Should the Changing Character of War Affect Our Theories of War?
War has changed so much that it barely resembles the paradigmatic cases of armed conflict that just war theories and international humanitarian law seemed to have had in mind even a few decades ago. The changing character of war includes not only the use of new technology such as drones, but probabl...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2016]
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In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2016, Volume: 19, Issue: 3, Pages: 603-618 |
RelBib Classification: | NCD Political ethics VA Philosophy ZC Politics in general |
Further subjects: | B
New wars
B Reductionist theories of war B Just War Theory |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | War has changed so much that it barely resembles the paradigmatic cases of armed conflict that just war theories and international humanitarian law seemed to have had in mind even a few decades ago. The changing character of war includes not only the use of new technology such as drones, but probably more problematically the changing temporal and spatial scope of war and the changing character of actors in war. These changes give rise to worries about what counts as war and thus what norms to use in evaluating a particular conflict. In this paper, I develop an argument that the changing character of war gives us reasons to take reductionist revisions of just war theory seriously. By reductionist theories of war I mean those revisions within the just war tradition that suggest that we can use ordinary peacetime interpersonal analyses of moral responsibility and liability to harm to decide what justice requires in times of war. |
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ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-015-9653-x |