ABSTRACT
Despite the widespread contemporary perception that justice in conducting war is implausible, mainstream voices within the just war tradition-past and present-affirm that coercive force both can and should be morally guided and thus constrained. This is possible on the basis of the tradition’s fundamental assumptions about human dignity-which is the consequence of the conjoining of justice and neighbor-love-and about political deliberation-which distinguishes between the criminal act and the retributive act, based on the moral intention undergirding the act being judged. The same moral reasoning that leads to determinations about going to war (ius ad bellum) informs decisions about the means by which war is to be executed (ius in bello). In the just war tradition, ends and means are inextricably related. Emanating from the baseline moral principle that unjust means may not be employed to achieve a just end, two basic and interlocking trajectories of just war thinking follow: the principle of discrimination-by which fundamental moral distinction is made between combatants and non-combatants on the basis of direct material cooperation in the doing of wrong-and the principle of proportionality-by which the demands of justice are calibrated in terms of upper and lower limits determined by the nature of the evil being opposed. In its reconciling means and ends, the just war tradition shows itself to be a unified, integrated ethic and repository of moral wisdom, capable of adapting to everchanging geopolitical and military challenges.
