Pacifism, innocence, and modern war

© 2012 Dr. Nicholos Edward ParkinModern war has a terrible and widespread effect on innocent people, who neither start, nor promote, nor escalate, nor prolong it. The innocent are the ones who are harmed and killed in the greatest numbers in modern war, and yet it is they who deserve it the least. In this thesis I advance and defend a pacifist argument against the moral permissibility of modern war, motivated by the harm that it does to innocents. In the thesis I first explain, through a rights-based analysis of self-defence, why it is for the most part morally impermissible to kill innocent persons. I then explore the concept of innocence in war, and show that modern war predictably kills many innocent persons. This provides a strong moral presumption against war. Specifically, I maintain that since it is at least prima facie morally impermissible to kill innocent persons, and since modern war predictably kills many innocent persons, it follows that it is morally impermissible to wage modern war. I defend this anti-war pacifist position from several challenges. The first is the doctrine of double-effect; I argue that this doctrine fails to establish the permissibility of predicted yet unintended killing of innocents in war. The second is the so-called ‘argument from prevention;’ the contention that war is sometimes the lesser of two evils, and as such may be permissibly fought to prevent some greater evil from occurring. I address the suggestion that while it is morally wrong to kill innocents, it may be sufficiently less morally wrong to let them be killed by others, as well as the problem of supreme emergency, in which it is often argued that war may be permissibly waged to prevent some terrible disaster from occurring. In the end I propose that supreme emergencies are morally tragic situations. This means that while it may not be justified to allow some terrible disaster to occur, it may also not be justified to wage war to prevent it. I also argue that agents responsible for waging (or not waging) war in difficult and morally tragic situations, thereby killing many innocents (or allowing many innocents to be killed), may be excused from blame for doing so. Finally, I attempt to dispel some common misconceptions regarding the effectiveness of non-violent alternatives to war. It is often held that while war is terrible, it is the only way to repel determined and powerful aggression. I argue that non-violent alternatives to war can be very efficient at repelling aggression, and that recourse to these alternatives does not cause so much harm as does recourse to war