Comparative Just War Theory

There are a variety of reasons why it is important to have widespread cross-cultural and cross-ideological agreement regarding how to fight war (jus in bello) and when to enter war (jus ad bellum). Firstly, international humanitarian law was created in the West and states of power may either sidestep or use these norms as a political umbrella to pursue realist political ambitions. Secondly, war involves addressing the morality of killing and using violence and these two are normally impermissible. It is important to avoid biased perspectives and find a reasonable agreement. Thirdly, attacking compounds and media systems that serve military purposes can result to unnecessary deaths of civilians when the rule of proportionality is exercised. Fourthly, there is an increasing involvement of different countries in each other's' security legislation. Common grounds on how to understand war are necessary to explore. The major theme of this edited book will precisely address issues regarding the morality of war from a comparative perspective. The chapters in this book will look at two important debates regarding war ethics: a) when is it morally justified to enter in war? b) If one is in war, what are the morally acceptable violent methods? These topics have been debated substantially in the Western liberal context. What this volume does new is to address these topics taking into consideration concepts from non-mainstream Western and non-Western philosophical theories, with the use of concrete examples. Particularly, this means addressing those two issues taking into consideration concepts like Confucian Yi/Rightness, Ahimsa, Class Struggle, Ubuntu, Anarchism, Pacifism, Buddhism, Islam, Jihad, among other concepts. Therefore, this book provides a wider conceptual framework to deal with the morality of war by offering a comparative philosophical approach to just war theory. Fresh insights into how the normative problems that arise from just war can be addressed. Ethnocentrism and the preservation of superpowers' interests dominate international politics, contravene international law and are not compliant with just war theory. The world organization is largely driven (as a facilitator) for superpowers' geopolitical interests to wage war, even if not morally justified, and stretching the boundaries of international law. By way of illustration, United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction under Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002) in Iraq but an intervention under the façade of humanitarian justifications was driven by the United States (US) and coalition of the willing. Similarly, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US influenced immediate collective military intervention (via Chapter 51 of the UN Charter) against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan under Security Council Resolutions 1368 and 1373 (2001). However, Al-Qaeda is a transnational organization, and non-state actor, and is not entirely based in Afghanistan and thus Article 51 only applies, as a last resort, to states that are attacking a UN Member State.[1] The intervention was not jus ad bellum. Therefore, an increasing moral concern in contemporary politics and moral theory is to address moral issues from a non-ethnocentric point of view. In terms of moral theory, this pattern is noticeable with the increasing relevance of comparative philosophy. For example, philosophers such as Chenyang Li (Li 2016), Thaddeus Metz and Daniel Bell (Bell and Metz 2011)have compared African and Confucian ethical values and built up a moral theory based on the combination of both schools of philosophy. Bai Tongdong (Bai 2010), Joseph Chan (Chan 2015), Mario Wenning (Wenning 2011), among others, have equally compared Chinese philosophy with Western philosophy with the goal of finding a moral system that comprises East and West. Thus, the concern of finding ethical values that are cross-cultural is an increasing concern in politic...