Cian O'Driscoll

James Turner Johnson's Just War Idea: Commanding the Headwaters of Tradition

James Turner Johnson is the foremost scholar of the just war tradition working today. His treatment of the historical development of the just war tradition has been hugely important, influencing a generation of theorists. Despite this, Johnsons work has not generated much in the way of critical commentary or analysis. This paper aims to rectify this oversight. Engaging in a close and critical reading of Johnsons work, it claims that his historical reconstruction of the just war tradition is bounded by two key thematic lines — the imperative of vindicative justice and the ideal of Christian love — and occasionally betrays an excessive deference to the authority of past practice. By way of conclusion, this paper sums up the promise and limits of Johnsons approach, and reflects upon its contribution to contemporary just war scholarship.

Re-negotiating the Just War: The Invasion of Iraq and Punitive War

This article examines the arguments pertaining to punitive war presented by President George W Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair and various just war theorists, in order to examine how they relate, first, to the case made for war against Iraq in 2003 and, second, to the classical just war tradition. In highlighting the confluence between contemporary justificatory rhetoric and the classical just war tradition, this article sketches an account of the mode by which the tradition has developed over time. By drawing attention to the homologies linking just war arguments, classical and contemporary, it constructs a basis for a critical perspective: understanding the idea of punishment as it has figured historically in just war tradition past may enable us to gain a degree of critical purchase on how it figures in just war tradition present.

Learning the Language of Just War Theory: The Value of Engagement

Abstract This paper argues that the significance of Michael Walzers seminal Just and Unjust Wars (JUW) lies in its excellence as a spur to political activism and debate. If JUW teaches us anything, it is the value of political engagement. It reminds us that we all have a responsibility as citizens to participate in the body politic, by holding our leaders accountable for their foreign policy and international endeavours, among other things. The signal achievement of JUW is that it teaches us how to do this, by providing instruction in the language of engagement and the art of political argument. In doing so, it does us an invaluable service and provides a useful resource for coming to grips with the world we live in. By teaching us how to argue about war, this book has armed us for the struggles, both military and ideological, that the ‘war on terror’ will surely present us with in the coming years. This essay will focus upon the manner by which Walzer achieves this lofty end, revolving mostly around his innovative re-interpretation of just war theory as a moral language.

Divisions within the Ranks? the Just War Tradition and the Use and Abuse of History

Plato wrote in the Republic that quarrels between fellow countrymen are wont to be more virulent and nasty than those between external enemies. Sigmund Freud (and latterly Michael Ignatieff and Toni Erskine) have similarly cautioned of the malice and excess that can attend conflicts that are fueled not by antithetical oppositions, but by the “narcissism of minor difference.” Bearing these warnings in mind, scholars of the ethics of war would be well advised to consider the implications of James Turner Johnson’s acute observation in his contribution to this special section of Ethics and International Affairs that their field of study is currently beset not so much by external opposition as by divisions within the ranks. The principal antagonism within the field, at least as I understand it, is the rift that has emerged between what I shall call historical and analytical approaches to the subject. Laying my cards on the table, the work that I have done in the past connects more clearly with the former than the latter. However, it has struck me, as it must have struck others, that the historical approach has in recent years come to assume a rather scuffed and unfashionable, even outre, appearance. It has been the subject of numerous curt dismissals, but has also, more interestingly, been tarnished by a few powerful critiques. This article will elucidate four of the most hard-hitting charges levied at the historical approach, and evaluate its continuing utility in light of them. The question then is: Have the critics of this approach landed it a knock-out blow, or can the historical approach withstand the bricks and bats that have been hurled its way?

Talking about Just War: Obama in Oslo, Bush at War

Boasting origins in the Roman Empire, the just war tradition furnishes us with a set of principles for addressing the moral-legal questions that war raises. Recently, the just war was the subject of controversy following President Obamas very public ruminations on the subject in the course of his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize address. Many popular commentators seemed to assume that Obamas ‘turn’ towards the just war marked something new. This article inquires, first, whether this turn is really as novel as these commentators suppose and, second, whether the prominence of just war ideas in Obamas discourse is evidence of a civilising trend at work or just another case of empty moral talk in international affairs.

Hedgehog or Fox? An Essay on James Turner Johnson's View of History

Abstract Drawing on Isaiah Berlins celebrated essay on Tolstoy, this paper poses the question should James Turner Johnson be deemed a hedgehog or a fox? That is, it considers whether Johnson should be regarded as a monist (hedgehog) or a pluralist (fox) in his contribution to the just war tradition. It contends that his commitment to history, while superficially indicative of a hedgehog, serves to conceal a deep-lying pluralism – or at least the possibility of such – in his views on the meaning of history. Contrary to initial appearances, then, Johnsons commitment to history is not univocal: it does not speak with one voice, and to one purpose. Rather it suggests a variety of voices or positions, and is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which are of a piece with one another. This paper seeks to uncover these various voices or positions, with a view to raising some searching questions pertaining to how we should properly understand the just war tradition today.

Introduction: Thinking Ethically about the Use of Force

Thearticles gathered in this special section are the products of two years of discussion among the contributing authors, but also the result of an extended conversation between the authors and the wider community of scholars working on matters pertaining to the ethics of war. In June , I wrote to the authors in question, inviting them to participate in a panel discussion on the theme of what I then called “The Just War Tradition and its Critics.” It was quickly agreed that we would gather at the following year’s International Studies Association (ISA) convention to reflect upon what we, as scholars of the just war tradition, have to learn from its critics. Our aim was to broker a meaningful conversation between (to borrow Professor James Turner Johnson’s phrase) “the friends and enemies of the just war tradition.” This, we hoped, would supplant the dialogue of the deaf that had hitherto defined relations between these two camps. Rather predictably, the conversation took on a life of its own almost as soon as it began. The exchange of ideas that occurred in an ISA conference room in San Diego in April  was not so much concerned with whether and how scholars of the just war tradition should listen to their external critics; instead, it focused on the arguably trickier question of whether and how scholars of the rival schools within the just war tradition should engage with one another. Our contributing authors evaluated the merits of competing approaches to the ethics of war, and offered their reflections upon the character of the shared enterprise that these various schools address. This gave rise to a lively debate about what it actually means to think ethically about the use of force, and what this vocation demands of us both as individual scholars and as a scholarly community. These are matters that speak directly to the readership of Ethics & International Affairs.

Paul Robinson, Nigel de Lee and Don Carrick (eds.), Ethics Education in the Military

the 1948–1960 Malayan emergency, as a template for combating today’s terrorism. A better description of the problems would make the application of biology to solving them more convincing. Overall, the essays suffer from American exceptionalism, too. Several seem to regard the attacks on 11 September 2001 as not just shocking, but utterly unique, as if countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Russia and Israel had not been dealing with terrorist attacks for many years.

Under an empty sky? Bruce Springsteen, just war and the war on terror

There is a story told that, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks upon the United States, Bruce Springsteen was cajoled by a passing member of the New Jersey public to re-convene his celebrated E-Street Band for their first studio album in 18 years. ‘Hey Boss! We need you now.’ Stirred by these words, Springsteen rallied his players and, not long after, recorded and released ‘The Rising’ to critical acclaim. Whether true or not, the genesis of Springsteen’s album tells us something about the spirit of the times. The decade that has followed 9/11 has been a time of uncertainty and trauma, marked globally but in the United States most of all, by a hankering for decisive leadership (Hurrell 2002, pp. 186–193). In a world in which the established patterns of international politics were suddenly, dramatically called into question, people sought comfort from a host of sources, old and new. While some re-invested in religion and community activism, others, like our friend from Jersey, turned to more unlikely figures such as the Boss. Uniting almost all of these people, however, was a propensity to address the problems of the day – terrorism and what to do about it – in the idiom of the just war. Terms such as ‘pre-emption’, ‘just cause’ and ‘last resort’ were bandied about freely. Like Springsteen, they were, it would seem, needed. Of course, this reliance on just war tropes is nothing new. Michael Walzer wrote of the ‘triumph of just war theory’ some years ago, detailing the manner by which the moral tradition of bellum justum had captured martial discourse, permeating both the corridors of power and the open forum of public debate (Walzer 2004). The triumph of just war does, however, reveal a series of questions that demand our attention. First, what exactly is the just war? Is it properly understood as a theory, doctrine, or tradition? Second, to whence should we trace its origins? And to what degree are these origins determinative of the tradition’s subsequent development and identity? Pushing this

Ethics and War in the Twenty-First Century: International Society at a "Fork in the Road"

The discipline of International Relations has a patchy record when it comes to accounting for change in world politics. It has tended to focus on continuity instead. A typical statement in this regard is Martin Wight’s depiction of international affairs as a ‘realm of recurrence and repetition’, while Hans Morgenthau has drawn attention to its ‘repetitive character’. On a more general level, the dominant realist/neorealist orthodoxy has presented statecraft as a timeless and invariant practice, unchanged since the time of Thucydides. Against this backdrop, the events of 9/11 delivered a