PARLIAMENT AND DEFENCE OVERSIGHT

Abstract

A tremendous amount of important work has been done recently on operationalising the protection of civilians as a military task. The bulk of the discussion has focused on how militaries should respond to direct attacks on civilians. This is an important issue, but thinking about civilian protection should also include a serious examination of the ways in which the approach of military organisations to the problem of ‘spoiler’ groups can affect the level and dynamics of attacks on civilians – importantly, where armed groups are interested in violent control of civilian populations, attempts to ‘dislodge’ them from areas of control may substantially increase the level of violence against civilians (beyond the dangers to be expected from being near areas where active fighting is taking place). In 2009, the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) supported the Congolese military in operations to dismantle the Hutu-dominated FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda, Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) militia group, at massive human cost. Critics have primarily focused on MONUC's failure to protect civilians from direct attack, consonant with the general discourse on tactics for civilian protection. These criticisms are valid, but in this paper I argue that two crucial additional considerations should be kept in mind: the way that military operations can affect violence against civilians, and the way that moralising the approach to armed groups, even those which have committed serious abuses, can limit military and political options – potentially in ways that increase civilian risk in the name of protecting them.     

In Defense of Mercy

ABSTRACT

Though it is legally permissible to kill combatants in war, unless they are rendered hors de combat, the existence of “Naked Soldiers” raises an important moral question: should combatants kill vulnerable enemy combatants or show mercy towards them? Most philosophers who address this question argue that it is morally permissible to kill the Naked Soldier given the extended notion of self-defense during war. They ground their arguments in a form of collectivism. In this article, I use Larry May’s argument. He offers an approach that extends the principle of discrimination that would apply also to combatants. Instead of assuming all combatants are de facto dangerous, this approach would allow for nuance in targeting the enemy and showing mercy when enemy combatants clearly pose no danger, in other words, when they are Naked Soldiers. I defend this view against two criticisms: Noam Zohar’s view of armies as complex collectives and Stephen Deakin’s view that a policy that spares Naked Soldiers would be open to abuse. I argue that it is not only morally suspect to kill Naked Soldiers, but also it is within the spirit of both international laws governing war and the just war tradition to offer mercy whenever possible.     

WARFARE IN A NEW DOMAIN: THE ETHICS OF MILITARY CYBER-OPERATIONS

While most normative evaluations of military cyber-operations have emerged from the legal community, this article assesses the legitimacy of such operations from a philosophical-ethical perspective. After reviewing the relationship between rights forfeiture and the jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria of the just war tradition, it applies these criteria to several aspects of cyber-operations, including responses to cyber-activities, the use of cyber-capabilities affecting combatants and civilians, and the use of these capabilities by contractors. Finally, it briefly addresses the legitimacy of limiting rights to privacy and anonymity in service of preventing cyber-harm.     

How Is a Man to Decide? Unjust Combatants,Duress and McMahan’s Killing in War

Jeff McMahan’s much-discussed work Killing in War is an important part of the revisionist school of just war studies. This paper avoids discussion of McMahan’s use of human rights and examines the practical consequences of his argument about duress on soldiers to fight an unjust war. These arguments are found to be wanting and to be impractical ones that do not fit battlefield realities. The importance of the Law of Armed Conflict and the legal equality of combatants that is part of it is emphasised and accepted as the most practical way of regulating battlefield behaviour and saving lives. It is concluded that attempts to tell soldiers what to do when they may be fighting an unjust war add to their burdens and are misplaced.     

Non-violent Resistance and Last Resort

It is commonly accepted that recourse to war is justifiable only as a last resort. If a situation can be resolved by less harmful means, then war is unjust. It is also commonly accepted that violent actions in war should be necessary and proportionate. Violent actions in war are unjust if the end towards which those actions are means can be achieved by less harmful means. In this article, I argue that satisfaction of the last resort criterion depends in part upon the likelihood of success of non-violent alternatives to war, and that the actual and potential effectiveness of non-violent resistance means that the last resort criterion of the jus ad bellum and the proportionality criterion of the jus in bello are harder to satisfy than is often presumed.     

Sadat as Supreme Commander

Extant literature explains Egyptian successes and failures in the October 1973 War by Sadat’s restoration or abolition of ‘objective control’: when restoring ‘objective control’, Sadat succeeded; when abolishing it, he failed. However, Samuel Huntington’s theory cannot account for Sadat’s command performance, not because Sadat zigzagged between this theory’s extremes, but because he never thought or acted according to its recipe. I employ Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command concepts to argue that Sadat’s command constituted an eccentric combination of military romanticism and politicization of war, whose paradox was reflected in the initial military successes and the achievement of Egypt’s strategic objectives despite the military failures by the war’s final stage.     

Building Legitimacy: Interactional Dynamics and the Popular Evaluation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey

Abstract

Previous research has identified a variety of general mechanisms to explain how insurgents build legitimacy. Yet, there is often a gap between these mechanisms and the interactional dynamics of insurgencies. This article attempts to bridge this gap through a theoretically informed analysis of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) insurgency in Turkey. I show how the PKK’s efforts to cultivate legitimacy, Turkey’s counterinsurgency strategies, and civilian perceptions of the PKK, all mutually influenced one another. Based on this analysis, I argue that the mechanisms that produce popular legitimacy coevolve with insurgents’ behaviors, states’ interventions, and civilians’ perceptions.     

Historical and Political Background to the Erosion of the Rule of Law and Human Rights During Sri Lanka’s Civil War and the Way Forward

The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) is regarded as a violent reflection of deepening divides along political and ethnic lines. During this civil war the Sri Lankan Government and its security forces have been implicated in unlawful killings carried out in a pervasive manner against civilians, whilst at the same time specifically targeting ethnic Tamils, humanitarian workers and journalists. The human rights of all citizens suffered as a result and ultimately led to the weakening of the rule of law. With the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan Government has made little progress in providing accountability for wartime abuses. Its absence of and reluctance to ensure justice is seen as a logical culmination of decades of impunity. The importance of acknowledging historical behaviour and taking accountability for past violations will be discussed. In an analysis for paving the way to a new democracy in Sri Lanka, the main outcomes of this article are calls for accountability arising out of the government’s actions during the war; an investigation into the present state of human rights, the rule of law and finally; an examination into the political solution going forward to ensure a process of reconciliation and peaceful co-existence.     

Right Intention and the Ends of War

The jus ad bellum criterion of right intention (CRI) is a central guiding principle of just war theory. It asserts that a country’s resort to war is just only if that country resorts to war for the right reasons. However, there is significant confusion, and little consensus, about how to specify the CRI. We seek to clear up this confusion by evaluating several distinct ways of understanding the criterion. On one understanding, a state’s resort to war is just only if it plans to adhere to the principles of just war while achieving its just cause. We argue that the first understanding makes the CRI superfluous, because it can be subsumed under the probability of success criterion. On a second understanding, a resort to war is just only if a state’s motives, which explain its resort to war, are of the right kind. We argue that this second understanding of the CRI makes it a significant further obstacle to justifying war. However, this second understanding faces a possible infinite regress problem, which, left unresolved, leaves us without a plausible interpretation of the CRI. This constitutes a significant and novel reason for leaving the CRI out of the international law of armed conflict (LOAC).     

Legitimate Authority as a Jus Ad Bellum Condition: Defense of a Procedural Requirement in Just War Theory

ABSTRACT

Today, it is widely held that while authorization may be helpful in assuring that the other jus ad bellum criteria are met, legitimate authority is not itself a condition for just recourse to war. Or, if it is necessary, it is said to be a trivial requirement, as mobilization for war requires some political authorization. Those who would retain the legitimacy requirement have differing views about who the proper authority is. I argue that, reasonably understood, legitimate authorization is necessary for jus ad bellum. Considerations of agency and consent in force combine with the social contract to commit us to deferring to recognized authorities. These obligations are strengthened by the epistemic reliability and pragmatic value conferred by governing institutions and procedures limiting recourse to war. These same rationales imply that the U.N. Security Council should regulate the international use of force. I qualify that if higher authorities fail to act, other subsidiary authorities may then authorize force. However, the move to each subsequent level of authorization must be justified. Understood in this way, the requirement that wars not be fought without legitimate authorization is a non-trivial, necessary procedural jus ad bellum condition.     

A Criterion for Settling Inconsistencies in Clausewitz’s On War

On War’s unfinished state has been a source of difficulties for interpretation for 180 years. By establishing a hierarchy of revision among the parts, we propose a criterion that can bring any part of On War in line with the most advanced stage of Clausewitz’s thinking. We exemplify the utility, illustrate the underpinnings and appreciate the potential of this criterion. We argue that the criterion offers the prospect of a shared, coherent, fully consistent and faithful rendering of Clausewitz’s theory of war.     

Repression Substitution: Shifting Human Rights Violations in Response to UN Naming and Shaming

Does the United Nations naming and shaming of specific violations of human rights decrease government repression? In this article, we argue that international shaming of specific human rights violations can weaken the target government, bringing new challenges and making the government cessation of repression less feasible. When international naming and shaming campaigns target specific repressive tactics, they increase the costs of some – but not all – means of repression. Using original data on naming and shaming by the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), we show that the shaming of one physical integrity violation is jointly associated with decreases in that violation and increases in other violations of human rights.     

Doing Away with “Legitimate Authority”

ABSTRACT

I argue in this article that traditional just war theory did allow private, indeed even individual war, and that arguments in support of a legitimate authority criterion, let alone in support of the “priority” of this criterion, fail. I further argue that what motivates the insistence on “legitimate authority” is the assumption that doing away with this criterion will lead to chaos and anarchy. I demonstrate that the reasoning, if any, underlying this assumption is philosophically confused. The fact of the matter is that wars need not necessarily be authorized by some higher authority (such as a king, president, or parliament) in order to be justified, and this moral fact does not need to lead to chaos and anarchy. Accordingly, the criterion of legitimate authority cannot be relied on to delegitimate individual war, private war, guerrilla war, or even terrorism. Finally, I consider some other defenses of authorization and demonstrate that the “authorization” these accounts defend is either not needed for justification or already provided by other just war criteria or, indeed, entirely fictitious.     

Civil-military relations and human security in a post-dictatorship

This article explores current developments in Chile, where since the return to democracy in 1990, the elected authorities have reconfigured the nation’s military resources in favour of four action pillars: peacekeeping and international conflict management, landmine removal and gun disarmament, emergency and catastrophe response, and a concern for human, economic and social rights. Successive defence policies offer a valuable case study for exploring the trade-offs between security, traditional and non-traditional threat management and institutional capabilities. The article argues that human security policymaking is not free from undesired outcomes; specifically, regarding how to reconvene the role of the armed forces when conventional war seems a thing of the past. The paper focuses on the interagency policy implications and the challenges ahead for civilians and the military.     

Fighting a Just War in the Midst of an Unreasonable International Strife: World War I and the Collapse of the Central European System of the Triple Imperial Dominion

ABSTRACT

This article constitutes an attempt to demonstrate the complexity of factors affecting the legitimate acquisition and reasonable exercise by a political community of the right to war as specified in the just war criteria of jus ad bellum. To achieve this purpose, a brief analysis is presented of the intentional participation in World War I of thousands of Polish volunteers forming military units deployed by the Central Powers on the Austrian-Russian front. Considered in light of the standard principles of just war, the military enterprise of the Polish Legions, as they were called, turns out to be a paradoxical instance of warfare which, while being part of a state-to-state aggression, must be deemed compliant with all the principles in question. As a means of explaining this paradox, a modification of the concept of justified intervention is proposed, embracing military efforts aimed at the ultimate defeat of all the (unjustly) warring parties operating within a given territory. In consonance with the classic just war approach, it is also argued that the justification for such an intervention is essentially dependent on its being initiated by, or attributable to, an unquestionable state agent acting in defence of the state’s basic prerogatives.     

Civilian protection in Africa: How the protection of civilians is being militarized by African policymakers and diplomats

This article explores how the protection of civilians is being militarized by African policymakers and diplomats. I draw on practice approaches to analyze what social groups are doing when they claim to “protect civilians.” I show how innovative protection mechanisms can be seen as a function of officials and diplomats coping with the changing circumstances of increasingly militarized politics in Africa. Specifically, accountability mechanisms for unintended and intended civilian harm by African security operations have originated in connection with this development. I argue that these are results of anchoring practices, which means that everyday informal interactions in one context become linked to another context. I argue that these emerging accountability mechanisms represent a new combination of practices, with the potential of changing the routine activities and mutual learning between policymakers and diplomats.     

Self-Defense Militias,Death Squads,and State Outsourcing of Violence in India and Turkey

What explains the variation in states’ nonstate partners in civil warfare? States often use nonstate actors to do what their regular military forces cannot do well – navigate the local population. Some of their nonstate partners are ordinary civilians, while others are battle-hardened fighters with a rebellious or criminal past. The choice of proxy carries serious implications for the patterns and effects of violence during civil war, human rights, and international security. This article is the first to disaggregate the nonstate counterinsurgents and offer an explanation for why and how states use each type. It brings together the politics of collaboration with the politics of exploitation. The article shows that the state’s use of nonstate proxies is shaped by the supply of willing collaborators, the state’s ability to exercise control over them, and the trade-offs underlying the use of the different types of nonstate actors. The empirical evidence used to support this argument comes from a novel, comparative study of Turkey’s counterinsurgency campaign against Kurdish separatists and India’s counterinsurgency against Kashmiri separatists. The original data were collected through fieldwork in the disputed territories of each country.     

Anarchy’s anatomy: Two-tiered security systems and Libya’s civil wars

ABSTRACT

No issue deserves more scrutiny than the mechanisms whereby popular unrest unleashes civil wars. We argue that one institution – two-tiered security systems – is particularly pernicious in terms of the accompanying civil war risk. These systems’ defining characteristic is the juxtaposition of small communally stacked units that protect regimes from internal adversaries with larger regular armed forces that deter external opponents. These systems aggravate civil war risks because stacked security units lack the size to repress widespread dissent, but inhibit rapid regime change through coup d’état. Regular militaries, meanwhile, fracture when ordered to employ force against populations from which they were recruited.     

War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam

Wartime adaptation is a process of adjustment from the war you planned for to the one you have. This process of adjustment is done, in part, by the practitioners of war in the theater of conflict–soldier-led adaptation. Drawing upon two case studies of gun truck development in Iraq and Vietnam I argue that soldiers created networks in order to adapt to battlefield challenges and that the pattern of those networks carries implications for the likelihood of formal adoption by the organization. Simply put, the pattern of the flow of ideas, resources, and skills across the battlefield may affect the likelihood of bottom-up adaptation.     

Was World War Two a Completely Just War?

ABSTRACT

According to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess no moral rights. I argue that a more plausible comparative model would allow for a state to acquire (or lose) discrete moral rights as it improves (or damages) its moral record. This would generate a more accurate portrayal of both domestic policy within states and military conflict between states; including, in particular, the role of the Allied forces during World War Two.