Just War theory and the ethics of media representation in contemporary conflict

¶ … Just War Theory

Sweeping changes in the way wars are fought have brought current scholars' attention to the ethical concept of the Just War. The concept of the Just War is nearly as old as war itself; it is perhaps best codified in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. There have historically been two main approaches to deciding what is, in fact, fair in war: deontological and consequentialist. In short, these opposing poles represent: on the one hand, duty, what war "ought" to be, and the notion that war requires a moral motivation and morally justifiable means; on the other hand, realpolitik, pragmatic considerations, and an account based on justifiable ends rather than means. The deontological approach takes many cues from Kant's ethics, while the consequentialist or Realist school finds its roots in John Stuart Mill, among others.

Recent work in political philosophy and ethics has attempted to place international terrorism, and the Bush doctrine of preventive war, in the context of the Just War theory. Philosophers have focused on updating Just War theory to take different distributions of international power into account. However, one area that has not received very much attention is the impact of information technology on the formation of public opinion, and the interface between Just War theory and the ethics of propaganda. Below, I will explore historical changes in the conscious stakeholders in war, how the media has aided this shift, and whether this had substantially changed how the jus in bello are constituted. Specifically, I will focus on the media's treatment of events at Abu Ghraib prison, and whether they require substantial change in contemporary formulations of Just War theory.

Early Modern Work

Most current Just War theorists cite Michael Walzer's work as the foundation of contemporary thinking on Just Wars. Walzer dealt mainly with the problems of WWII and the Vietnam war -- namely, the problems raised for Just War Theory by the vast destructive power of the atomic bomb (Walzer, 263), and issues of justice related to the draft of unwilling participants in war (Walzer, 138). However, as Walzer himself acknowledges, the tenor of war has changed dramatically since Just and Unjust Wars' first publication in 1977. As he writes, "[t]he issues that I discussed under the name "interventions," which were peripheral to the main concerns of the book, have moved dramatically to the center" (Walzer, xi). There is some debate as to whether interventions indeed count as "war" or are a species of international police action (Carnegie Council, web). This debate centers on the notion of equality between combatant forces. If there is a drastic disparity between forces and the aggressor is the stronger, interventions have the character of a police action in the international community rather than a war as such. Since the ethical status of war is still more serious than that of a police action, it should be unsurprising that the conduct of soldiers during wartime may be held to higher standards than during a 'mere' intervention. However, public perception of an international conflict may not differentiate between these categories if, as Walzer indicates, interventions are the most common type of war conducted these days.

Contemporary authors have been concerned with the consent of the populace to certain techniques used in war -- most notably, the use of the atomic bomb, but also the use of assassination and most recently the debate over the use of torture to extract information (Kaufman, 172). Interestingly, governments and individual soldiers alike have justified some instances of torture by claiming that they were not torture at all, but merely boyish pranks. This attempt to discount soldiers' activities in order to excuse them from ethical scrutiny quickly came under fire by the public, the media, and legislators (Oliver, 64). The debate over Abu Ghraib suggests that the ethical content of the jus in bello are different when the voting public can critique the praxis of war on a moment-by-moment basis. Debates about the right of the voting public to knowledge about war are central to the development of a theory of Just War that encompasses modern (and postmodern) reality.

Conclusion

Public outcry against the behavior of American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison during the 2nd Gulf War contrasts with the military's initial handling of the incidents in question. This contrast reveals an interesting cultural fact about the way these two groups conceptualize justice during wartime. For individual soldiers, any behavior that dehumanizes the enemy, as long as it can be reframed as "goofing around" or "having fun," is allowed to exist outside the bounds of duty and honor. For the public, jus in bello is a constant imperative, and its violation can retroactively call into question the jus ad bellum if the motives for war are already on shaky ground.

Changes in the way we wage war have been brought about by the spread of technology beyond the elites who make up the ruling bodies of states, in the classical sense. These changes have been addressed by contemporary proponents of Just War Theory in a variety of ways -- some reject consequentialism as an appropriate component of Just War Theory, and rely on the ethics of information-sharing to provide deontic heft to what may be, at root, realist desires in the mind of the voters. Others attempt to integrate a consequentialist turn by revealing consequentialism as the other side of deontology, the motivating impulse by which our duties are brought to life.