One of the responses to Part II of Libertarians and war, namely the comment by Billy Beck, has puzzled me sufficiently to turn what would otherwise be a rather lengthy comment into another blog. (Part III on Strategic considerations is yet to come…)
“What you have in this is an exemplary waypoint on a logical trail which is consistently extensible toward *validly* including anyone whose productive effort in any way contributes to the efficacy of this so-called “monopoly on the use of force”. And if the logic is consistently extended, then what it means is that your distinction of “civilians” (in your final paragraph, above) is no better than Al-Qaeda’s was on September 11, Adriana.”
It took me a while to work out how anyone could think that the logic of my argument extents to blurring the distinction between combatants and civilians. I came to the conclusion that it must be due to misunderstanding of two other concepts – “monopoly on the use of force” and “collective responsibility” – that I want to clarify.
It is precisely because the state has the monopoly on the use of force that a civilian population can never be a legitimate target. The monopoly on force means that the state usurps the use of force and prevents individuals from using it against external enemies (foreign armies and terrorists) and in many cases, e.g. such as in the UK, internal enemies (criminals). For my part, I resent the state’s exclusive use of force, especially regarding the latter category.
“We were going after military targets. No point in slaughtering civilians for the mere sake of slaughter. Of course there is a pretty thin veneer in Japan, but the veneer is still there. It was their system of dispersal of industry… I’ll never forget Yokohama. That was what impressed me: drill presses. There they were, like a forest of scorched trees and stumps, growing up throughout that residential area. Flimsy construction all gone…everything burned down, or up, and drill presses standing like skeletons.”
The quote above (from Memoirs of Gen. Curtis LeMay) does distinguish between military and civilian installations and makes it explicit that “the veneer was pretty thin in Japan”. It also admits that civilian casualties occurred but the point is specifically made that they were aiming at military targets, never at civilians. Although civilian casualties were to be expected given the [Japanese] system of dispersal of industry…
It is for circumstances like these the double effect doctrine has something to say. The bad effect may be known beforehand but provided it is not the intention and the act itself is required for bringing about the needed good effect, the doctrine of double effect allows waging a war despite foreseeble civilian casualties. I do not see how it opens up a possibility that civilians may ever be a legitimate target just because they have their role in the functioning of the military machine. It is self-evident and blindingly obvious that an army cannot be raised, funded and function without civilian economy and infrastructure supporting it but I fail to see how it can provide a justification for turning civilians into a military target!
It is Al-Qaeda, as Billy Beck correctly points out, and not me, that cannot make the distinction between the effect civilians may have on the efficacy of the military and the moral grounds for turning them into a target for their ‘war’. As I argue in my posting on just war, it is equivalent to taking defenceless hostages – civilians disarmed by the state are targeted by the enemies of that state for its actions.
Here the notion of collective responsibility becomes relevant as it is often implicit in statements of those who hold an individual responsible for actions carried out by a collective entity, such as state merely on the basis of that individual’s membership of such entity. Would you say that all German civilians were equally and personally responsible for the Holocaust and WWII, by virtue of being citizens of the German state or even by virtue of working in one of the armaments factories trying to make a living?! Surely, there is a distinction to be made and one does not need a rigorous moral code to see that.
The doctrines of just war and double effect mean to provide guidance in situations where our moral instincts are torn between two ‘unacceptable’ options. They are meant to provide a moral template, not definitive or comforting answers, for those who want to know right from wrong even in the most difficult situations. They still leave plenty of room for formulation of policy and strategy…
Vernor Vinge has a story, the ungoverned. The premise is the US is broken and the northern midwest is ungoverned. It is about idevidual resposibility for “national” defence. The southern nation tries to conquer the free lands and the defence contractors (meant to defent peoples homes in case of nomadic gangs). In the end they win because the people are all defending themselves (some homes are automated fortresses) and they have better tech(this is generally true of all free societies).
I don’t know if this applies to this post because it’s late, but i thought it was interesting anyway.
Finally some words jump from libertarian fingers which deal with the real world. This and the previous articles by Adriana are the breath of fresh air. I am being eager to see more writing please bylibertarians with heads not firmly pushed up own backsides. This thinking is clear and not fuzzy.Very good!
I am no fan of the IRA but they prove that the truth is the state’s monopoly on force is more fragile than it wants you to think.
I don’t see a difference between civilians which you directly target, and civilian deaths which come about as the result of hitting some military target. Killing is always wrong, and especially in the case of killing civilians. The idea that the reason for killing a civilian should matter is a dangerous one, as is illustrated in your justification:
“The bad effect may be known beforehand but provided it is not the intention and the act itself is required for bringing about the needed good effect, the doctrine of double effect allows waging a war despite foreseeble civilian casualties.”
This is writing a blank cheque for any kind of violence, as long as we can put a nice sugar coating on it. If massive civilian causulties are inevitable in some action, then the action is immoral. Are we honestly to believe that it was moral to kill hundreds of thousands of people because it brought an end to WWII? These people needn’t have died; the U.S. simply saying “OK, we’re getting out of this war” would have been preferable to wholescale slaughter. The obvious military utility of the attacks was to scare the Japanese government by killing a lot of their people. Knowing we could blow up their military bases would hardly change anything in the war–we could already do that.
This is writing a blank cheque for any kind of violence, as long as we can put a nice sugar coating on it.
No it isn’t a blank cheque, far from it, as you can see from the conditions of the just war and double effect! These are strict and harsh conditions and do not lend moral justification easily. For example, if there are massive civilian casaualties inevitable, the action is not allowed as it doesn’t meet the condition of proportionality. The justification I describe applies only in situation where some deaths/killing is inevitable.
Your example of WWII is a classic example of being a general after battle. Nobody was saying it is moral to kill civilians as long as it brings end to the war, for crying out loud. Firstly, it was the Japanese who waged a war of aggression, remember Pearl Harbour? Secondly, their civilian and military infrustructures were closely intertwined and thirdly, nobody could predict the full effect and horror of nuclear weapons at that time. It is also true that the Japanese government wouldn’t have surrendered without a major shock to the country. That doesn’t make it moral, though and I would never use that as an example of just war proper. Again, hindsight is a useful thing when one wants to make self-righteous remarks about other people’s moral dilemmas…
Finally, if you say that killing a person is always immoral, well, if someone is attacking you with a lethal weapon or is holding a child, a woman or someone dear to you hostage, you mean you will not fight them with all you can?! Such pacificism is easy to subscribe to until you have a chance to ‘test’ it. Good luck to you that you may never need to!
I have no problem with being a general after the fact, if that means that it was wrong to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. You seem to have no qualms about being a general after-the-fact for communists. But wait, they’re evil. So it’s OK to judge them, but not people on our side I see as evil? Makes loads of sense to me.
“nobody could predict the full effect and horror of nuclear weapons at that time. ”
Do you honestly expect me to believe that engineers and ballistics experts didn’t know how big a bomb they were building? Come on. Furthermore, the effects of firebombing were well known.
You’re right that if the “double effect” doctrine is applied properly, then it’s not a blanque cheque. However, all you need is some thin sugar coating (saying Poland is a threat to you, for example), and suddenly it’s OK to invade. All one has to do is value “proportionality” differently from you, and it turns into a blank cheque very quickly.
“Nobody was saying it is moral to kill civilians as long as it brings end to the war, for crying out loud. Firstly, it was the Japanese who waged a war of aggression, remember Pearl Harbour?”
The Japanese government waged an aggressive war of imperialism, so what’s your point exactly? Does this make our immoral actions less immoral, just because the Japanese were not nice guys?
“if someone is attacking you with a lethal weapon or is holding a child, a woman or someone dear to you hostage, you mean you will not fight them with all you can?! Such pacificism is easy to subscribe to until you have a chance to ‘test’ it. Good luck to you that you may never need to!”
Gasp! I’d never thought of that before. Yes, it would still be immoral to kill someone, even if he was attacking me. I would try not kill him, and if I did, then I would have committed an immoral act. I doubt that this will ever come up, and even if it did, the situation would be extremely different from state-sanctioned mass-slaughter of civilians.
I am in no way personally threatened by Saddam, and even if I were, civilians in his country should not pay the price for my security. Millions of civilians across the world have been paying that price for decades, and I don’t think it’s worth it. It never was.
Oops. Should read “blank cheque,” not “blanque cheque.” What a silly mistaque.
How about carte blanche?