasons that bear on the justification of fighting. Often our duties to protect our associates will weigh against fighting: we best protect our associates by trying to stop the war altogether even, sometimes, if it would otherwise be justified. This is an important and plausible restriction on the Associativist Account.
But it should not be overstated. Sometimes the onset of war is inexorable, and cannot be halted by comparatively uncoordinated individuals—perhaps because the adversary is implacable, or because our own leaders are hell-bent on conflict.
When we can do nothing to prevent war, our duties to protect our associates may enjoin fighting. This is most obviously true for active-duty combatants, whose vital interests are guaranteed to be at stake once fighting begins. Recognising a duty to protect your comrades-in-arms from lethal threats is a necessary condition of those relationships persisting. It is also arguably constitutive of fellowship of arms that you take risks to ensure no-one gets left behind.
This is easy to forget, at least for citizens of the UK, US, and our allies, since we fight our wars far from home. For our adversaries in those wars, however, the story is often quite different. For other liberal democracies such as Israel and India, war directly threatens the lives and vital interests of ordinary civilians. In conflicts in and between developing nations, it is axiomatic that the greatest suffering falls on those least able to defend themselves.
Hugo Slim offers this depressing catalogue of civilian injuries endemic to armed conflict: 1. Killing, torture, wounding; 2. Rape and other forms of sexual violence; 3. Forced and restricted movement; 4.
Impoverishment; 5. Famine and disease; 6. Emotional suffering caused by loss; 7. Post-war suffering due to UXO as well as psychological problems of post-traumatic stress Slim, , p.
It should be uncontroversial that, if we can protect our loved ones against harms such as these, even at considerable cost to ourselves, we ought to do so. Sometimes the best way to avoid this suffering is to oppose the war before it begins. Once that option is gone, however, fighting may be the only available means to protect those we love.
Sometimes the threats to vital interests arise only because we use force to avert these threats to social goods—these are cases of purely political aggression Lazar, Forthcoming-a. Do we have associative duties to avert threats to these social goods? Perhaps if we owe associative duties to our compatriots, qua compatriots, we might do so.
But in this paper my focus is on our deeper personal relationships, and it is less plausible that we owe it to our children, for example, to protect our democratic institutions.
Such a duty is much less obviously constitutive of, or necessary for, our deep personal relationships. This means that the Associativist Account, as presented here, cannot justify going to war against an adversary that threatens only these political and social goods.
This means bearing greater costs to protect their interests than we are required to bear for non-associates. Indeed, I argue that we can permissibly kill non-associates, to save the lives of associates. To begin with, however, it is helpful to consider the infliction of harms short of death. Suppose a meteor is plummeting from the sky, directly towards B, and will surely kill her if nothing is done. A can deflect the meteor using her surface-to-air heat-seeking missile launcher.
But if she does so, fragments of the meteor will hit a nonliable person C. Suppose, for now, that A bears no relation to either B or C. She must consider at least two dimensions of her actions. If she lets the meteor fall towards B, then she must consider the harm that B suffers and the qualitative evaluation of her agency in letting B suffer that harm.
If she diverts it towards C, she must consider the harm that C will suffer and the qualitative evaluation of her agency in diverting that harm towards C. Her two options, in other words, each involve qualitative and harm-based dimensions. Suppose that intervening in a causal process leading to harm is qualitatively worse than failing to prevent a causal process from resulting in harm.
If the prospective harms to B and C are equal, then A ought to do nothing, since letting B die is better in one respect and in no respect worse than killing C.
However, if the prospective harm to C is less than the harm to B, then A might be required to divert the meteor—though the qualitative difference between her options means that the harm to C must be more than marginally less than that to B. But there is some threshold of harm H, such that if the harm to C is less than H, A is morally required to divert the meteor. This is so for two reasons. Second, the agential dimension of failing to save B is qualitatively worse given their relationship—it amounts to a failure to recognise the value of their relationship.
This view contravenes philosophical orthodoxy, according to which our associative duties cannot override general negative duties for further arguments against that orthodoxy see Lazar, c. I do not pursue this option; but we should note that this distinction is one of degree, not of kind. Breaching negative duties is not lexically worse than breaching positive duties—as though we ought to perform any negative duty, no matter how slender the interests at stake, in preference to any positive duty, no matter how serious.
And as the meteor example shows, sometimes it is permissible to breach negative duties as a lesser evil, even in the absence of a special relationship. My contention is simply that our deep personal relationships affect how much harm can be inflicted as a lesser evil. One might concede this much, yet deny that our associative duties can justify killing , even if they could justify breaching lesser negative duties.
However, while killing a nonliable person is clearly a presumptively wrongful act, not all acts of killing are alike. There are important agential differences between killing and letting die, between intentional killing, unintended but foreseen killing, unintended, unforeseen, but foreseeable killing, and unintended, unforeseen, unforeseeable killing.
There is a further distinction between eliminative and opportunistic killing. In opportunistic killing, the killer does derive such benefits Frowe, ; Quinn, ; Quong, ; Tadros, Her killing is also eliminative, insofar as she would be no worse off if C were elsewhere.
Contrast this with an alternative, where unless the meteor lands on someone, it will explode and kill B anyway. If A diverted the meteor towards C in this case, she would be using C opportunistically, deriving a benefit that would have been unavailable in her absence. This would be a qualitatively worse killing.
But, as I now argue, it can override the general negative duty not to foreseeably eliminatively do so. The transitivity of moral reasons has in recent years come under sustained criticism from Larry Temkin and Jonathan Dancy, among others Dancy, , ; Temkin, Though I cannot address their arguments here, transitivity remains the default, commonsense position.
To deny transitivity in some case, you need an account of precisely why it fails in that particular instance. I consider one such account below. Case 1: A meteor is plummeting towards the earth, and, if A does nothing, will kill five nonliable people.
If she uses her missile launcher, however, she can divert it away from the five. If she does so the meteor will land on and kill C. This is just the standard trolley case, albeit with meteors instead of trams. I am assuming, note, that the cost to each person of dying is the same, and that the costs to others of their deaths are also the same. It is intuitively clear to most that A is at least permitted to divert the meteor. Indeed, anyone who denies that it can be permissible to foreseeably kill an innocent person as a side-effect of saving others or who thought the ratio had to be much higher than would have to be a pacifist.
Wars cannot be fought without foreseeably killing innocents, so this quasi-absolutist attitude would make fighting a justified war impossible. I think the right interpretation of case 1 is that A ought to divert the meteor.
Case 2: Two meteors are plummeting towards the earth. One is headed towards a group of five, as in case 1. A has only one missile, and can divert only one meteor. The diverted meteor will land harmlessly in a field. Again, I think it is intuitively obvious that A is permitted to save B rather than save the five.
Moreover I think that A is morally required to save her daughter, rather than save the five—she would be acting wrongly if she did not. For example if an army base in the middle of a city is bombed and a few civilians living nearby are killed as well, nothing unethical has been done, because the army base was a legitimate target and the death of civilians was not the intention of the bombing even though their death could be predicted.
The doctrine of double effect can't be used to defend the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as non-precision nuclear weapons, area bombing, or chemical or biological weapons used against a population in general, since these are so indiscriminate in effect that civilian casualties can't be regarded as a secondary result.
Some people answer the question: "Is it immoral to kill civilians in war? They say that all the citizens of the enemy country should be regarded as combatants.
As modern wars are fought by the resources of a whole country, they argue, it doesn't make sense to distinguish the citizens who contribute directly to the war effort from those who don't. The whole nation is at war, and every citizen is a combatant. A supporting argument was that if the whole nation was supporting the war effort, then every member of that nation was responsible for the acts carried out by that country's armed forces and could be regarded as a combatant.
These ideas became popular from the writings of Giulio Douhet, an Italian General in the early part of the twentieth century, who was one of the first strategists to understand the true potential of air power. Douhet thought that all future wars would be total wars and that there should be no distinction between combatants and non-combatants: when a nation is at war, everyone is involved.
Douhet argued that the best way to win a war was to crush the enemy by attacking its weakest points: its cities and civilians. This should be done by air:. A complete breakdown of the social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of merciless pounding from the air.
The time will soon come when, to put an end to the horror and suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war. During World War 2 the RAF used a mass bombing strategy over Germany for a period, but their aim was not Drouhet's of so distressing the civilian population that they rebelled against their leaders, but to cause so much fear and distress that morale collapsed, and the war effort with it.
They say that artillery is the King of Battle. While some may find the idea of military professionals being unable to kill in battle a bit embarrassing, we should instead think of it as encouraging. We want soldiers who choose to do only what is morally right. What military leaders have to do, then, is explain to their soldiers why what they train them to do is the morally right thing to do. Marshall had noted that soldiers who otherwise would not fire their weapons did do so when their officers were watching them and when they fired crew-served weapons.
Marshall also had noted that soldiers have great difficulty shooting at another human being, so he recommended that they be trained to fire at locations rather than at persons. The modern day transitional pop-up target marksmanship ranges follow this advice. They enable soldiers to overcome their aversion to killing by conditioning them to act spontaneously to conditions that are combat-like yet morally benign. Retired infantry officer and psychologist Dave Grossman explains the process this way:.
What is being taught in this environment is the ability to shoot reflexively and instantly and a precise mimicry of the act of killing on the modern battlefield. This conditioning, this training on pop-up marksmanship ranges, does enable soldiers to kill on the battlefield, and the Battle of Mogadishu provides great evidence of that.
In that hour fight, a few hundred soldiers from Task Force Ranger and the 10 th Mountain Division battled thousands of Somalis in fierce, urban combat. The Americans suffered only eighteen dead, while they killed an estimated Somalis. They achieved this extraordinary casualty ratio by being well-trained.
Based on extensive interviews with the soldiers involved, journalist Mark Bowden wrote a best-selling account of the battle, Black Hawk Down, [20] which includes these revealing comments:. The man would drop. Just like target practice, only cooler. In books and movies when a soldier shot a man for the first time he went through a moment of soul searching. He just reacted.
I just started picking them out as they were running across the intersection two blocks away, and it was weird because it was so much easier than you would think. You hear all these stories about "the first time you kill somebody is very hard. They were far enough away so that you didn't see, or I didn't see, all the guts and the gore and things like that, but you would just see this target running across in your sight picture, you pull the trigger and the target would fall, so it was a lot easier then than it is now, as far as that goes.
Clearly, modern military leaders are doing half of their duty—they are training their soldiers to fight effectively on the battlefield. They are doing so by utilizing techniques that enable soldiers to fire their weapons at the enemy despite the natural moral reservations that they may harbor.
By conditioning combat soldiers to reflexively engage targets and by giving them leaders who issue fire commands, military leaders greatly reduce moral deliberation for the soldier in combat. At a deeper level, however, this approach is inadequate.
It makes soldiers able to kill, even if they are not willing to do so. It prepares soldiers to deal with the enemy, but it does not prepare them to deal with their own consciences. It keeps them alive, but it leaves them in a life that may be less worth living. Training soldiers to kill efficiently is good for them because it helps them survive on the battlefield. However, training soldiers to kill without explaining to them why it is morally permissible to kill in combat is harmful to them because it can lead to psychological trauma.
When soldiers kill reflexively--when soldiers kill because of military training that has effectively undermined their moral autonomy--they conduct their personal moral deliberation of their actions only after the fact. If they are unable to justify what they have done, they often suffer guilt and psychological trauma. Many combat soldiers experience feelings of guilt in the months and years after their wartime actions.
Listen to the words of some combat veterans who performed their wartime duties as their leaders had trained them to do. Well, that day, I had absolutely no ethical or moral problems with pulling the trigger and taking out as many people as I could. And being back here, years later, I think that they had wives, children, mothers, sons, just like I have a mother and a dog, and all these things.
Our government sent us there to do a mission, and I'm sure somebody was paying him to do a mission. And so that's hard to deal with, but that day it was too easy. That upsets me more than anything else, how easy it was to pull the trigger over and over again ….
It took a long time to wear off, a real long time, because we were still there for a little while, and then when we came back you were still sort of riding the waves of what happened.
And I know for me, the hardest thing to live with is knowing that you took another human life , for no other reason than your government told you to. That's hard. I mean, I'm sure it's been said before but here I would have [gone] to jail for exactly what I did over there and got medals for.
At least one senior enlisted soldier who killed in the Gulf War may have found his actions to have been too much to live with. An officer in his unit described the situation:.
Let me give you the results of one person who did kill. His name was 1SG Doe. While in Desert Storm, he was assigned to my unit. He volunteered for a bunker searching mission. Upon coming to one particular bunker, he heard movement inside. Without bothering to clear the bunker, he yelled at the people inside to come out. When they failed to respond, 1SG Doe fired three rounds from his. The noises ceased.
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