In Defence of War

Abstract

Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice. Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Rwandan Tutsis. Against the virus of wishful thinking, anti‐military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights‐talk, therefore, In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of reflection running from Augustine to Grotius, it argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice; that morality can justify military intervention even in transgression of positive international law (e.g., Kosovo); that love and the doctrine of double effect can survive combat; and that the constraints of proportionality are sufficiently permissive to sanction Britain's belligerency against Germany in 1914‐18. Finally, in a painstaking analysis of the controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003, In Defence of War culminates in an account of how the various criteria of just war should be thought together. It also concludes that, all things considered, the invasion was justified.

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