Just War Theory

Question 1

What is just war theory?

Answer 1

is a belief to ensure war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria (rules), all of which must be met for a war to be considered just.

Question 2

What are two main elements of just war theory

Answer 2

Jus ad bellum

Jus in bello

Question 3

Lus ad bellum

Answer 3

Latin for the laws and conditions under which it is legitimate to go to war.

Question 4

Lus in bello

Answer 4

Latin for the rules under which a war must be fought once begun

Question 5

What are the beliefs of lus ad bellum

Answer 5

-There has to be a just cause.

-War can only be declared by a legitimate authority.

-The war must be fought with the right intention.

-There has to be a reasonable probability of success.

-War must be the last resort.

-There must be proportionality.

Question 6

What are beliefs of
Lus in bello

Answer 6

-There has to be a principle of discrimination – non-combatants must not be directly attacked.

-Proportionality of means to ends – the means used to fight the way must be proportionate to the ends required.

Question 7

Development and rationale of JWT?

Answer 7

-JWT mainly developed in Christian circles; primarily because Christian authoritarians found tension between Jesus command to resist violence and situations in which they found violence to be necessary

-Augustine and Aquinas influential in development of theory, theory mainly been set within natural law framework, where there is a principle of defending one’s own life and life on innocent

Question 8

What are weapons of mass destruction?

Answer 8

• nuclear weapons
• chemical weapons
• biological weapons

Question 9

Nuclear weapons

Answer 9

-The effects of a thermonuclear explosion include primarily heat, blast and radiation.

-The heat from an exploded bomb reaches several million degrees. A 20-megaton blast would produce third-degree burns at a distance of up to 38 km, and would probably level civilian buildings up to 20km away, with lethal radiation effects at a distance of up to 5km.

-environmental damage caused by nuclear weapons would be severe, with contamination of topsoil, existing crops and water supplies.

-In April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine released a cloud of radioactive dust over 200,000 km² of land. The effects of a global nuclear war are incalculable, particularly in terms of environmental damage.

Question 10

Chemical weapons

Answer 10

-can cause injury, incapacitation or death

-When used as far back as the First World War, mustard gas and phosgene gas caused blindness, lung damage and death.

-Phosgene was responsible for about 85 per cent of the 100,000 deaths from chemical weapons.

-Sarin gas can be around 16 times more deadly than cyanide, and VX gas is about 100 times more deadly than Sarin Several countries have stockpiles of chemical weapons.

-Most chemical agents can be delivered to their target by a shell or a warhead, which explodes to spread the agent.

-Chemical weapons such as VX gas can be used to make a combat no-go area, so human and animal life forms would be inevitable casualties.

Question 11

Biological weapons

Answer 11

-include bacteria and viruses, and in some ways biological weapons are the most feared form of warfare.

-Entomological warfare uses insects to deliver biological agents such as plague.

-Insects can be used to carry infectious pathogens that are transmitted when the insect bites a victim.

-Botulinum toxin can be distributed by aerosol or by contamination of water and food supplies; it is so deadly that one gram of the toxin can kill a million people if inhaled

Question 12

Discrimination

Answer 12

Most theologians argue that, at the very least, the use of weapons of mass destruction can never discriminate, since they are equally likely to kill non-combatants as they are to destroy military targets; so, they breach the principle of discrimination (Principle 1, ius in bello).

Question 13

Proportionality

Answer 13

-Most theologians argue, also, that weapons of mass destruction meet neither of the proportionality clauses.

-For Principle 6, ius ad bellum, the harm done by such weapons can never be proportionate to the good that is aimed at For Principle 2, ius in bello, using weapons of mass destruction during a war can never be proportionate to the ends desired.

-This is particularly true of nuclear weapons, where their use is likely to render any affected area contaminated and unusable for decades

Question 14

Probability of success

Answer 14

-Fighting an unwinnable war would be futile.

-With airburst nuclear weapons, for example, the range of contamination could be as deadly to the aggressors as to the intended victims.

-A full-scale nuclear confrontation would result in massive casualties and environmental destruction for all sides in the war.

-With the current progress in weapons development, it will probably be possible within a few decades to destroy the Earth entirely. All of this goes against Principle 4, ius ad bellum, since such wars have no probability of success.

Question 15

What do Christian’s argue about JWT

Answer 15

-Many Christians argue that Just War theory cannot be applied to weapons of mass destruction, because the evil threatened or caused by them would be out of all proportion to any hoped-for good effects, and could never be just.

-The position of the Christian Churches varies, although many appeal to Just War theory in describing nuclear weapons as ‘intrinsically evil’.

Since 2013, Pope Francis has urged the abolition of nuclear weapons, and many of the Protestant Churches take a similar line, for example, in recommending that Trident (the UK’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent) should not be r

Question 16

Other Christian’s beliefs about WMD

Answer 16

-Chemical, biological and nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, and it would be naive, for example, to imagine that countries will voluntarilygive up their nuclear weapons.

-Smaller nations with a nuclear capacity that is big enough to deter larger and more powerful countries would think it suicidal to give up a nuclear deterrent, since they would then have nothing capable of deterring those countries from mounting a full-scale attack.

-If Czechoslovakia had possessed a nuclear deterrent in 1939, Hitler would have been unable to invade that country without a retaliation that would have obliterated much of Germany.

Question 17

Threat of WMD

Answer 17

-the threat and the use of nuclear weapons (and potentially of biological and chemical weapons also) could be justified by Christians

-For example on the grounds that: the threat of their use is the best deterrent to a potential attacker.

Question 18

Invasion and conquest

Answer 18

-For some, invasion and conquest by another country could be a worse evil than using nuclear weapons against the attacker: the atrocities committed by invading armies are arguably as unspeakable as the use of nuclear weapons.

Question 19

Abolition of WMD

Answer 19

abolition of nuclear weapons would merely return us to conventional forms of warfare, and conventional weapons are rapidly becoming as deadly as nuclear weapons.