openpolitics.com

In the Age of ISIS, Can We Still Have ‘Just Wars’?

G.G.: Traditional theory also holds that only soldiers, not civilians, are legitimate targets in war. How has this standard fared in discussions of modern warfare?

C.F.: Many contemporary conflicts are, in terms of conventional war, fought between vastly unequal belligerents. The weaker side often has little option other than to hide themselves among their own civilians in order to make it very difficult for the enemy to kill them, or to pretend that they are civilians in order to better approach and kill the enemy. So some modern theorists have questioned the strict exclusion of attacks on civilians.

.. G.G.: It seems, then, that for practical purposes your view amounts to a kind of pacifism.

C.F.: It’s a form of what has come to be called “contingent pacifism,” for which (at least in the present historical period) wars are almost never justified because they seldom really meet the conditions for a just war.