Lazar: The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War: A Review Essay

Seth Lazar (Univ. of Oxford - Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict) has published The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War: A Review Essay (Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 38, no. 2, p. 180, 2010). Here's an excerpt:

Killing in War is a sustained assault on the linchpin of Walzerian just war theory, the moral equality of combatants (MEC). MEC states that, irrespective of whether their side justly resorted to war, combatants face the same moral prohibitions and permissions. It underpins Walzer’s views in three ways: first, it grounds the principle of discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Individuals lose the protection of their right to life, on Walzer’s account, when they become a threat to others’ lives. Hence all combatants are entitled to kill other combatants, but noncombatants, who pose no threat, are immune from intentional attack. Second, MEC underpins Walzer’s account of just resort to war, which depends on the analogy between individuals’ and states’ rights to defend themselves. This ‘domestic analogy’ is very troubling for ethical individualists, who note that when states fight each other, individuals die, and remind us that individuals, not states, are the fundamental unit of moral concern. Since the right to life is normally our most fundamental protection, this killing demands justification. However, if combatants on either side of a conflict can fight without violating their adversaries’ rights, as MEC says they can, then the domestic analogy could be consistent with those rights. Third, MEC is vital to implementing Walzerian just war theory in international law. Without MEC, the laws of war are unlikely to secure widespread international agreement; moreover, rejecting MEC could have disastrous consequences: since countries and individuals rarely fight without a secure conviction (however unreasonable) of their justification, if we extend greater permissions to just combatants than to unjust combatants, all will assume that the wider set of permissions applies to them, and correspondingly wreak still greater havoc.

McMahan, however, believes that MEC is a dangerous doctrine, widespread endorsement of which provides unscrupulous politicians with armies willing to serve their unjust ends. If individual combatants believed they can only fight justly for a just cause, they would be more cautious about which wars they fight, and fewer wars would result. Moreover, he thinks that MEC is based on flawed reasoning. Killing in War substantiates this skepticism with three lines of attack against MEC. The first develops a theory of permissible killing, and criticizes alternatives defended by Walzer and other advocates of MEC. The second applies this theory to killing in war, and shows that it radically undermines MEC. The third acknowledges and accommodates the practical strengths of Walzer’s account, while separating them from endorsement of MEC. In particular, McMahan argues that its legal advantages need not be lost if we reject it as a moral principle.

On its own terms McMahan’s critique of MEC is in my view persuasive, and I do not seek to resurrect that principle in this article. Instead, I argue that the consistent application of McMahan’s alternative to MEC would require such a radical revision of our considered judgments about war that we might be prompted either to reevaluate his critique, or to seek a different accommodation between our considered judgments about war and our moral theory.