ADVANCING 

STRATEGIC THOUGHT 

SERIES

NEW 

DIRECTIONS 

IN JUST-WAR 

THEORY

J. Toby Reiner

Carlisle Barracks, PA and

UNITED STATES 

ARMY WAR COLLEGE

PRESS

i

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Strategic Studies Institute

and 

U.S. Army War College Press

NEW DIRECTIONS IN JUST-WAR THEORY

J. Toby Reiner

July 2018

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ISBN 1-58487-785-5
vii

FOREWORD

Just-war theory has a long and distinguished history that stretches back to the Christian theologians 

of medieval Europe. Yet principles of just war must 

develop alongside social norms, standards of military 

practice and technology, and civilian-military relationships. Since World War II, and especially since 

American involvement in Vietnam, military ethics has 

developed into an academic cottage industry. As commonly taught to undergraduates and military practitioners, contemporary just-war theory seeks to ensure 

the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of 

nation-states. The theory insists that the only just 

wars are defensive ones and forbids wars of national 

aggrandizement. On this view, because of the right 

to collective self-determination, wars must not seek 

to remake the world order, as that would undermine 

state sovereignty.

In recent decades, however, cosmopolitan philosophers have challenged various aspects of the traditional 

edifice in an attempt to use just-war theory to enhance 

the protection of human rights around the world. 

Scholars have argued for greater scope for humanitarian intervention to protect individuals against their 

own government, for principles of justice after war to 

ensure that all states are legitimate, and most radically, 

for the responsibility of ordinary combatants to assess 

for themselves the justice of their military’s cause. On 

this last argument, because combatants whose cause 

is just have done nothing to lose their immunity from 

harm, attacking them is unjust, and combatants whose 

cause is unjust cannot fight with discrimination.

This publication surveys these recent developments, and it finds that they provide a radical challenge to both the theory and practice of contemporary 
warfare. Of particular importance is its insistence on 

the need to strengthen international institutions, so as 

to provide combatants with an impartial perspective 

on their side’s cause, and to strengthen military ethics 

education; this monograph also suggests that policies 

on dishonorable discharge be rethought. However, 

the monograph challenges certain aspects of the new 

approach, suggesting important connections between 

military ethics and democratic theory and practice.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute and

U.S. Army War College Press

viii
ix

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. TOBY REINER is an associate professor of political 

science at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA. In academic 

year 2015-2016, he was a visiting assistant professor at 

the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

Carlisle, PA.

xi

SUMMARY

This monograph provides an overview and analysis of recent developments in military ethics that 

conceptualize just wars as a form of global law enforcement in defense of socially basic human rights and, 

in different ways, deny the sovereignty of independent states. Having first considered the arguments in 

favor of humanitarian intervention and for principles 

of jus post bellum (justice after war) that insist upon 

the rehabilitation of aggressive regimes, the analysis 

then focuses on a new revisionist approach to just-war 

theory, which it shows to be an extension of the other 

arguments. According to this approach, the traditional 

bipartite structure of just-war theory, which divides 

questions of military ethics into the justice of resort to 

war (jus ad bellum) and justified combat during war 

(jus in bello), must be abandoned. On this argument, 

the division wrongly absolves ordinary combatants 

of responsibility for judging the justice of their side’s 

cause, as jus ad bellum is normally thought of as the 

responsibility only of civilian leaders. This increases 

the ease with which states may fight unjust wars and 

allows warriors prosecuting unjust wars to get away 

with murder. In the new view, soldiers become liable 

to attack in war only if they do something to forfeit 

their moral immunity to harm. This makes warriors 

prosecuting a just cause illegitimate military targets 

and emphasizes the gravity of taking a human life, 

no matter what the circumstances. As the discussion 

shows, this is an important challenge to both the theory 

and practice of contemporary warfare. It suggests the 

need both to strengthen international institutions, so as 

to provide for neutral judgments of the justice of resort 

to war, and to ensure that Armed Forces increase their 
xii

focus upon jus ad bellum and the justice of particular 

causes within military ethics education. However, this 

monograph also queries the moral foundations of the 

new revisionism, and holds that we should reconceive 

just-war theory as a collective enterprise that is continuous with democratic theory, which suggests that 

expecting each combatant to make an individual decision about a war’s justice may be in tension with civilian control over the Armed Forces.
1

NEW DIRECTIONS IN JUST-WAR THEORY

As conventionally taught, contemporary just-war 

theory seeks to ensure the political independence and 

territorial sovereignty of nation-states by insisting 

that the only just wars are those waged in defense of 

either one’s own state or a third party that has been 

subjected to attack from without. Religious crusades 

and wars of national aggrandizement are, on this view, 

equally criminal.1 The sole legitimate purpose of war is 

to secure a better peace than that which existed prior 

to war by ensuring the conditions of national independence.2

 While the purpose of just wars is to protect human rights, the fundamental importance of the 

right to collective self-determination means that wars 

must not attempt to remake the world order if that 

undermines the twin state rights of independence and 

sovereignty.3

However, in recent decades, a set of cosmopolitan 

alternatives to the traditional theory have emerged 

that have in common the conceptualization of just 

wars as those fought in protection of “socially basic” 

human rights, including security rights against one’s 

government.4 This monograph provides an overview 

and analysis of these developments, showing them 

to provide a radical challenge to the theory and practice of contemporary warfare by calling into question the legitimacy of the nation-state and suggesting 

the need to strengthen international institutions. The 

most focus and attention is directed toward a most 

recent development: the argument that soldiers may 

not rely upon the authority of the state to determine 

whether the cause for which a war is being fought is 

just, because soldiers who are prosecuting a just war 

have done nothing to lose their immunity to attack. 
2

On this argument, advanced by scholars such as David 

Rodin and Jeff McMahan, individual combatants must 

be held responsible for participating in an unjust war.5

This position undercuts the distinction between the 

justice of resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the justice 

of conduct in war (jus in bello) that first featured in the 

just-war theories of Christian theologians from Augustine and Aquinas to Grotius and Vitoria and that has 

been the foundational distinction within military 

ethics for more than a millennium. For many decades, 

it remained foundational to the secular just-war theory 

of the 20th century academy. Most importantly, 

Michael Walzer argued in his seminal Just and Unjust 

Wars that there is a dualism between jus ad bellum and 

jus in bello because ordinary warriors are absolved of 

responsibility for judgments about the justice of their 

army’s cause, but they are expected to refuse to participate in unjust actions during the prosecution of war.6

As a result, there is, Walzer claims, a “moral equality” 

between soldiers: regardless of which side they are on, 

they may legitimately target each other, but they may 

not target non-combatants.7 In large part because of 

Walzer’s importance in contemporary just-war theory, 

for a long time, many scholars accepted this position 

unquestioningly.8

In rejecting this orthodoxy, scholars have appealed 

to a liability model of justified harm, in which soldiers 

fighting in defense of a just cause are immune from 

attack because they have done nothing to render themselves liable to harm.9

 This makes attacks on such combatants illegitimate. Furthermore, on this argument, 

the claim that only political leaders are responsible for 

such crimes does not hold up; obeying illegal orders 

may partially excuse combatants from responsibility, but it cannot justify their actions.10 This argument 
3

poses a radical challenge to both the traditional theory 

of just war and the disciplinary practices of modern 

armies. By making the justice of action in war dependent on the justice of resort to war, it undercuts the 

distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello 

and makes the ethics of war all one piece, morally. It 

consequently denies the “moral equality” of soldiers, 

requiring combatants to assess the justice and legality 

of entire military campaigns, not just of an individual 

operation.11 This means that it calls for soldiers to disobey the order to go to war if that order appears to be 

unjust, and suggests the need to develop accommodations for conscientious objection to particular wars.12

Although some revisionists have shied away from 

holding soldiers legally accountable for actions undertaken in pursuit of an unjust war, the argument also 

points in the direction of strengthening global institutions such as the International Criminal Court so that 

they can prosecute crimes of aggressive war.13

The implication that international institutions need 

strengthening makes revisionist just-war theory continuous with other recent developments in military 

ethics, such as the insistence on a broadened scope for 

humanitarian intervention14 and the focus on developing a set of principles for justice after war (jus post 

bellum) so that aggressor regimes are rehabilitated.15 As will be shown, these three developments all 

argue for increased international scrutiny of domestic 

regimes and the development of a rights-supporting 

international order. Moreover, their arguments share 

a basis in the methods of analytic philosophy, and so 

tend to argue for just-war principles by analogy with 

the morality of everyday life. This monograph argues 

that this underlies both the importance of the new 

approach and the difficulties to which it gives rise. On 
4

the one hand, revisionist just-war theory is important 

because of its insistence that, regardless of the circumstances of war, taking a life remains one of the gravest moral decisions―perhaps the gravest of them all. 

Thus, one of the great benefits of revisionist just-war 

theory is that it pushes us to do more to try to hold 

armies accountable for taking lives by insisting that 

a defense of following superior orders does not justify the waging of aggressive war and only partially 

excuses it. On the other hand, the model of moral 

decision-making presupposed by the revisionist theorists is more atomized than is warranted. Worse, it 

may show insufficient respect for the norms underpinning contemporary democracy. Thus, in conclusion, 

while traditional approaches to the ethics of war may 

overstate the dualism between jus ad bellum and jus 

in bello, we may do better to try to incorporate moral 

deliberation about just cause within the training and 

practice of contemporary armies than expect combatants to weigh up the pros and cons of their nation’s 

cause as isolated individuals. Put differently, while it is 

true that not all soldiers are equal, the argument here is 

that a broad swathe of combatants who represent militaries that provide recourse for selective conscientious 

objection and whose states ensure institutional consideration of the advisory verdicts of international courts 

are entitled to obey their government’s decision to go 

to war without second-guessing institutional decisions 

individually.

This monograph has five parts. The first provides 

a brief account of traditional just-war theory, focusing 

on the arguments for separating the justice of resort to 

war from justified conduct in war. The second highlights the first two of the new cosmopolitan arguments, 

namely the need for humanitarian intervention to 

protect socially basic human rights and for principles 
5

of jus post bellum that would rehabilitate aggressor 

regimes. The third directs careful attention on revisionist just-war theory’s rejection of the moral equality 

of soldiers and insistence that combatants must judge 

for themselves the justice of their army’s resort to war. 

The fourth assesses the new approaches, arguing that 

democratic participation in decisions to go to war is 

preferable to expecting each combatant to make her or 

his own judgment. The final section notes the implications of this analysis for the theory and practice of war, 

including the importance of strengthening global institutions so that combatants have some notion of the justice of their country’s cause as judged by a third party. 

Militaries should rethink their policies on dishonorable discharge to accommodate selective conscientious 

objection and that military ethics are a particular form 

of role morality. There is an urgent need to change the 

education in senior service schools so as both to integrate the ethics of war with strategic objectives and to 

provide greater focus on jus ad bellum. Furthermore, 

military ethics should incorporate consideration of its 

relationship to democratic theory.

TRADITIONAL JUST-WAR THEORY

The foundational distinction in most versions of 

just-war theory is the one that revisionism seeks to 

reject―that between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. 

For example, many theorists have argued that, for the 

resort to war to be justified, there must be a just cause, 

reasonable possibility of success, and public declaration of war by a competent authority, while the war 

must also be a last resort that is proportionate in its 

ends.16 Regarding the means deployed in war, most 

ethicists have taken the crucial principles to be proportionality of means and discrimination17 (usually taken 
6

to mean respecting non-combatant immunity).18 A similar division was also present in the just-war theories 

of the Christian jurists of medieval and early-modern 

Europe.19 Underlying the division of just-war theory 

into jus ad bellum and jus in bello is the claim that the 

moral principles appropriate to the decision to resort to 

war are of a different order to those governing action in 

war because of the difference in context. Jus ad bellum 

is the responsibility of political, and sometimes military, leaders; ordinary combatants are not responsible 

for jus ad bellum and must abide only by the principles of jus in bello. As a result, the same principles 

of jus in bello apply to all soldiers, regardless of the 

cause for which they are fighting. An allied soldier in 

World War II was on the same moral footing as a Nazi, 

if both obeyed the principles of jus in bello. As David 

Rodin puts it, two theses underlie this argument: first, 

a symmetry thesis that states that all combatants have 

the same jus in bello rights and obligations; second, an 

independence thesis, which suggests that those rights 

and obligations are independent of the justice of the 

war being fought.20 Both theses lead to the conclusion 

that there is a “moral equality of soldiers.”21

In recent just-war theory, the most important 

defenses of these claims are those provided by Michael 

Walzer. In Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer argues for a 

“dualism” between the two parts of just-war theory 

because part of the crime that is aggressive war consists of making warriors into “human instruments” 

trapped in a war not of their own making.22 Soldiers 

are moral equals because of their shared victimhood 

at the hands of the state that corrals them into fighting 

to further causes of its own. War really would be hell, 

Walzer argues, if this coercion, and the risks to which 

it subjects soldiers, did not bring in its wake certain 

rights, in particular the right to kill enemy combatants 
7

without being accused of the crime of aggressive war, 

ameliorating soldiers’ situation somewhat. Furthermore, Walzer grounds the moral equality of soldiers 

in the facts that “they are led to fight by their loyalty 

to their own states and by their lawful obedience. They 

are most likely to believe that their wars are just.”23

That this belief is not based on “rational inquiry,” but 

“a kind of unquestioning acceptance of official propaganda,” does not make such soldiers criminals.24 Even 

were soldiers to seek to question the state’s claims, they 

would often be incapable of discerning the truth of the 

situation. Combatants have, so to speak, an invincible 

ignorance of the justice of their army’s war. Walzer 

insists that the moral equality of soldiers applies to all 

Armed Forces, even those of Nazi Germany, if they 

abide by the principles of jus in bello.25

It is worth noting that Walzer considers only rejecting an alternative to the moral equality of soldiers, 

which he names the “sliding scale” approach.26 This 

is the view that an army fighting for a just cause has 

more right on its side than its opponents and may fight 

less discriminately than the opponents may. Walzer 

rejects the sliding scale because it would erode the war 

convention and make it easier for leaders to believe 

that they are forced to violate human rights.27 The 

sliding-scale approach would introduce an element 

of asymmetry into just-war theory by suggesting that 

soldiers do not all have the same rights. It would also 

undercut what Rodin called the independence thesis, 

by basing that asymmetry on the justice of the cause 

that soldiers seek to uphold. However, Walzer only 

considers one form of asymmetry, which Rodin later 

called “permissive asymmetry.” This is the view that 

just warriors have rights to violate jus in bello principles. Walzer does not consider “restrictive asymmetry,” which would have denied to unjust warriors the 

right to kill at all and held that combatants fighting 
8

for a just cause may attack enemy soldiers but must 

respect jus in bello principles.28 In essence, revisionist just-war theory is the view that, while Walzer was 

right to reject permissive asymmetry, he ought not to 

have rejected asymmetry per se but, instead, denied 

war rights to combatants whose cause is unjust.

Indeed, Walzer does not ultimately maintain an 

absolute form of the independence thesis. As soon 

as he rejects the sliding-scale approach, he goes on to 

acknowledge that there may be situations in which 

it is so important that the just side win the war that 

they must be granted leeway to violate principles of 

jus in bello. Walzer calls such situations “supreme 

emergencies”29 and argues that they arise when there 

is a “threat to human values so radical that its imminence”30 and its seriousness combine to warrant an 

army to do whatever it must do to avert the threat, 

including, if necessary, deliberately targeting civilians. Space precludes consideration of the merits of 

this argument here, which has also proven highly controversial.31 However, it is worth bearing in mind that 

most theories of just war seek to find a way to ensure 

that the just side is more likely to win the war, at least 

in extreme circumstances, and that it is not only revisionists who are uncomfortable with the idea that war 

rights are independent of just cause.
9

THE MOVEMENT TOWARD COSMOPOLITAN 

JUST-WAR THEORY

Challenging the Paradigm: The Argument for 

Humanitarian Intervention

The new directions in just-war theory share a concern to reduce the incidence of justice in warfare by 

bolstering the denial of the right to use force to those 

who would not have a just cause on their side. As we 

shall see, this trend reaches its apotheosis in revisionist just-war theory, which extends that denial to ordinary warriors who obey the principles of jus in bello 

but whose military’s cause is unjust. However, the first 

movements in this direction targeted not combatants, 

but the state, whose rights to territorial integrity and 

political sovereignty were denied by a wave of cosmopolitan critics of Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars in 

the late 1970s. These arguments laid the theoretical 

foundations for subsequent developments in military 

practice such as the notion that there is a responsibility to protect human rights wherever violations occur. 

These critics followed Walzer in insisting that individual human rights must be the foundation of principles 

of just war and that only defensive wars can be just. 

Where Walzer’s early critics broke with him was on 

the claim that the only legitimate defensive wars were 

wars of national defense.32 Rather, they held, if justwar theory is grounded in human rights, then those 

must include rights against one’s own government, 

which means that humanitarian interventions can be 

justified on the grounds that they defend the rights of 

the persecuted, even though no national boundary has 
10

been breached.33 Where Walzer, following John Mill, 

had accepted humanitarian intervention only in very 

limited circumstances, the critics were more concerned 

to avoid the danger of states violating the rights of 

their citizens.

In response, Walzer argued that, while it was true 

that states that committed human rights violations 

were illegitimate from the point of view of their own 

citizens, just-war theorists should, for the most part, 

presume a “fit” between government and citizen body. 

This means that humanitarian intervention should take 

place only to prevent massacre or slavery or as a form 

of counterintervention in civil wars.34 According to this 

argument, just-war theory should not seek to remake 

the world order such that states are reconstituted as 

liberal democracies; rather, state rights to territorial 

integrity and political sovereignty exist because these 

are necessary for individuals to establish common lives 

in communities of their own.35 It is this right to collective self-determination that undergirds what Walzer 

calls the “legalist paradigm,” in which the rights of 

states are justified by virtue of a “domestic analogy” 

with individual rights.36 In order to ensure the individual right to collective self-determination, states have 

equal rights, although they can lose those rights by acts 

of aggression, as can individuals. Similarly, absent acts 

of aggression, the rights of states must be respected, 

and thus just-war theory cannot be used to attempt to 

justify the forcible reconstruction of states by “authorities who stand outside the political arena.”37

However, this response did not satisfy Walzer’s 

critics, who held that his view seemed “to privilege 

the value of communal integrity and give insufficient 

weight to human rights.”38 They argued that just wars 

should not be conceived of as ones fought in defense 
11

of the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of 

independent states representing distinct communities, but rather as defenses of “socially basic human 

rights,” including security rights against one’s government.39 The entitlement to prosecute wars in defense of 

basic rights stems from the fact that such rights have a 

“cosmopolitan nature,” as they are “necessary for the 

enjoyment of any other rights at all”; because people 

cannot survive without them, basic rights are “universal.”40 Defense of basic rights is therefore incompatible with national sovereignty that critics hold to be 

“indifferent” to basic rights and based on a “myth” of 

national commonality.41 On this view, just-war theory 

must dispense with the domestic analogy and proceed 

as though state rights are justified only when states 

uphold socially basic human rights. When they do 

not do so, states should be taken to be illegitimate and 

lose their rights to sovereignty. This means that the 

argument for humanitarian intervention forms part 

of a conception of just wars that, at least in embryonic 

form, partakes in the cosmopolitan project of seeking 

to remake the world order such that basic rights are 

respected everywhere. For this reason, although Walzer’s early critics did not adopt the liability model that 

calls into question the dualism between jus ad bellum 

and jus in bello, we should understand them as taking 

the first important steps toward it in conceptualizing 

just wars as a form of global law enforcement.
12

Vignette 1: Humanitarian Intervention

National Sovereignty versus Individual Rights: Apartheid 

South Africa and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua

Many real-world cases of humanitarian intervention are ones for which both traditional just-war theorists and their cosmopolitan critics who, as noted in 

the main text, argue against a strong right to national 

sovereignty and come to similar policy conclusions. 

For example, there was a moral case for intervention 

in apartheid South Africa according to both types of 

just-war theory, albeit on different grounds. Cosmopolitans treated apartheid as an example of oppression that warranted intervention because the rights of 

black South Africans were being violated. For advocates of the traditional approach, on the other hand, to 

talk in terms of “oppression” was to miss the severity 

of the situation and the fact that black South Africans 

took their struggle to be one against something that 

amounted in effect to slavery and to be a struggle for 

national liberation.

However, there are situations in which the different approaches come to different conclusions about 

whether intervention is warranted. An important 

example here is the case of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Cosmopolitan theory probably suggests that there 

should have been a foreign intervention in Nicaragua 

at the time of the first Sandinista struggle against the 

Anastasio Somoza regime in 1978, whereas according to 

the traditional theory, such an intervention would not 

have been warranted. The reason for this is that intervention would have exempted the Sandinistas from 

having to engage in an internal bargaining about the 

character of the new regime that they would establish 
13

upon taking power. According to Walzer, humanitarian intervention in 1978 would have “violated the right 

of Nicaraguans as a group to shape their own political 

institutions,” and doing so would have interfered with 

the collective right to self-determination of the Nicaraguan people.42

What this means is that in cases where humanitarian 

intervention may appear to be called for, it is important 

for intervening powers to consider which rights are at 

stake in a particular case. On the traditional just-war 

approach, humanitarian intervention does not only 

protect rights, it also endangers them, because it runs 

the risk of establishing a satellite power that is not in 

any meaningful sense a local regime. On the cosmopolitan approach of more recent just-war theory, this suggestion overstates the importance of the nation-state 

and so gives insufficient weight to individual human 

rights. What militaries must consider, then, is how 

important such things as national independence are to 

black South Africans and oppressed Nicaraguans compared to relief from violent rights-violations.43

The Addition of Jus Post Bellum

The next major development in cosmopolitan justwar thinking occurred around the turn of the millennium.44 At that time, the geopolitical climate of the 

post-Cold War world, which led to a renewal of ethnic 

conflict across both Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, 

encouraged a new generation of theorists to argue that 

justice after war―jus post bellum―must be considered 

an independent part of just-war theory, and could 

no longer be subsumed into jus ad bellum and jus in 

bello. Both the increased need for humanitarian intervention and the use of military force in “chaotic arenas 

of insecurity” meant that independent principles of 
14

post-war settlements were major requirements of 

military ethics.45 More recently, the wars of regime 

change―whether justified or not―need the guidance 

of a set of post-conflict principles that can avert the 

danger of descent into chaos. As a result, theorists of 

jus post bellum have continued the cosmopolitan project of treating just-war theory as a form of global law 

enforcement by arguing that just wars must aim at creating just societies, and that just-war theory must be 

linked to theorizing about justice in domestic society. 

Not to do so is to downplay the “ethical implications 

of the status quo.”46 Doing so misses the opportunity 

to help contribute to a more peaceful and just world.

To see why scholars conclude that the absence of 

principles tailored specifically to jus post bellum is a 

major omission, let us consider the traditional view. 

Walzer is again paradigmatic. In the late 1970s, he followed the traditional just-war paradigm in assuming 

that all that justice after war required was a “better 

peace” than the status quo prior to war, where better 

means “more secure than the status quo ante bellum, less 

vulnerable to territorial expansion, safer for ordinary 

men and women and for their domestic self-determinations [italics in original].”47 Walzer is explicit that 

these words must be used relatively; it can be no part 

of just-war theory to try to ensure perfect safety, whatever that might mean, because “Just wars are limited 

wars.”48 The limits in this instance relate to the ends of 

war, and not just to its means. Walzer holds that the 

“theory of ends in war is shaped by the same rights 

that justify the fighting in the first place―most importantly, by the rights of nations, even of enemy nations, 

to continued national existence and, except in extreme 

circumstances, to the political prerogatives of nationality.”49 Justice after war requires a more secure status 

quo, such that the conditions that caused the war 
15

might be changed so that a new war does not follow 

quickly upon the cessation of the old. It cannot require 

the remaking of the world order and of the internal 

politics of nations such that we encourage the spread 

of liberal democracy. National self-determination, on 

this view, has its limits, but it should not be interpreted 

as requiring similar political forms all over the world. 

Extending this principle, Walzer argued that, in those 

exceptional cases of humanitarian intervention that he 

did accept, the intervention concluded with the cessation of rights-violations, and did not require democratization. Interveners should be guided by a rule of “in 

and quickly out.”50

Walzer’s view is, as usual, the received one,51 but 

even when he wrote Just and Unjust Wars, the legal situation had departed from the traditional just-war view.52

The experience of Nazism had led to the establishment 

of post-war military tribunals to deal with crimes 

against humanity and the like.53 Walzer discusses the 

Nuremberg trials, but he treats the issue as a matter of 

allocating responsibility for crimes of war, introducing 

it in cohort with an account of responsibility for American involvement in Vietnam, rather than as a separate 

branch of just-war theory.54 This may be because of his 

appeal to the legalist paradigm, which pictures states 

as perpetually in tension with each other and suggests 

that just-war theory should focus on restraint of states 

and not on transformation of the state system.55 Cosmopolitan advocates of jus post bellum have rejected this 

claim, arguing that we need to rethink the belief that 

“the end of war is a better state of peace” and replace 

it with a view that sees just wars as part of a progressive transformation of the state system toward one of 

global respect for human rights.56 In partial acceptance 

of this, Walzer has revised the rule that should guide 

humanitarian intervention to “in and finally out,” once 
16

independent local authorities are securely in place,57

arguing that jus post bellum reflects the need for war 

to aim at “social justice in its minimal sense: the creation of a safe and decent society.”58

Advocates of jus post bellum, then, reject the legalist paradigm that guides traditional just-war theory in 

favor of a model of rehabilitation that seeks to ensure 

that aggressor regimes are reconstituted such that 

they become “progressive member[s] of the international community.”59 The legalist paradigm, in treating 

punishment for war crimes as a matter of allocating 

responsibility for war crimes, on this view does not 

pay sufficient attention to the need for conciliation 

and security after war.60 At the least, it fails to recognize that long-term security requires societies that 

are more just. Brian Orend argues that the traditional 

model treats postwar justice as a matter of revenge, 

seeing postwar peace as involving an apology from the 

aggressor, war crimes tribunals for those responsible, 

demilitarization, the giving up of territorial gains, and 

possibly further losses.61 Orend cites the Paris Peace 

Treaties that ended World War I and the treaty that 

ended the first Gulf war as examples of this model.62

By contrast, Orend argues, a rehabilitative model of 

jus post bellum requires something more like the peace 

treaties that ended World War II. Rehabilitation does 

not mean the eschewal of apologies, demilitarization, 

and war crimes tribunals, but it does reject sanctions 

and compensation payments, and it also espouses 

regime change. Orend concludes that justice after war 

requires a new Geneva Convention that commits the 

international community to the construction of “minimally just” regimes that are peaceful, that are legitimate in the view of both their own people and the 

international community, and that do what they can to 

satisfy human rights.63
17

Jus post bellum thus breaks with the idea that just 

wars are limited in their ends by the twin principles of 

political sovereignty and territorial integrity.64 Rather, 

it bolsters the cosmopolitan conception of international 

order that seeks to ensure the spread of a particular 

model of human rights across the globe. Moreover, 

Orend’s is what Mark Evans calls a “restricted” conception of jus post bellum because it limits its concerns 

to the immediate aftermath of war, whereas more 

expansionist views require further changes to the 

international order.65 Nonetheless, either conception 

of jus post bellum marks a significant break with the 

traditional theory of just war by limiting the political 

sovereignty of states and connecting military ethics to 

questions of domestic justice.66 Put differently, rather 

than trying to restrain states, jus post bellum seeks to 

break the cycle of violence, and promote a world in 

which rights are more uniformly respected.67 In other 

words, it conceives of just wars as a sort of global law 

enforcement in pursuit of a cosmopolitan, rights-protecting order. It thus furthers the project of the advocates of humanitarian intervention and anticipates, as 

we shall see below, the new revisionism. While it does 

not yet reject the notion of the moral equality of soldiers, it does display the same universality that traditional just-war theorists bemoan as lacking attention to 

context.68 That is the hallmark of the new directions in 

just-war theory with which we are concerned.
18

Vignette 2: Justice After War

Regime Change and the Promotion of Democracy: Human 

Rights and Security in Post-War Reconstruction

Traditional just-war theory stipulates that nations 

have a right to self-determination and sovereignty, and 

therefore holds that, following the cessation of war, 

the victor should seek to restore the previous status 

quo, although it accepts the necessity of taking steps 

to remove the situation that led to conflict in the first 

place. By contrast, cosmopolitan approaches see war 

as a form of global law enforcement and advocate the 

development of liberal regimes that do what they can 

to satisfy human rights. Therefore, the two approaches 

are radically at odds over questions of regime change 

and rehabilitation.

For example, the traditional approach would have 

forbidden the 2003 invasion of Iraq insofar as the 

goal was the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime and 

the replacement of Saddam Hussein with something 

resembling a liberal democracy. While the question 

of weapons of mass destruction complicates matters 

somewhat for the traditional view, most exponents of 

it advocated the continuation and enhancing of inspections and the no-fly zone. On this view, preventive war 

is illegitimate, and states must actually do something 

that violates the rights of another state before they lose 

their own rights to territorial integrity and political 

sovereignty.

By contrast, so long as they satisfy the other 

requirements of just war, wars of regime change can 

be proportional and legitimate on the cosmopolitan 

approach. Because this approach tries to break the 

cycle of violence and promote a world in which rights 
19

are respected, the internal actions of states can constitute a just cause for war as surely as can violations 

of the sovereignty of a third party. Moreover, regime 

change can be a legitimate goal of a war sparked by 

an external act of aggression, and some cosmopolitans 

advocated the toppling of Saddam’s regime after the 

first Gulf war of 1991.

In other words, the two approaches to just-war 

theory differ radically in their assessment of the tasks 

of post-war reconstruction. Whereas the priority of the 

traditional theory is to improve the security of the international order, cosmopolitan approaches seek to limit 

sovereignty so as to promote a more just world order. 

In practice, it may sometimes be possible to attempt to 

combine the approaches and to aim at the best of both 

possible worlds by seeking the establishment of pluralistic institutions, including power-sharing agreements and the separation of powers. However, one of 

the grave dangers for military forces is being perceived 

as acting as proxies of imperial powers, in particular 

when engaged in action in parts of the world with 

vastly differing norms to those of North America and 

Western Europe.69

REVISIONIST JUST-WAR THEORY

The most important theoretical development in 

recent military ethics, and that with the most radical 

implications, is the revisionist approach that holds 

that the moral distinction between jus ad bellum and 

jus in bello must be revised such that combatants are 

held responsible for fighting for an unjust cause, and 

not merely for particular acts of war. Although at first 

glance, this argument might seem to be at odds with 

the claims that the categories of just-war theory need 

to expand to incorporate jus post bellum, in analyzing these arguments, it is best to understand them as 
20

adopting similar theoretical approaches and conceiving of just wars as forms of law making. In assessing 

the implications of the approach, it is important to 

highlight the call for the development or strengthening 

of global institutions designed to judge the justice of 

particular wars or state arrangements. In other words, 

the central point of departure shared by the two arguments is that the legalist paradigm needs revision. In 

the case of revisionist theory, this leads to the claims 

that the dualism between jus ad bellum and jus in bello 

must be collapsed, as combatants are not entitled to 

accept the state’s authority when assessing whether 

the cause for which they fight is just. In considering this 

argument, we will mostly focus on the approaches of 

David Rodin and Jeff McMahan, the two most important revisionists.

We should note at the outset that in important ways 

Walzer anticipated the new revisionism by requiring more of combatants than had previous versions 

of just-war theory. Most importantly, he revised the 

“Doctrine of Double Effect” by insisting that soldiers 

accept risks to themselves in order to minimize those 

that they impose on civilians.70 Walzer argued that it 

was not sufficient for combatants to claim that, while 

they foresaw that certain military actions would lead 

to civilian casualties, they did not intend those casualties. Rather, soldiers owe civilians a duty of due care. 

For example, Walzer suggests that soldiers in World 

War I who bombed dugouts owed it to potential civilians trapped in the dugouts to shout a warning before 

throwing the bombs inside.71 Walzer thus opens the 

door for the suggestion that soldiers must accept risks 

for the sake of the morally innocent.

Revisionist just-war theory holds that Walzer does 

not go far enough in this regard. The starting point 

for their argument is the claim that while traditional 
21

just-war theory and the laws of war, enshrined in the 

Charter of the United Nations (UN), both suggest that 

just wars are defensive ones, the argument for self-defense does not work in the same way in the case of 

war as it does in the case of interpersonal morality.72

In criminal law, for someone to claim self-defense as a 

justification when harming another person, the person 

harmed must have done something to render them 

liable to attack or the person invoking the claim must be 

able to claim a lesser-evil justification. In other words, 

the law conceives of people as being immune from 

harm unless they do something to lose that immunity 

or there is an urgent justification akin to Walzer’s argument that states may violate principles of jus in bello in 

cases of supreme emergency.

However, just-war theorists such as Walzer take 

soldiers to become liable to attack by fighting in war, 

even if they are prosecuting a just cause. As McMahan notes, committing justified harm would not 

render someone liable to defensive harm in civil law. 

The argument that combatants become liable to attack 

simply by fighting is at odds with principles of personal self-defense. If “a murderer is in the process of 

killing a number of innocent people and the only way 

to stop him is to kill him, the police officer who takes 

aim . . . does not thereby make herself morally liable 

to defensive action.”73 Rodin makes a similar point, 

asking, “How does the Just War Theorist get from a 

right of national-defense held against a state to a right 

to kill held against a particular person?”74 In other 

words, in the traditional argument that grounds state 

rights in a domestic analogy with individual rights, 

the rights of individuals are transformed into state 

rights and so, in effect, states become individuals for 

the purposes of international law. This means that justwar theory generally assumes that soldiers are liable 

to attack simply by virtue of posing a threat to other 
22

human beings. However, revisionist just-war theorists 

insist that liability to harm requires moral, not merely 

causal, responsibility for a threat of harm. In other 

words, the threat in question must be illegitimate.75

However, soldiers prosecuting a just war are not morally responsible for an illegitimate threat. As a result, 

such combatants are not liable to attack. Revisionists 

thus conclude that, although just-war literature has 

usually used the term “innocence” as a synonym for 

“not engaged in harming,” in fact, it ought to be used 

in its ordinary, moral sense as meaning “not guilty of 

illegitimate acts of harm.”76 In this view, as we shall 

see, combatants prosecuting an unjust cause are guilty 

of illegitimate acts of harm; even if they are misled by 

their government into thinking their war is just.

Put differently, the revisionist argument proceeds 

from the view that killing in defense of an unjust 

cause is, morally speaking, killing the innocent and is 

therefore tantamount to murder. That is why revisionists argue that the traditional distinction between jus 

ad bellum and jus in bello cannot hold, and soldiers 

must assess the justice of their army’s cause. By contrast, killing in prosecution of a just cause is legitimate, 

provided, that is, that such killing is both necessary 

to advance the war’s aims and proportionate to them. 

Aware that this conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive to most, revisionists have advanced defenses of it 

against many of the most likely objections. The following discussion considers three of the more important 

of these.77

First, revisionists have argued against the view 

that the moral equality of soldiers can be defended by 

virtue of the duties of the office itself. This argument 

sometimes proceeds via an analogy between combatants and prison guards. Like combatants, guards 

are expected to carry out sentences regardless of any 
23

misgivings they have about the justice of the sentence. The reason for that, revisionists argue, is that 

we assume that the legal system in which the guard 

works is generally just and grant the excuse if and only 

if there is good reason to think that it is. Absolute certainty may not be required morally prior to action that 

would cause harm, but we expect those inflicting such 

harm to have a strong degree of confidence in the justice of their action. In war, however, this is impossible, 

because contemporary just-war theory stipulates that 

no war can be just on both sides and because many 

wars are unjust on both sides. The upshot is, the revisionists argue, that soldiers cannot presume their war 

to be just because it is more likely to be unjust.78 Now, 

if we were to doubt the fact that domestic legal systems 

are just, this would not uproot the revisionist argument 

in and of itself, because the obvious response would 

be that in cases of injustice, prison guards also have 

strong reason to doubt whether to impose sentences. 

The revisionist argument that all combatants should 

believe that their cause is more likely to be unjust than 

just may be overstated, but at the very least the argument should call into question the claim that combatants may simply defer moral decision-making to their 

government.

Second, revisionists argue that the appeal to moral 

equality makes a conceptual error by confusing the 

legal categories of “excuse” and “justification.” In 

criminal law, a justification exculpates someone completely because it suggests that an action that would 

have been wrong in most circumstances is not wrong 

in the conditions in which it was committed. By contrast, an excuse provides partial diminution of responsibility, but some wrongdoing remains.79 Revisionists 

claim that the sorts of arguments that Walzer adduces 
24

to support the position that soldiers do not commit a 

crime if they fight for an unjust cause are presented as 

though they justified such action, when the considerations that he presents are, at best, excuses. In particular, Walzer’s argument that soldiers are moral equals 

because they are coerced by their states into fighting 

is, they argue, in effect a claim of duress, which is an 

excusing condition, not a justification.80 Combatants 

coerced by their government are in a position analogous to someone coerced by a criminal into harming a 

third party. While we might hold that the third party 

bore most of the responsibility for the harm, generally 

speaking, we would not regard such duress as justifying but merely excusing the coerced party’s actions. 

Duress does, on this view, excuse not only conscripted 

soldiers, who are formally coerced, but also those who 

enlist in order to escape poverty or because dictatorial 

governments threaten their families. We should perhaps add that it also applies to those who wish to serve 

their country, if they have good reason to believe that 

their country generally acts in a just manner and serves 

as a force for good in the world. However, duress 

should be considered only a partial excuse, because 

the possibility of either evading the order or accepting 

punishment exists and, given the harm that fighting 

in an unjust war causes, ought to be seriously contemplated by coerced combatants.81

Third, and most important, revisionists deny the 

claim that combatants may legitimately defer to their 

government’s view for epistemic reasons. In the traditional view, it is impossible for soldiers to discern 

whether a war is just because of lack of information. 

We saw earlier that Walzer, in defending the moral 

equality of soldiers, argued that combatants are most 

likely to trust official propaganda and so believe that 
25

their war effort is just.82 Traditional just-war theorists 

tend to believe that the ignorance of soldiers about 

the justice of their side’s cause is, in a sense, invincible. That is to say, given a government’s influence over 

the information presented to the public and to the military, it may not be possible for soldiers to uncover 

the truth. Acknowledging this, McMahan claims that 

military organizations also deliberately tend to limit 

the ability of combatants to reflect on the content of 

their orders and to offer scarcely any education on the 

morality of war.83 Moreover, that which they do provide misleads combatants into believing that, even if 

their cause is unjust, it is permissible for them to participate in it.84 It is important not to accept McMahan’s 

claims uncritically; many military forces around the 

world, including the U.S. military, do devote great 

attention to just-war theory. However, they tend to 

teach the doctrine of the moral equality of soldiers and 

to underemphasize critical reflection on jus ad bellum 

and in particular on the requirement of just cause. In 

particular, traditional just-war theory, which remains 

the dominant focus of the military, concludes that, if 

wrong is indeed done when soldiers fight in an unjust 

war, the responsibility lies with the government, and 

perhaps with military leaders, and not with ordinary 

combatants. That is because combatants believe their 

cause is just and could not believe otherwise, given 

both the paucity of information and the social and cultural pressures to accept government authority. Moreover, even if combatants do doubt the justice of their 

country’s war, they are not given an opportunity to act 

on that doubt.

Revisionist just-war theory denies that these 

considerations amount to a legitimate justification 

for combatants to accept the call to fight, given the 
26

considerations adduced earlier about the likelihood of 

a war being unjust. McMahan devotes the most attention to this argument, and concludes that a particular 

soldier’s decision whether to fight may make little 

difference from the point of view of consequences.85

Someone else would fight in her place if she refused 

to fight. There are two sorts of moral risks increased if 

she fights and that should therefore persuade her not 

to do so.86 The first is that, morally speaking, there is 

an important difference between actively doing something and allowing it to happen. It is, McMahan holds, 

“more seriously wrong to kill innocent people . . . than 

it is to allow innocent people to be killed.” So a soldier who, not knowing whether his side’s war is just or 

not, accepts the order to fight and goes on to kill innocent people does a greater wrong than does the one 

who refuses the order to fight and so allows innocents 

to die.87 Second, the confluence of the facts that most 

wars are actually unjust and that most combatants 

believe their wars to be just should, McMahan argues, 

encourage considerable skepticism about the justice of 

a particular war and encourage us to err on the side of 

caution because of “the natural bias in favor of believing that one is right.”88 In other words, because we 

tend to be inclined to believe that the wars our country 

fights are just and yet know that most wars are unjust, 

in cases of uncertainty, “the presumption should be 

that the morally safer course is not to fight.”89 However, as discussed later, it should also be noted that 

the abstraction of the foregoing argument ignores the 

fact that states may have differential histories of justice in war. As McMahan notes, it would be less risky 

for a soldier from Norway to accept her government’s 

verdict than for one from the United States to do so, 

because Norway does not have the same history of 

fighting unjust wars as that of the United States.90
27

The upshot of these arguments is that, according 

to the revisionists, soldiers are not moral equals and 

cannot defer to their government’s authority when 

deciding whether a particular war is legitimate. As soldiers who are fighting in defense of a just cause have 

done nothing to render themselves liable to attack, 

to kill them would be morally equivalent to an act of 

murder. Rodin asks rhetorically, “how can soldiers 

whose very war is unjust be engaged in an activity for 

which they are free of fault?”91 His answer, which is 

reminiscent of the arguments advanced by the advocates of jus post bellum discussed in the previous section, is that there is a tension at the heart of just-war 

theory between jus ad bellum, which aims to restrain 

states from fighting wars, and jus in bello, which aims 

to make war a rule-governed activity.92 On this view, 

leaving jus ad bellum as the responsibility of political 

leaders allows too great a degree of statism into our 

thinking about military ethics, and a more thoroughgoing individualism would require us to treat soldiers 

as moral agents and not merely as victims of government coercion.93

When assessing the revisionist approach, we shall 

consider whether the impossibility of applying such an 

individualism universally ought to give us pause, as 

well as consider the radical implications of this argument for the practice of modern warfare in posing a 

stark challenge to the disciplinary techniques of military training. However, it is worth first considering 

one of the theoretical complexities, namely that the 

revisionist argument may also undermine the central 

principle of jus in bello, non-combatant immunity. 

McMahan notes early on in Killing in War that it is a 

mistake to equate “discrimination” and “non-combatant immunity,” because the distinction between 
28

legitimate and illegitimate targets may not map on 

neatly to that between combatants and non-combatants.94 This is because, on his version of the liability 

model, moral responsibility for an illegitimate threat 

or harm may render someone liable to attack.95 Given 

that some civilians bear such responsibility for illegitimate threats, some civilians may be liable to attack, 

provided this would avert the harm.

To show that situations do arise in which civilians 

bear moral responsibility for an illegitimate threat, 

McMahan considers the case of the American invasion 

of Guatemala in 1954. Accepting McMahan’s description of the situation for the sake of argument, this 

involved the forcible overthrow of a democratically 

elected government and its replacement by a series of 

military juntas.96 One major cause of the invasion was 

the pressure that the senior executives of the United 

Fruit Company, who objected to Guatemalan President 

Jacobo Arbenz Guzman’s nationalization of United 

Fruit Company property, exerted on the Dwight Eisenhower government. McMahan invites us to consider 

whether it would have been legitimate for the Guatemalan Army to prevent the coup by assassinating the 

executives of the United Fruit Company if doing so 

would have had a realistic chance of success. He suggests that it would have because the executives had 

rendered themselves liable to attack “by their role in 

instigating an unjust war.”97 McMahan adds that such 

an action might even have been preferable to waging 

a regular war―even if they were somehow successful 

against the might of the U.S. Army―because the Guatemalan soldiers who would have been killed in such 

a war had not committed a moral wrong. McMahan 

concludes that the principle of non-combatant immunity must give way to a principle of discrimination 
29

based on moral responsibility for harm rather than the 

posing of harm.

However, it would be a mistake to think that revisionist just-war theory simply does away with the 

principle of non-combatant immunity. McMahan 

immediately qualifies his claim about the United Fruit 

Company by noting how rare it is for civilians to be 

able to influence government policy to such an extent 

and adding that it is “fanciful and contrived” to imagine that killing the executives might have averted the 

threat to the Guatemalan Government.98 Moreover, he 

adds that the moral immunity of civilians, for the most 

part, can be arrived at by considering the combined 

force of different factors, such as lack of responsibility, ineffectiveness, and the commingling of innocent 

and responsible civilians.99 In addition, he insists that 

his arguments do not offer support for terrorist attacks 

that pay lip service to ideas of moral responsibility. 

Most importantly, he insists that “pragmatic considerations argue decisively for an absolute, exceptionless 

legal prohibition of intentional military attacks against 

civilians,” and suggests that this is a place where the 

morality of war must separate from the laws of war.100

However, bearing in mind that McMahan’s analysis 

suggests that responsible civilians are more liable to 

attack than are just combatants, we might consider 

whether his arguments open the door to attacks on 

civilians in counterinsurgent operations in which civilians are often active participants.

Perhaps for this reason, other revisionists reject 

McMahan’s argument about non-combatant immunity altogether. Notably, Rodin argues for what he 

calls “restrictive asymmetry”; that is, for the position 

that, while unjust combatants should have fewer privileges in war than granted by the war convention, just 
30

warriors should have the same duties as hitherto and 

should be expected to comply with the extant principles of jus in bello.101 As noted earlier, this is the type 

of asymmetry that Walzer fails to consider in Just and 

Unjust Wars. His discussion of the sliding scale rejects 

the view that those fighting for a just cause should 

have more privileges than unjust warriors should so 

that they are entitled to violate principles of jus in 

bello. However, this is the possibility that Rodin calls 

“permissive asymmetry.” By contrast, Rodin’s variant 

of the sliding scale would not allow just warriors to 

violate jus in bello but would deny unjust ones any 

war rights at all.

In short, Rodin argues that, while unjust warriors 

should be held accountable for fighting for an unjust 

cause, this does not mean that just warriors may target 

civilians, even if those civilians are morally responsible 

for an illegitimate threat. Rather, he holds, the liability 

model, if properly used, restricts war rights of soldiers 

to those fighting for a just cause and refuses to grant 

anyone else the right to harm anyone in war. The thesis 

underlying Rodin’s work is that human rights apply 

everywhere and do not cease to exist on the edge of 

the battlefield. In practice, McMahan concurs with this 

position in almost all circumstances. The hard core of 

the revisionist principle is, then, that the distinction 

between jus ad bellum and jus in bello does not hold. 

Soldiers are not morally equal, because those defending a just cause harm only those who are liable to harm, 

while those fighting for an unjust cause harm the morally innocent and thus commit serious injustice. The 

principles of jus in bello may be what traditional justwar theory has taken them to be, but in this approach, 

they depend on the prior satisfaction of jus ad bellum, 

and in particular of the requirement of just cause. As 
31

this approach denies states the sovereign right to wage 

war for reasons of their own and seeks to reconstitute 

the international order such that recourse to war is limited, we understand it best if we build on the earlier 

cosmopolitan approaches and seek to replace war with 

international police work.102

Vignette 3: Revisionist Just-War Theory

Non-Combatant Immunity: The Case of the United Fruit 

Company Executives and the Coup in Guatemala (Or the 

Forcible Overthrow of a Democratic Regime for Reasons of 

Realpolitik)

As mentioned previously, the most radical implication of the revisionist approach to just-war theory is 

that, in some versions of it, it may undercut the jus in 

bello principle of non-combatant immunity. Given that 

this is probably the most widely accepted principle of 

just-war theory in the public imagination, it is worth 

considering further. 

According to the revisionist argument, the moral 

basis for liability to attack in war is being morally 

responsible for an unjustified threat of harm. Absent 

such a threat, people are immune to such harm. However, it is clearly the case that there can be circumstances in which people whom we would ordinarily 

consider civilians are morally responsible for an unjustified threat. Consider, for example, the American 

invasion of Guatemala in 1954, discussed in the text. If 

the description offered there does not satisfy, consider 

a hypothetical version of it tailored to fit the description: because of pressure exerted by a major international corporation that wishes to gain access to foreign 

markets, a powerful democratic country is considering 
32

going to war with a far less powerful but democratic 

country in its sphere of influence. Although the powerful state is committed to democratic governing, 

both at home and abroad, it has pledged to maintain 

its sphere of influence to resist the encroachment of a 

hostile foreign power pledged to overthrow the political system of the powerful democracy. Unfortunately 

for the less-powerful country, it is in this sphere of 

influence and its democratically-elected government 

bears a resemblance—but only a passing one—to that 

of the hostile foreign power. It is, in fact, a legitimate 

government that is not under the influence of the foreign power, but the international corporation is able to 

exploit the fear of that foreign power in the minds of 

the leaders of the powerful democracy, and there is a 

real risk of invasion.

What should the small democracy do? According to 

traditional just-war theory, its only legitimate recourse 

is a war of national defense. However, given that it is 

hopelessly outmatched militarily, even that would be 

ruled out by the jus ad bellum requirement that wars 

have a reasonable hope of success. While it could 

appeal to international assistance, this is unlikely to 

be forthcoming because of the might of the neighboring power and the lack of strategic significance of our 

benighted small democracy. It would seem as though 

surrender and negotiation is its only option.

In this instance, however, some versions of revisionist just-war theory present it with another option. 

It could attempt to assassinate the chief executives of 

the international corporation. This strategy might work 

because the intelligence agencies of the small democracy are sufficient to carry out the task effectively and 

because, with the chief executives out of the way, the 

powerful democracy might stay its hand and not carry 
33

out the invasion. The targeted assassinations would 

therefore fulfill the requirement of reasonable hope 

of success. Furthermore, they would be morally preferable to war because the chief executives have acted 

in ways that render them liable to attack, whereas the 

soldiers of the small democracy who would be killed 

in the defensive war have not acted so.

What should militaries do in such circumstances? 

The moral stigma on attacking non-combatants is high, 

and rightfully so. Indeed, some revisionists insist that 

non-combatants may indeed never be attacked, and 

even McMahan, who dissents from this view, believes 

that all such attacks should be legally, if not morally, prohibited. However, insofar as non-combatant 

immunity rests on the moral status of those rendered 

invulnerable, it is worth reconsidering the question 

of whether we should indeed regard all non-combatants, in all times and places, as innocent in the relevant 

respects.

ASSESSMENT

To some, revisionist just-war theory will look, 

as McMahan admits, “plainly crazy,”103 like “moral 

theory gone mad, the recommendations of [theorists] 

without the slightest sense of realism.”104 However, as 

advocates of the traditional approach now recognize, 

the majority of philosophers today accept its critique 

of the moral equality of soldiers.105 The following text 

provides an account of the importance of the revisionist approach to the theory and practice of contemporary warfare, and will try to explain this curious fact. 

The importance of the revisionist argument lies in the 

confluence of three factors. Taken together, they suggest, as argued in the next section, the need for significant changes to military practice, even though some of 

the changes should be reactions against revisionism.
34

The first feature of the revisionist argument that 

makes it worthy of our attention is that it is best understood as part of a broader cosmopolitan approach to 

just-war theory that seeks to strengthen international 

institutions to reduce the incidence of war and ensure 

greater protection of human rights before, during, 

and after war. This is the direction in which just-war 

theory has been moving steadily for several decades, 

and it offers the possibility of transforming the world 

order, while ensuring greater compliance with emerging international norms related to the legitimate use 

of force and the responsibility to protect. While earlier forms of the cosmopolitan argument had tended 

to focus their attention on limiting the political sovereignty of nation-states that traditional just-war theory 

upholds, revisionism attempts to extend the concern 

with raising the moral requirements of war to individual combatants. As noted, this was a feature of Walzer’s secularized version of traditional just-war theory, 

which requires soldiers to take risks in order to protect 

non-combatants, regardless of their nationality. Even if 

we are skeptical about the possibilities of global transformation or adopt a more positive attitude toward the 

state than do cosmopolitans, the attempt to use justwar theory to reduce the incidence of violence and 

encourage greater moral thought on the part of individual combatants is important. It should prompt militaries to incorporate a greater focus on jus ad bellum 

in their education on just-war theory.

Second, cosmopolitan approaches are a natural 

product of deploying the techniques of analytic philosophy to the question of just-war theory. As evidence 

of this, it is worth noting that Robert Nozick had suggested that combatants must judge the justice of their 

army’s cause as early as the 1970s, before Walzer wrote 
35

Just and Unjust Wars. Nozick claimed that, “It is a soldier’s responsibility to determine if his side’s cause is 

just; if he finds the issue tangled, unclear, or confusing, 

he may not shift the responsibility to his leaders.”106

Likewise, Orend has argued that at least some combatants ought to refuse to participate in war because 

they know or should know that it is unjust, and that 

if they do not do so, they are “like minor accomplices 

to a major crime.”107 What is new about the revisionist 

approach is its emphasis on the argument that combatants must make individual decisions about the justice 

of the cause for which they are called to fight, not the 

argument itself.

What makes the argument a likely outcome of 

deploying the methods of analytic philosophy to the 

ethics of war is the abstraction and universalism of 

those methods, which encourage theorists to adopt a 

relatively a-contextual attitude toward moral questions and to treat military ethics as continuous with all 

other aspects of personal morality. Nozick’s account of 

the methods he uses is particularly instructive. There 

are, he says, “elaborate arguments, claims rebutted 

by unlikely counterexamples, surprising theses, puzzles, abstract structural conditions, challenges to find 

another theory which fits a specified range of cases, 

startling conclusions,” and so on.108 McMahan and 

Rodin tend to be somewhat more interested in the 

context of war than that, but the liability model that is 

at the heart of their approach also assumes that there 

is nothing particular about war that might make the 

principles appropriate to it discontinuous with those 

of interpersonal relations.

By contrast, Walzer’s argument for the moral equality of soldiers rests on one of the characteristic crutches 

of his theory: that war cannot be understood by analogy 
36

with activities in civil society and, in particular, that 

we cannot ground military ethics in a comparison with 

the principles of individual self-defense.109 A bank 

robber who kills a bank guard has no right to claim 

that she acted in self-defense because she was responsible for robbing the bank in the first place. By contrast, 

soldiers are not responsible for the wars in which they 

fight and so should not be treated as invoking a claim 

of self-defense in a conflict that they started. That is 

why they are not, in Walzer’s account, criminals when 

they kill enemy soldiers.110 The absence of responsibility for the conflict makes the situation of soldiers 

different from that of bank robbers. More generally, 

war is distinctive, Walzer argues, for three reasons. 

First, it is an intensely coercive experience, and is so in 

“ways that are probably not equaled anywhere else.”111

Second, it is “an intensely collective and collectivizing 

experience” which attempts to treat individual actions, 

that are fraught with difficulty, separately.112 Finally, 

it is “a world of radical and pervasive uncertainty,”113

such that assessments of moral risk are almost impossible. Requiring them would make almost any action 

whatsoever impossible. As a result, Walzer concludes, 

“wars and battles are not ‘cases’ to which the law and 

morality of everyday life can be applied,” but activities 

that represent a radical break from the social round 

and so must be treated on their own merits.114

In short, both the new revisionism, and the cosmopolitan just-war theory of which it is a part, are important not only because of the issues they raise but also 

because of the question of approach that they ought 

to prompt. If we want to challenge the idea that soldiers must judge the justice of their side’s cause, we 

will have to insist that military ethics are a form of role 

morality and reject the idea that we can develop useful 
37

principles of just war by virtue of an analogy with 

non-military activity. Rather, just-war theorists would 

have to focus on the history and practice of warfare.115

They would also need to pay careful attention to the 

implications of their arguments for democratic theory 

and practice, and in particular, to be at pains not to 

undermine the principle that military forces must be 

subordinated to civilian oversight so that the Armed 

Forces are the servant of the public, not its master. 

However, this argument for the particularism of justwar theory might be more radical than Walzer himself 

recognizes, for his justification of the rights of states 

is grounded in what he labels the “domestic analogy” 

with individual rights,116 and so might not survive 

the move to treating just-war theory as a specific role 

morality.

The third reason why the revisionist argument is 

important, is moral. Its insistence that, regardless of 

the circumstances of war, taking a life remains one 

of the, if not the, gravest things we can do to another 

person and is a major contribution to the theory. It is 

the moral intuition underlying and guiding McMahan’s work in particular, and it explains the power of 

any theorist’s attempt to restrain and limit recourse 

to war.117 Thus, one of the great benefits of revisionist 

just-war theory is that it pushes us to do more to try 

to hold armies accountable for taking lives by insisting that the defense of following superior orders does 

not justify the waging of aggressive war and only partially excuses it. If we insist on recourse for armies as 

institutions to incorporate the possibility of selective 

conscientious objection to particular wars, we may 

prevent unnecessary destruction. This is particularly 

so because the experience of many just-war theorists 

in recent decades has been that officers of the Armed 
38

Forces tend to be less bellicose and more concerned 

for the ethics of their conduct than are their civilian 

leaders.118

In other words, the revisionists are right to argue 

that the doctrine of the moral equality of soldiers 

needs rethinking, because it enables soldiers to sidestep the moral question of whether the taking of life 

is justified. Granting combatants carte blanche to fight 

without considering why they fight makes the decision too unreflective, and holding soldiers morally 

accountable for their actions in war does not make up 

for this. However, this does not necessarily mean that 

combatants should have to make individual decisions 

about whether to take up arms. A preferable conclusion might be that military forces should allow combatants to object conscientiously, or at least to rethink 

their policy on dishonorable discharge, without branding combatants who obey the democratic order to fight 

as murderers.

Vignette 4: Assessment

Selective Conscientious Objection

When should a soldier be permitted to refuse to 

fight in a particular war? Can militaries accept continued service from those who do so? These are questions 

on which both types of just-war theory offer different answers and where military practice diverges yet 

again.

Imagine the following scenario: a mid-ranking 

officer has a distinguished record of service, having 

been on tours of duty in multiple combat zones over 

the course of more than a decade, and having fought 

bravely throughout. She has only ever questioned one 
39

order, and that one turned out to be an illegal order 

that would have violated the principles of jus in bello 

by firing on civilians. Our officer, then, has repeatedly 

demonstrated her loyalty to both her country and its 

Armed Forces and the laws of war enshrined in the 

Geneva Conventions.

Now, however, the country is about to embark on 

war with a state that may be harboring terrorists but 

that claims to be doing all it can to root out the cells 

itself. If the war goes ahead, many civilians will die. 

The officer refuses to serve, saying that she is committed to the views that the only legitimate military 

action is clearly defensive, and that the counterterrorism operation can proceed just as effectively by means 

of intelligence work involving force short of war but 

not a full-scale war. She insists that she will disobey 

all orders relating to the war and is willing to face 

court-martial and dishonorable discharge, although 

she reiterates her patriotism and willingness to abide 

by any orders that she takes to be legal.

What should be done? On the one hand, if the officer is allowed to continue to serve, this may encourage 

future acts of disobedience that would render military discipline impossible. On the other, her previous 

refusal to obey a jus in bello order did not have this 

effect. Revisionist just-war theory encourages Armed 

Forces to search for means of incorporating selective conscientious objection or at least to rethink the 

policy on dishonorable discharge. In combination with 

its argument for further development of cosmopolitan institutions, perhaps such accommodation can be 

found, but in the meantime, this remains a pressing 

issue for contemporary military practice.
40

IMPLICATIONS

If we adopt an ambivalent attitude toward revisionist just-war theory, we will nonetheless have to recognize that the implications for both the theory and the 

practice of contemporary warfare are radical almost to 

the point of being revolutionary. Given the underlying 

conceptualization of just wars as forms of international 

law enforcement, a view that is premised on rejection 

of the political sovereignty of nation-states, the first 

major implication is for extending the remit of global 

institutions such as the International Criminal Court, 

such that they can make rulings on jus ad bellum war 

crimes. In other words, international consideration of 

the decision by states to resort to war may be a useful 

implication of the claim that states do not have the 

sovereign prerogative to resort to war for reasons of 

state. Second, given the challenge to military discipline 

that the revisionist approach suggests, there is a need 

to incorporate revisionist just-war theory within military ethics education, and more focus is needed on 

just cause as it relates to particular wars. Related to 

this, this author calls for a rethinking of the policy on 

conscientious objection or at least of dishonorable discharge. Finally, there is a need within just-war theory 

for greater debate about methods, so as to consider the 

nature of combatant duties as a form of role morality 

and to recognize the continuity of just-war theory not 

only with social justice, as cosmopolitans advocate, but 

also with collective decision-making problems and, 

thus, with democratic theory.

The Need to Strengthen Global Legal Institutions

Cosmopolitan approaches to just-war theory tend 

to conceptualize just wars as forms of global law 
41

enforcement and thus to dream of a world in which 

combatants operate more like police officers than 

soldiers. It will come as no surprise that revisionist 

just-war theorists have also called for strengthening 

global institutions to reduce the political sovereignty 

of nation-states. They come to this argument because 

they tend to shy away from suggesting that ordinary 

combatants should receive legal punishment for participating in unjust wars, in part because of the logistical 

and motivational difficulties that trying large numbers 

of soldiers would cause, but also because of the mitigating excuses that apply to most of them. Of particular importance as an excuse is the epistemic problem 

discussed above: namely, that because of government 

propaganda, misinformation, and classification of relevant material, it is often impossible for soldiers to know 

the relevant details of the circumstances surrounding the military buildup to war. Revisionists such as 

McMahan argue that, in cases of uncertainty, it is less 

risky to fight than not to fight, but they recognize that 

the epistemic problem means that there are moral risks 

regardless of which choice a combatant makes. As a 

result, revisionist just-war theory often incorporates a 

divergence between the morality and the law of war.119

In an attempt to mitigate this problem, McMahan has recently called for the establishment of an ad 

bellum branch of the International Criminal Court. 

This court could “codify our understanding of jus ad 

bellum in a body of deontic principles stating prohibitions, permissions, and perhaps requirements concerning the resort to war” and rule on whether particular 

wars cohere with those principles.120 Similarly, Rodin 

suggests that, while we should not view just wars as 

a form of punishment or law enforcement undertaken 

by particular states, a model of legitimate international 
42

law enforcement is possible. It would require “a body 

which was genuinely impartial and which had a recognized authority to resolve disputes and enforce the 

law,” which would undertake military action to prevent aggression and punish those responsible for it.121

Rodin thus takes the argument for international institutions a step further than McMahan, suggesting the 

possibility of a world state and rejecting the traditional 

philosophical arguments advanced by cosmopolitans 

such as Kant against such a state.122

A world state might seem to be the ultimate implication of cosmopolitan just-war approaches, but it is, 

obviously, not a possibility in the near future, so it will 

not be considered further. What, however, of McMahan’s suggestion of an international court to rule on 

the justice of resort to war? In its favor, McMahan 

holds that such a court might extricate soldiers from 

their predicament, as well as help to bolster the jus ad 

bellum requirement of “legitimate authority.”123 While 

as fallible as any other human institution, such a court 

would produce judgments with “a stronger claim to 

epistemic reliability than the pronouncements of warring states, which are inevitably lacking in impartiality 

and disinterestedness.”124 There are, of course, political 

problems in getting countries to sign onto such a court, 

as well as questions about the setup of the court. If the 

court were constituted in such a way that it did little 

more than serve the interests of powerful states looking for a warrant to act overseas for reasons of state, in 

fact, it might cloud the epistemic issue further by lending an aura of impartiality to what were in reality the 

interests of a strong aggressor state, at the expense of 

its weaker victims. However, at the level of principle, 

there would be potential advantages to such a court. 

Epistemically speaking, as Walzer acknowledges, 

such a court would make soldiers more like the bank 
43

robbers that McMahan’s analysis compares them to, 

because they would now know that there was a judgment ruling that their activity was wrong.125 While it is 

unlikely that such rulings could deter warring states, 

McMahan plausibly argues that some combatants 

might be more reluctant to fight in light of a judgment 

that the war their army was about to wage was unjust 

and that civilians might stop supporting the war or 

even start to oppose it.126 Furthermore, especially if 

military forces allow selective conscientious objection 

in cases where the court has ruled the war unjust, it 

might well be that civilian leaders would be less likely 

to resort to war in such cases because of the danger of 

widespread disobedience. Thus, the court might mitigate the need for combatants to object to their country’s cause. In effect, a court ruling that a war is just 

would strengthen military discipline.

On the other hand, short of a general transformation of international politics such that a world state 

emerges, such a court could never be anything more 

than advisory. The obvious reasons for this have to 

do with political feasibility. States are highly unlikely 

to sign over their war-making powers to an international court and equally unlikely to sign on to a court 

that could order the prosecution of combatants from 

the state’s military forces. However, the more fundamental reasons are principled ones. States should not 

sign on to such a court and combatants should not sign 

over their deliberative autonomy to it. In other words, 

an international court would need to sit alongside the 

self-determination of (at least) democratic states, while 

it could only ameliorate and not resolve the epistemic 

problems of judging the case for going to war.127 The 

following paragraphs will discuss a little about each of 

these two things in turn.
44

First, the court might downplay the moral desirability of the current regime of self-help, which 

rests on the value of political participation in moral 

decision-making.128 Yitzhak Benbaji has made this 

argument in terms of accountability, arguing that 

McMahan’s court would need to be accountable not 

merely to those immediately affected by its rulings, 

but also to outsiders.129 The reason is, as Benbaji points 

out, the moral task when considering the design of the 

international system is not how to prevent all wars but 

how to balance the costs and benefits of different institutional designs. In this case, that means balancing the 

costs of war against the benefits of self-determination, 

and so even the desirability of limiting participation in 

unjust wars does not in and of itself justify the court. 

As he puts it, “if our interest in fair political participation” is great and if “the risk of an aggressive war, 

which would be prevented under a different regime” 

is much smaller, the self-help system may be preferable to the court “despite the fact that it permits obedient armies, and thus puts innocents under the risk of 

being legally killed by unjust combatants.”130 In other 

words, the good that an international court might do 

in restricting states’ abilities to fight unjust wars needs 

to be balanced against the benefits of political regimes 

fitted to a scale in which people can participate or, at 

least, with which they can identify. While the urging 

by lawyers and philosophers of non-participation may 

be beneficial in that it would increase the public consideration of the morality of war, if the rulings were 

binding, we would deny institutional space for public 

disagreement with the court’s opinion. Unless the 

court has a merely advisory role, then it may create a 

democratic deficit. As Walzer points out, McMahan’s 

court would, in practice, merely appeal to individual 
45

consciences, and many of us may feel that, even while 

we demonstrate against our country’s war while at 

home, we should also participate in it for reasons of 

solidarity.131 As the avoidance of war is not the only 

moral good, institutional design dedicated to reducing 

the incidence of war needs to proceed with an eye to 

fostering other important goods, such as that of democratic participation.

Second, the court cannot solve the epistemic problem because it cannot be sure to collect all the information relevant to the casus belli and, more importantly, 

because lack of information is only one reason for disagreement about whether a war is just. In fact, even 

where there is full information, disagreement about 

justice is endemic to moral argument, both about war 

and about every other normative issue. Even if the 

court is more reliable than the sovereign states over 

whom it would sit in judgment, it cannot be perfectly 

reliable, and individual combatants are going to continue to disagree with it. If combatants may not defer 

to the authority of others in cases of disagreement as 

revisionists argue, then they cannot simply defer to the 

authority of an international court, for the court may 

turn out to have been mistaken, according to some 

subsequent ruling. On the revisionists’ own terms, 

then, the court cannot do what McMahan intends it 

to do, because nobody can make a moral decision that 

removes all risk from those other people who would 

defer to it.

However, many people understand moral reasoning in dialogic terms, as something that we do together, 

sometimes as a democratic unit, but often in smaller 

groups. On this view, the way out of the problem posed 

by moral and epistemic uncertainty about the justice of 

resort to war is not to individualize the decision but to 

democratize the decision-making process by allowing 
46

more widespread participation in the discussion. That 

is why critiques of revisionist just-war theory tend to 

appeal to the importance of political participation.132 In 

this view, the argument that soldiers are not required 

to assess for themselves the justice of their army’s war 

does not appeal to “epistemic” limitations or to ignorance. Rather, it holds that democratic decisions are 

morally preferable because they are produced by public 

debate and contestation. This does not mean that such 

decisions are always right or must always be obeyed, 

but it does enjoin an attitude of humility toward our 

private judgments. Soldiers can never be sure that they 

are right and the polity wrong when judging the justice of particular wars. Indeed, McMahan accepts that 

the distinction between just and unjust combatants is 

more or less always a simple one of moral luck.133 In 

such a situation, courts do not help combatants, who 

need the security provided by the presence of a collective decision-making process to ameliorate the moral 

precariousness of their situation. The court may be 

useful in terms of participation in providing specialist 

input into the ethical dilemma, but it would need to sit 

alongside other venues for discussion of the justice of 

war, which is why it is so important for Armed Forces 

to incorporate discussion of just cause as an ongoing 

part of war preparation and planning.

Vignette 5: Strengthening Global Legal Institutions

The Judgment of the International Criminal Court

As discussed in the main text, some revisionist justwar theorists have called for the establishment of an 

ad bellum branch of the International Criminal Court 

to adjudicate on the justice of resort to war. While the 

establishment of such a court might help shed light on 
47

some of the murkier aspects of international politics, 

it might also create thorny new dilemmas for Armed 

Forces around the world.

For example, imagine that a coalition of countries 

intends to go to war in defense of a third party that has 

had its sovereignty violated. However, the territory 

in question is hotly disputed, with both sides having 

claimed it as their own for more than a century. In this 

situation, it is extremely hard to tell which side has a 

just cause; meanwhile, war is underway and people 

are dying. For reasons of national security, the coalition is unable to present all of the relevant information 

at the ad bellum branch of the court, and the judgment 

goes against it: its war of defense is ruled to be illegal.

What should it do now? Following the ruling, some 

soldiers are refusing to participate in the war, declaring it an unjust war of aggrandizement and accepting 

discharge. However, while this would make fighting 

the war more difficult, it would not be impossible. The 

coalition remains convinced that the resort to war is 

justified, but it also believes that the increasing institutionalization of just-war practices is both legitimate and necessary if we are to reduce the incidence 

of war and promote respect for human rights around 

the world. Waging war in spite of the court’s ruling 

would jeopardize this latter aim. While a traditional 

just-war theorist might not consider such a prospect 

particularly serious, because it conceives of war as an 

inevitable feature of an international system consisting 

of states with twin rights to sovereignty and territorial 

integrity, to the cosmopolitan, this is a major concern.

It is unlikely that there is any rule that could be 

developed that would resolve this dilemma entirely. 

The judgment of any international court would have 

to be advisory, and there might be situations in which 
48

states would legitimately ignore its rulings. However, 

a ruling that a war was illegitimate would be a factor 

in determining whether a war is just or not, even for 

a state that is convinced the ruling is wrong. This is 

because the ruling adds weight to the case against war 

by virtue of the fact that upholding the war would have 

advantageous long-term consequences by strengthening the court. When considering whether the war is 

proportionate or not, the coalition would now have to 

consider not only the loss of life that war would bring 

but also the damage to the international court’s ability 

to promote respect for human rights and the laws of 

war around the world.

The Need for Greater Focus on Jus Ad Bellum 

within Military Education on Just-War Theory and 

to Rethink the Policy on Dishonorable Discharge

Revisionist just-war theory raises the moral stakes 

for combatants by declaring them guilty of a moral 

wrong if they fight in an unjust war. The clear implication is that they must be allowed to refuse to fight 

in a war that they deem unjust. McMahan notes this 

clearly, arguing that, while there may be prima facie 

duties to defer to the authority of the government 

and to sustain just institutions, these duties are outweighed by the more basic moral duty of avoiding killing innocent human beings.134 While revisionists often 

shy away from arguing that soldiers should be punished for fighting in an unjust war, they nonetheless 

hold that the appropriate moral response to an order 

to fight in war is to consider for oneself whether that 

war is just. Given that the moral intuition underlying 

revisionism―that taking a life is a matter of the gravest concern―insistence on deliberation about a war’s 
49

ends seems sound, even if we shy away from concurring with revisionists that the actual decision-making 

must be individual. However, many combatants are 

not equipped to think about, or participate in, a discussion of the ethics of war. Moreover, bearing in mind 

that militaries around the world believe themselves to 

rely on a rigid, hierarchical chain of command in order 

to function effectively, the barriers to incorporation of 

discussion of the revisionist perspective are high.

Nonetheless, the effort is worth making. The positive benefit of focus on jus ad bellum within institutional fora such as education programs is that it would 

help to reduce the isolation of soldiers who doubt the 

justice of their country’s cause. Moreover, it may be 

that an army that drags its soldiers to war unwillingly 

is, in fact, a less cohesive unit than one confident in the 

commitment of its soldiers. In so far as that commitment depends on the soldiers recognizing the justice 

of what they are fighting for, institutional focus on just 

cause may lead to greater, not lesser, military effectiveness. Put differently, if discipline is crucial to the 

ability to fight well, then just-war theory is an important part of military training because it inculcates discipline by making combatants aware of the harm that 

they cause if they do not fight with respect for moral 

limits. Moreover, as Walzer pointed out at the start 

of Just and Unjust Wars, the language of morality is in 

important ways analogous with that of strategy, which 

suggests that there are strategic benefits wrought by 

ethics education.135

On the other hand, if we teach that an approach to 

just-war theory encourages soldiers to disobey orders 

that they deem unjust, there is an obvious sense in 

which it may jeopardize military discipline. However, 

it is worth bearing in mind that not only the orthodox 

morality of war but also the laws of war allow, and in 
50

fact require, soldiers to disobey illegal military orders; 

that is, those which mandate a jus in bello violation.136

Indeed, even in the heat of battle, many soldiers do 

refuse to obey orders to fire at civilians, often accepting great risks to themselves, including the risk of punishment, in order to avoid killing non-combatants.137

Yet such refusal is not widely thought to make military discipline impossible. Indeed, it could be argued 

that training soldiers to obey all orders except for those 

that require them to commit a war crime is to prepare 

them for a more reflexive discipline that internalizes 

the moral and legal requirements of justice in war. 

Moreover, as McMahan points out, provisions for conscientious disobedience to jus ad bellum orders would 

likely be less disruptive than those for jus in bello ones, 

because of the diminished capacity for rational deliberation on the battlefield.138 Were institutional provisions 

made available for soldiers to object conscientiously to 

particular wars as a whole, the less frenzied nature of 

preparations for battle might make for reasoned moral 

deliberation that is impossible once combat has begun.

However, one might argue that refusing to participate in a particular war is, in effect, choosing to opt out 

of the Armed Forces altogether. Whereas in civil society, a conscientious objector can always perform some 

other sort of civic duty, it would place an intolerable 

burden on the Armed Forces to expect them to divide 

tasks such that combatants only worked on campaigns 

of which they approved. Moreover, combatants receive 

pay and benefits to be ready when the country calls 

that they should not receive if they are not ready, particularly because, if large numbers opt out, the army 

as a whole will be unable to function. While that is a 

good thing if the selective objection really is conscientious, we can imagine circumstances in which combatants use moral arguments to disguise unwillingness to 
51

fight in, say, defense of a third party or in a humanitarian intervention. It is at least worth asking whether 

a country should send its army to war when sufficient 

numbers of its soldiers refuse to fight to jeopardize 

the prospect of prosecuting the war successfully. The 

problem is the likelihood that wars fought in defense 

of distant countries might not attract willing soldiers, 

while unjust wars in which national fervor is aroused 

by propaganda campaigns are fought willingly.

Whereas on the one hand, selective conscientious 

objection to particular wars seems analogous to selective conscientious objection to particular orders in 

battle, on the other hand it may amount in effect to 

resignation from one’s post. An important question for 

future research, then, should consist in whether it is 

possible for armies to allow soldiers to object conscientiously or whether such objection should be seen as 

requiring a discharge, perhaps without honor. However, it certainly appears possible that adverse rulings 

of an international court could help ameliorate many 

of these problems by making resort to war less likely 

because both government and military leaders would 

know that they would face strong internal resistance to 

the decision to go to war.

Vignette 6: The Military Curriculum

Teaching Jus Ad Bellum

Because the Armed Forces tend to think of resorting to war as the responsibility of civilian leaders, education programs in the military tend to focus on jus in 

bello, ensuring that soldiers abide by legal orders on 

the battlefield but refuse to comply with illegal ones. 

However, cosmopolitan approaches to just war insist 

that soldiers are also responsible for assessing the 
52

justice of their resort to war by their Armed Forces. 

This means that military education must focus also on 

jus ad bellum.

Here, however, there are a few dilemmas for military practice. First, time and resources are limited, 

and any increase in attention to jus ad bellum would 

divert them both away from jus in bello. Second, there 

is a danger of disrupting military discipline. Third, 

there is the question of what to teach. Most recent 

just-war theory uses the methods of analytic philosophy and treats military ethics as it would any other 

branch of applied ethics. On the traditional view, justwar theory is continuous with military practice, and 

the study of the subject requires focus on the history 

and practice of warfare. This is even more true for jus 

ad bellum, because assessing the justice of a particular 

war requires detailed knowledge of conditions on the 

ground and the history of the dispute in question.

How should we devise an educational syllabus that 

meets these conflicting goals? The best approach may 

be to try to combine the two, teaching both moral philosophy and military history, but this cannot resolve 

all problems, especially because the two frequently 

lead to contradictory conclusions. It is important that 

soldiers be able to think through the implications of 

different ethical scenarios, and that they be informed 

about international politics and theory.

This makes the construction of the curriculum for 

education on just-war theory one of the most pressing 

requirements of contemporary academia when seeking to ensure that its wars are conducted ethically.
The Need for Debate about Methodological

Foundations in Just-War Theory

Throughout this monograph, it is suggested that at 

stake in the debate between traditional and cosmopolitan or revisionist just-war theory is the approach that is 

appropriate to military ethics. Whereas the traditional 

view sees the role of a soldier as taking up a specific 

morality of its own that is discontinuous with personal 

morality and that is more closely related to democratic 

theory, revisionists use the methods of analytic philosophy and treat just-war theory via analogy with 

interpersonal morality. These different methods lead 

to rather different conclusions and so suggest a need 

to try to teach both with military ethics education. This 

is especially so, bearing in mind the argument that the 

moral intuition underlying the revisionist argument 

is sound, and that taking a life should be approached 

with the utmost care, but that the theory needs to consider the importance of democratic participation. However, choices will sometimes have to be made, for the 

approaches can lead to conclusions that are not only 

different, but also often incompatible with each other.

Let us consider that Walzer, the major theoretical 

advocate of the doctrine of the moral equality of soldiers, had earlier in his career supported the case for 

selective conscientious objection to particular wars in 

the context of American involvement in Vietnam.139

In this view, we can support soldiers’ rights both to 

refuse to fight in wars they deem unjust and to fight in 

solidarity with their country, even while demonstrating against the war politically. To many revisionists, 

the suggestion that there is no incompatibility between 

supporting a soldier’s rights to conscientious objection 

and to obedient participation motivated by solidarity 

will seem contradictory. In this view, either a war is just 

53
54

or it is unjust. If it is just, soldiers should fight in it. If 

it is unjust, they should not. This points to the fact that 

the revisionist approach relies heavily on the idea that 

moral questions are, if we have sufficient information, 

susceptible of an objectively right answer.140 On this 

account, one of the reasons that jus ad bellum needs 

to be reworked is that it does not provide the clear 

guidance that morality ought to provide. Approaching 

morality in this way implies that we can solve ethical 

problems by designing appropriately impartial decision procedures and applying them to particular cases, 

such as that of war. 

By contrast, defenses of the notion of the moral 

equality of soldiers often rest on a view of morality 

as both intersubjective and socially produced.141 It is 

for this reason that Walzer bases his just-war theory 

on what he calls the “moral reality of war,” and not 

on a priori inquiry using the methods of analytic philosophy. That is to say, what gives the principle of the 

moral equality of a soldier its force, like the other principles of jus ad bellum and other moral principles in 

general, is that it is the product of a long history of both 

moral debate and military practice. In this view, we do 

not reason our way to judgments about the morality 

of war privately, but must do so collectively. Put differently, the traditional view does not treat just-war 

theory as a branch of applied ethics but as a form of 

role-specific morality. If we want to refute the revisionist conclusions that combatants must make independent judgments of their army’s cause, it seems that 

the most promising route is to query their underlying 

methodology and teach just-war theory as discontinuous with personal morality and, instead, as dependent 

on questions in democratic theory. This might lead us 

to the conclusion that it is, at least sometimes, possible 
55

that the Armed Forces are not morally required to 

make an individual judgment about just cause, but 

they should be permitted to do so if they cannot accept 

their state’s decision.

CONCLUSION

Generations of students of just-war theory have 

been taught that states have rights to political sovereignty and to territorial integrity, and that there is a 

dualism between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, with 

policy makers responsible for the resort to war, and 

soldiers and their officers for the conduct of war on the 

battlefield. In recent decades, a new group of cosmopolitans trained in the techniques of analytic philosophy have challenged these notions, arguing that just 

wars are indeed defensive ones, but that they defend 

socially basic human rights, not nation-states, and that 

ordinary combatants must be held responsible for 

the cause for which they fight. Underlying both these 

developments is the view of just wars as a sort of global 

law enforcement, a view that denies the sovereignty of 

unjust states, but may also have the effect of eclipsing 

political activity and moral deliberation on the part of 

citizens. In surveying this literature, it is suggested that 

its most important contribution is the emphasis on the 

seriousness with which taking a life must be regarded, 

no matter the context in which it is taken. War may be 

a world apart, but that does not mean that efforts to 

bring it closer to the ordinary moral world are mere 

foolishness. However, those efforts must not forget 

that political pluralism and collective self-determination are also important moral goods and that they are 

ones for which soldiers continue to be prepared to risk 

their lives.
56

The major points that we should take from this 

survey of cosmopolitan just-war theory are: 

•Given the moral risks involved in waging war, 

institutional reform designed to encourage a 

more peaceful international system is to be welcomed. In particular, a jus ad bellum branch of the 

International Criminal Court, which would make 

advisory rulings on questions of just cause, would 

bring greater clarity to the murkiness that is the 

fog of (resort to) war. However, given the importance of democratic participation and the persistence of moral disagreement, the court should 

only aim to produce advisory judgments that contribute to, but do not determine, the decision to 

go to war. Likewise, while we should encourage 

combatants to consider the justice of their army’s 

cause, we should not brand as murderers those 

who fight for what we later deem to be an unjust 

cause.

•There is a need for greater incorporation of new 

cosmopolitan approaches to military ethics in the 

academies of the Armed Forces, and especially for 

consideration of the jus ad bellum requirement of 

just cause within the context of particular wars. 

This is particularly so because of the question of 

the concerned method. If we want to reject the revisionist argument that soldiers must make individual judgments of just cause, we will probably 

have to do so by adopting the view that the role 

of combatant has its own morality that is discontinuous with interpersonal morality. As a form of 

role morality, it requires the study not just of ethics, but also of the history and strategy of warfare. 

Education in military ethics can also usefully be 

integrated with strategic ends.
57

•The Armed Forces should at least consider the 

question of selective conscientious objection. As 

military discipline is compatible with disobeying 

illegal jus in bello orders, it might be compatible 

with disobeying the call to go to war. If, after due 

consideration, this is deemed potentially disruptive of the effectiveness of the Armed Forces, then 

the policy on dishonorable discharge should be 

rethought so that soldiers can resign their commission with honor if their conscience forbids 

them to participate in a particular war.

•For reasons of space, this question is not considered here, but it is important to note that future 

research should also consider the question of jus 

ad vim, or the resort to force short of war. Counterterrorism and covert operations of all kinds 

are often even more shrouded in secrecy than are 

wars per se, and they can involve the commission 

of mortal harm that may turn out to be unjust. 

This suggests that future research should focus 

on the morality of obedience to orders to deploy 

force short of war.
58

ENDNOTES

1. The classic recent statement of this argument is in Michael 

Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical 

Illustrations, New York: Basic Books, 2015 (1977), pp. 53-63. Compare to Brian Orend, The Morality of War, Peterborough, Ontario, 

Canada: Broadview Press, 2013, pp. 31-67; and A. J. Coates, The 

Ethics of War, Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 97-122, 146-166. For a critique of what it 

takes to be the orthodox view that just wars are wars of national 

defense, see David Rodin, War and Self-Defense, Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2002, pp. 1-13.

2. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 121-122.

3. Ibid., p. xxviii.

4. The phrase “socially basic human rights” is from David 

Luban, “Just War and Human Rights,” Philosophy and Public 

Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1980, pp. 161-181 and p. 175. Compare to 

Charles Beitz, “Bounded Morality: Justice and the State in World 

Politics,” International Organization, Vol. 33, No. 3, 1979, pp. 405-

424; Brian Orend, War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 

2000; David Rodin, War and Self-Defense; and Jeff McMahan, Killing in War, Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2009.

5. See McMahan, Killing in War, and Jeff McMahan, “The 

Morality of War and the Law of War,” in David Rodin and 

Henry Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal 

Status of Soldiers, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 

19-43; Rodin, War and Self-Defense, and David Rodin, “The Moral 

Inequality of Soldiers: Why jus in bello Asymmetry is Half Right,” 

in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 44-68. Compare to Cheyney Ryan, “Moral Equality, Victimhood, and the 

Sovereignty Symmetry Problem,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just 

and Unjust Warriors, pp. 131-152; Judith Lichtenberg, “How to 

Judge Soldiers Whose Cause is Unjust,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., 

Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 112-131; Cécile Fabre, “Cosmopolitanism and Wars of Self-Defense,” in Cécile Fabre and Seth Lazar, 

eds., The Morality of Defensive War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University 

Press, 2014, pp. 90-114; and Lionel McPherson, “Innocence and 
59

Responsibility in War,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34, No. 

4, 2004, pp. 485-506.

6. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 38-39.

7. Ibid., pp. 34-37.

8. Lichtenberg, “How to Judge Soldiers,” p. 112.

9. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 70-79; McMahan, Killing in 

War, pp. 32-37.

10. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 26-34, 90-99; McMahan, 

Killing in War, pp. 104-154. Compare to Lichtenberg, “How to 

Judge Soldiers,” pp. 114-125; Ryan, “Moral Equality,” pp. 139-

141. On the legal distinction between excuse and justification, 

see George Fletcher, Rethinking Criminal Law, Boston, MA: Little 

Brown, 1978, ch. 10. For critiques of this argument, see Michael 

Walzer, “The Political Theory License,” Annual Review of Political 

Science, 2013, pp. 1-9; and Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 335-346.

11. See Rodin, “The Moral Inequality of Soldiers,” pp. 44-45, 

for the connection between these claims.

12. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 95-103. For earlier arguments about selective conscientious objection, see Paul Ramsey, 

The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility, New York: Charles 

Scribner, 1968, pp. 91-137; and Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays 

on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: Harvard 

University Press, 1970, pp. 120-145.

13. On this, see Jeff McMahan, “The Prevention of Unjust 

Wars,” in Yitzhak Benbaji and Naomi Sussmann, eds., Reading 

Walzer, New York: Routledge, 2013, pp. 233-255. For critique, see 

Yitzhak Benbaji, “Against a Cosmopolitan Institutionalization 

of Just War,” in Benbaji and Sussmann, eds., Reading Walzer, pp. 

256-276.

14. Beitz, “Bounded Morality”; Luban, “Just War and Human 

Rights”; Richard Wasserstrom, “Review of Michael Walzer’s Just 

and Unjust Wars,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 92, No. 2, 1978, pp. 

536-545; and Gerald Doppelt, “Walzer’s Theory of Morality in 
60

International Relations,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 

1, 1978, pp. 3-26.

15. See Orend, The Morality of War, pp. 160-219; Orend, Michael

Walzer on War and Justice, Cardiff, UK: University of Wales Press, 

2000, pp. 135-152; Eric Patterson, Ending Wars Well: Order, Justice, and Conciliation in Contemporary Post-Conflict, New Haven, 

CT: Yale University Press, 2012; Eric Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond 

War’s End, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012; 

and Mark Evans, “Moral Responsibilities and the Conflicting 

Demands of Jus Post Bellum,” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 

23, No. 2, 2009, pp. 147-164.

16. The literature on jus ad bellum is vast. The following 

accounts include most, but not all, of the principles stated here: 

Orend, The Morality of War, chs. 2-3; Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 

chs. 2, 4-7; Coates, The Ethics of War, chs. 4-8; Nigel Dower, The 

Ethics of War and Peace: Cosmopolitan and Other Perspectives, London, 

UK: Polity, 2009, pp. 81-94; David Kinsella and Craig Carr, eds., 

The Morality of War: A Reader, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007, 

chs. 5-6. For an accessible brief introduction, see the Stanford 

Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on War in sec. 2.1, available from 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#HistVsContJustWarTheo,

accessed October 18, 2016. Compare to James Turner Johnson, 

Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014 (1981); 

William O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War, New York: 

Praeger, 1981; and Ramsey, The Just War.

17. On jus in bello, see Orend, The Morality of War, ch. 4; 

Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, chs. 3, 8-13; Coates, The Ethics of War, 

chs. 9-10; Dower, Ethics of War and Peace, pp. 94-97. Compare to 

the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on war, sec. 2.2.

18. As we shall see, one of the disagreements among the 

new revisionist just-war theorists concerns whether rejecting the 

moral equality of soldiers means calling into question the principle of non-combatant immunity. McMahan suggests that, in principle, it does. Rodin rejects this claim in “The Moral Inequality of 

Soldiers,” pp. 54-64. Compare to C. A. J. Coady, “The Status of 

Combatants,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, 

pp. 153-175.
61

19. For a brief history of just-war theory, see Orend, The 

Morality of War, ch. 1. A similar distinction also appears in the 

more recent Christian just-war theory of Elizabeth Anscombe, 

“Just War: The Case of World War II,” in Robert Goodin, Philip 

Pettit, and Thomas Pogge, eds., Contemporary Political Philosophy: 

An Anthology, Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2006, pp. 623-635. However, compare to Gregory Reichberg, “Just War and Regular War: 

Competing Paradigms,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust 

Warriors, pp. 193-213. Reichberg rejects the claim that traditional 

just-war theory did not require ordinary combatants to assess the 

justice of their side’s cause.

20. Rodin, “The Moral Inequality of Soldiers,” p. 44. Compare 

to Rodin, “The Ethics of Asymmetric War,” in Richard Sorabji and 

David Rodin, eds., The Ethics of War: Shared Problems in Different 

Traditions, London, UK: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 153-168.

21. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 34.

22. Ibid., p. 36. On the crime of war, see pp. 21-33.

23. Ibid., p. 127.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., pp. 37-41.

26. Ibid., pp. 228-232, 242-249.

27. Ibid., p. 231.

28. Rodin, “The Moral Inequality of Soldiers,” pp. 54-56. 

Rodin rejects “permissive asymmetry,” pp. 47-51.

29. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 250-267.

30. Ibid., p. 252.

31. I have addressed this question previously in J. Toby 

Reiner, “‘Supreme Emergencies,’ ontological holism, and rights 

to communal membership,” Critical Review of International Social 

and Political Philosophy, Vol. 20, Iss. 4, 2017, pub. online March 10, 

2015, available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/

13698230.2015.1004837. Important critiques of Walzer’s position 
62

include Alex Bellamy, “Supreme Emergencies and the Protection 

of Non-Combatants in War,” International Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 

5, 2004, pp. 829-850; C. A. J. Coady, “Terrorism, Morality, and 

Supreme Emergency,” Ethics, Vol. 114, No. 4, 2004, pp. 772-789; 

Martin Cook, “Michael Walzer’s Concept of ‘Supreme Emergency’,” Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2007, pp. 138-151; 

Henry Shue, “Liberalism: The Impossibility of Justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, 

eds., Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular 

Perspectives, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 

pp. 139-162; and Christopher Toner, “Just War and the Supreme 

Emergency Exemption,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 55, 2005, 

pp. 545-561.

32. Again, revisionists sometimes go further in this regard. 

Rodin rejects the claim that wars of national defense are justified 

at all, and assimilates war to a law-enforcement model. See Rodin, 

War and Self-Defense, chs. 7-8.

33. For these criticisms, see the references in this volume’s 

endnote 14. For a more recent version of the debate, see Ruth 

Gavison, “Taking states seriously,” Charles Beitz, “The Moral 

Standing of States revisited,” and Michael Doyle, “A few words 

on Mill, Walzer, and nonintervention,” in Benbaji and Sussmann, 

eds., Reading Walzer, pp. 40-60, 61-82, 83-103, respectively.

34. Michael Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States: A 

Response to Four Critics,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 

3, 1980, pp. 209-229, reprinted in Michael Walzer, Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory, New Haven, CT: Yale University 

Press, 2007, p. 225.

35. Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States,” pp. 233-234. Compare to Just and Unjust Wars, p. 61.

36. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 58-63. For Beitz’s account 

of this as the heart of their disagreement, see “The Moral Standing 

of States Revisited.”

37. Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States,” p. 234.

38. Beitz, “The Moral Standing of States Revisited,” p. 68. For 

the rejoinders to Walzer, see Charles Beitz, “Nonintervention and 
63

Communal Integrity,” David Luban, “The Romance of the Nation 

State,” and Gerald Doppelt, “Statism without Foundations,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1980, pp. 385-391, 392-397, 

398-403, respectively.

39. Luban, “Just War,” p. 175. For a definition and analysis 

of the notion of basic rights, see Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton 

University Press, 1980.

40. Luban, “The Romance of the Nation State,” p. 392.

41. Ibid., p. 393.

42. Walzer, “The Moral Standing of States,” p. 227.

43. For more information on this issue, see Ibid., pp. 226-228; 

and Luban, “Just War,” pp. 170-171.

44. These reflections on jus post bellum are necessarily brief. I 

plan to expand this analysis in a future monograph.

45. Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, pp. 7-8.

46. Ibid., p. 11.

47. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 122.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., p. 123.

50. For discussion of this point, see Michael Walzer, “The 

Argument about Humanitarian Intervention,” in Walzer, Thinking Politically, pp. 246-247.

51. By this, I do not just mean that his views have become 

dominant, but that his project is to systematize the prevailing 

moral conceptions that currently guide practice, not to formulate 

the ideal ones that should do so. That is why he appeals to the 

“moral reality” of war. On this, see Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 

pp. 13-16. For an argument that this is Walzer’s general method of 

theorizing, see J. Toby Reiner, “Social Meanings and the Cultural 
64

Theory of Goods in Michael Walzer’s Ethical Anthropology,” 

Polity, Vol. 48, No. 3, July 2016, pp. 359-386.

52. On this point, see Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, 

pp. 7-8.

53. For an account of the Nuremberg Trials as central to the 

development of a theory of jus post bellum, see Kinsella and Carr, 

eds., The Morality of War, pp. 343-358.

54. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 287-303. See also pp. 

304-327.

55. The editor makes this suggestion in Patterson, ed., Ethics 

Beyond War’s End, p. 7.

56. Ibid., pp. 5-9.

57. Walzer, “The Argument about Humanitarian Intervention,” pp. 247-248. Compare to Michael Walzer and Nicolaus 

Mills, eds., Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

58. Michael Walzer, “The Aftermath of War: Reflections on 

Jus Post Bellum,” in Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, p. 45.

59. Brian Orend, “Justice After War: Toward a New Geneva 

Convention,” in Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, pp. 175-

195 and pp. 183-184. Compare to Orend, The Morality of War, pp. 

160-189, and “Justice After War,” Ethics and International Affairs, 

Vol. 16, No. 1, 2002, pp. 43-56.

60. See Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, pp. ix-x, 1-4, 

9-15. Compare to Eric Patterson, “Jus Post Bellum and International Conflict: Order, Justice, and Reconciliation,” in Michael 

Brough, John Lango, and Harry van der Linden, eds., Rethinking 

the Just War Tradition, Albany, NY: State University of New York 

Press, 2007, pp. 35-52.

61. Orend, “Justice After War: Toward a New Geneva Convention,” pp. 179-181.

62. Ibid., pp. 182-183.
65

63. Ibid., p. 187.

64. It maintains the view that just wars are limited in their 

means.

65. Mark Evans, “‘Just Peace’: An Elusive Ideal,” in Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, p. 206. Compare to Mark Evans, 

“Moral Responsibilities and the Conflicting Demands of Jus Post 

Bellum,” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2009, p. 

147-164.

66. Evans, “Just Peace,” p. 210.

67. On this, see George Lucas, “Jus Ante and Post Bellum: Completing the Circle, Breaking the Cycle,” in Patterson, ed., Ethics 

Beyond War’s End, pp. 47-164.

68. For examples, see James Turner Johnson, “Moral Responsibility After Conflict: The Idea of Jus Post Bellum for the Twenty-First Century,” in Patterson, ed., Ethics Beyond War’s End, pp. 

31-32. Compare to Benbaji, “Against a Cosmopolitan Institutionalization of Just War,” pp. 256-276. On the conception of war as 

law enforcement or policing, see Caroline Holmqvist, Policing 

Wars: On Military Intervention in the Twenty-First Century, London, 

UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

69. For more information on this issue, see Orend, The Morality of War, chs. 6-7.

70. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 152-159. Compare to 

Michael Walzer, Arguing Against War, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 3-32.

71. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 152-154.

72. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 1-2; McMahan, Killing in 

War, pp. vii-viii.

73. McMahan, Killing in War, p. 14.

74. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, p. 163.

75. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 32-37; Rodin, War and 

Self-Defense, p. 164.
66

76. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 9-15, compare to pp. 162-

174; Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 77-83; Rodin, “The Moral 

Inequality of Soldiers,” pp. 45-47; compare to Lichtenberg, “How 

to Judge Soldiers,” pp. 114-148; Coady, “The Status of Combatants,” pp. 155-156; Frederik Kaufman, “Just War Theory and Killing the Innocent,” Rethinking the Just War Tradition, pp. 99-100. For 

a critique, see Christopher Kutz, “Fearful Symmetry,” in Rodin 

and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 81-85. For Walzer’s 

usage of innocence, see Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 144-147.

77. For reasons of space, my coverage is limited. For a fuller 

account, see McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 38-103, which is devoted 

to the consideration of the arguments for the moral equality of 

combatants and McMahan’s objections to them, such as lack of 

knowledge, duties to defer to their government or sustain shared 

institutions, and the fact that we do not require soldiers to take up 

arms for a just cause.

78. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 169-170. McMahan makes 

a similar argument in Killing in War, pp. 143-145. Compare to 

Ryan, “Moral Equality,” pp. 146-147.

79. On the distinction between excuse and justification, see 

Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 26-34. Compare to McMahan’s 

distinction between excuse and permission in Killing in War, pp. 

110-115.

80. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 112-113, 116-118.

81. For more on this, see McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 131-

137. Compare to Lichtenberg, “How to Judge Soldiers,” pp. 118-

122; Ryan, “Moral Equality,” pp. 139-141; and Rodin, War and 

Self-Defense, pp. 170-173.

82. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 127. See this volume’s 

endnote 25.

83. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 119-122.

84. Ibid., p. 137.

85. Ibid., pp. 137-154.

86. Ibid., p. 141.
67

87. Ibid., p. 142.

88. Ibid., pp. 144-145.

89. Ibid., p. 145.

90. Ibid., p. 152.

91. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, p. 166.

92. Ibid., pp. 166-168.

93. This is the major theme of Ryan, “Moral Equality.” See 

especially pp. 144-146. For a different view, see Dan Zupan, “A 

Presumption of the Moral Equality of Combatants: A Citizen-Soldier’s Perspective,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 214-225.

94. McMahan, Killing in War, pp. 11-12.

95. Ibid., pp. 203-218.

96. Ibid., pp. 214-215, 221-222.

97. Ibid., p. 222.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., p. 231.

100. Ibid., p. 234. Compare to McMahan, “The Morality of 

War and the Law of War,” and McMahan, “The Prevention of 

Unjust Wars.”

101. Rodin, “The Moral Inequality of Soldiers,” p. 56.

102. Rodin suggests that just wars should be viewed as a form 

of global law enforcement in War and Self-Defense, pp. 173-179.

103. McMahan, Killing in War, p. 97.

104. Ibid., p. 136.

105. Michael Walzer, “Response,” in Benbaji and Sussmann, 

eds., Reading Walzer, pp. 328-332.
68

106. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: 

Basic Books, 1974, p. 100. Walzer objects to this argument in Just 

and Unjust Wars, p. 40, arguing that moral sensitivity should lead 

us to recognize that “authority structures and socialization processes” are sufficiently strong as to negate the requirement of 

individualized judgements of the justice of an army’s cause.

107. Orend, Michael Walzer on War and Justice, p. 114.

108. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. x.

109. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 335-346. Compare to 

Walzer, “The Political Theory License.”

110. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 127-128.

111. Ibid., p. 339.

112. Ibid., p. 340.

113. Ibid., p. 343.

114. Ibid., p. 337.

115. Ibid., pp. 335-336.

116. Ibid., pp. 61-63.

117. McMahan, Killing in War, p. vii. I believe that the same 

is true of Rodin, who defines the central tenet of revisionist justwar theory as being, “the claim that human rights do not stop at 

the edge of the battlefield, but rather apply to all persons in all 

circumstances.” Quote from a closed Facebook group: Just War 

Theory Group, October 5, 2016.

118. On this point, I am grateful for private correspondence 

with Michael Walzer.

119. On this, see McMahan, “The Morality of War and the Law 

of War.” For critique, see Henry Shue, “Do We Need a ‘Morality 

of War’?” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 

87-111.
69

120. McMahan, “The Prevention of Unjust Wars,” quote at p. 

242. Compare to Benbaji, “Against a Cosmopolitan Institutionalization of Just War,” and Walzer, “Response.”

121. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 179-180.

122. Ibid., pp. 179-188.

123. McMahan, “The Prevention of Unjust Wars,” pp. 252-253.

124. Ibid., p. 248.

125. Walzer, “Response,” p. 330.

126. McMahan, “The Prevention of Unjust Wars,” pp. 248-249.

127. On this, see Benbaji, “Against a Cosmopolitan Institutionalization of Just War,” pp. 264-274.

128. Ibid., pp. 269-271.

129. Ibid., p. 272.

130. Ibid., pp. 272-273.

131. Walzer, “Response,” pp. 331-332.

132. Most notably, Benbaji, “Against a Cosmopolitan Institutionalization of Just War.” Compare to Yitzhak Benbaji, “The 

Moral Power of Soldiers to Undertake the Duty of Obedience,” 

Ethics, Vol. 122, No. 1, 2011, pp. 41-73; Dan Zupan, “A Presumption of the Moral Equality of Combatants: A Citizen-Soldier’s Perspective,” in Rodin and Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors, pp. 

214-225; Michael Brough, “Dehumanization of the Enemy and the 

Moral Equality of Soldiers,” Rethinking the Just War Tradition, pp. 

149-167.

133. McMahan, Killing in War, p. 95.

134. Ibid., pp. 66-84. Compare to Rodin, War and Self-Defense, 

pp. 165-173.

135. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 13-16.

136. McMahan, Killing in War, p. 98.
70

137. See for example Walzer’s discussion of the My Lai massacre in Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 309-316.

138. McMahan, Killing in War, p. 98.

139. Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, 

and Citizenship, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970, 

ch. 6. Walzer points this out in “Response,” p. 331.

140. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, pp. 83-88; McMahan, Killing 

in War, especially pp. 60-62, 162-167.

141. See, for example, Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 298. 

Compare to Reiner, “Social Meanings.”
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