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This chapter addresses the significance of political and personal relationships in the ethics of war—the extent to which such relationships and political communities give people reason to fight, the kind of reasons they are, and what implications they have in the ethics of war. It is mainly sceptical that such relationships can make an otherwise unjust war permissible, but it defends the view that they can make otherwise permissible conduct required. It also addresses the question whether contractual duties ground permissions and duties in war. Finally, the chapter argues that it is sometimes permissible to fight in unjust wars.

Justice discourse has long played an important moral and strategic role in the waging of war. Whether the cause is a just one is determined by the jus ad bellum, the ‘law of war’. Whether the mode of fighting a war is just is determined by the jus in bello, the ‘law in war’. The international system has tried to limit the grounds for initiating hostilities and also the means by which hostilities are initiated and conducted. Both of these efforts to impose limits on the use of force derive at least in part from a concept of fairness. Both deploy normative constraints: first to define limits, and secondly to institutionalise a pull to compliance. This chapter examines the effect of these normative constraints on the belligerence of states. First, historic notions of a just war vs. unjust war are considered, followed by a discussion of the UN Charter's shift from collective self-defence to collective security, and norms and practice under the Geneva Conventions.

If one is to assess whether recourse to war would be justified, one must distinguish those who are liable to harm (e.g., unjust aggressors) from those who are not (e.g., babes in arms). Thus, one of the most important questions a just war theory must answer is, Who in war is liable to harm? Building on the foundation of earlier chapters, this chapter addresses that question. The chapter begins by distinguishing those combatants who are liable to harm from those who are not. It is argued that most combatants who participate in an unjust war effort are liable. That argument is followed by a discussion of whether a noncombatant, in virtue of assisting combatants, can also be liable. It is argued that some noncombatants are liable. However, it is also explained why most contributions to an unjust war effort by noncombatants do not generate liability.

Perhaps the most common criticism of teleoperated combat vehicles is that they make war more likely by reducing the associated costs. However, it is not as obvious as is usually presumed that this would be a bad thing: it could as easily be case that drones enable just wars as unjust ones. This chapter advances a version of this argument specific to humanitarian military intervention, holding that, if the claim that drones “lower the threshold” to war is true, drones are likely to significantly improve the practice of intervention to stop genocide and other mass atrocities. In particular, the internal logic of the “lowering the threshold” argument suggests that drones will not only make intervention more likely in cases where it is warranted, but that they will significantly reduce the civilian casualty count during interventions.

This chapter comments on Nancy Sherman's essay in the previous chapter, which examined the psychic trauma associated with fighting for unjust causes. In the first half of her essay, Sherman intervenes in debates over just war theory; in the second half, she analyzes the shame and disillusionment of real soldiers. She aspires to render problematic the relation of objective evaluation to subjective experience. The implication is that just war theorists usually do not ask the most important psychological questions. Therefore, Sherman's work should refine or enlarge the traditionally limited perspectives of just war theorists. Her own sharply focused psychological account should encourage third-party observers to be more merciful or compassionate in their ethical evaluations of soldiers, particularly in military courts.

The writings of al-Fārābī and Aquinas make visible a morality that informs the oppositions between the peaceful and the warlike, and between just war and illegitimate aggression. In their typologies of different groups and cities, each designates some group as warlike, or as waging war for no good reason. Each contrasts this group’s disposition to illegitimate aggression to other kinds of violence and war, including, for Aquinas, “just war.” But each also implies—at times inadvertently—that recourse to violence can radically transform those who use it, which puts into question the political work of such classifications and elisions. Indeed, each describes a peace-loving group that wages war. Unlike diagnoses of the warlike disposition, the commitment to peace privileges “intentions” in a way that elides and ultimately sanctions the desire to correct others—one’s brothers, neighbors, friends, and enemies—in the name of peace.

This chapter evaluates two arguments to the conclusion that the scope of liability in war extends to at least most citizens of a nation engaged in unjust war. Roughly stated, the first is the argument that, because the government acts as the agent of the citizen, the citizen can be held accountable for her government’s injustices and so is liable to defense when her government engages in unjust war. The second is the argument that, because ordinary private citizens are under an obligation to prevent their government from engaging in unjust aggression, they are liable to defense if they fail to fulfill that obligation.

This afterword reflects on the connections among narrative, politics, and justice by analyzing Barack Obama's 2010 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech where his remarks describe the fine line between unjust war and just peace. Obama's narrative that chronicles the struggles of the soldier, the teachings of the impoverished mother, and the steps of the protestors creates simple life stories that generate characters, order a sequence of events and recount it from a particular perspective. The narrative becomes a process of innovation, synthesizing events into plots that lead toward possible future consequences while generating relationships among character, listener, and speaker that carry their own future effects. The narrative dimension of Obama's text thus helps posit the problem of justice as a temporal one, governing the transition from the impoverished here and now of the present to an imagined world of a just future.