Ethics of War and Peace: Some Paper Topics



Ethics of War and Peace: Some Paper Topics

All essays are argumentative ethics essays following the instructions in the "Checklists for Essays." I am open to alternatives, but these must be discussed with me in advance. Anything is possible, but you must propose it formally, and we will discuss it. Essays must be based on a close reading of the texts for this course. They are not mere statements of opinion! Final essays are due December 3. I’ve made this due date as late as possible, so no late papers please!

The following are some possible essay topics. Many overlap or approach similar issues from different angles. Construct a thesis for your paper from one of these or a combination. Run it by me if you have any doubt that you are pursuing an acceptable topic. This is your responsibility, and in general I think discussing an outline and/or draft can help you. Be especially careful to avoid a topic that is mainly an empirical investigation rather than an ethical one. (For example, don' t try to write on whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction!)

1. "War is a world apart, where self-interest and necessity prevail. . .We can neither praise nor blame. . ." (Walzer, p. 3; not Walzer' s own view, of course)

"...the principle of force forms a realm of its own, with laws of its own distinct and separate from the laws of moral life." (Walzer, p. 7, partly quoting Jaegar' s interpretation of Thucydides)

Argue for or against these claims, showing careful attention to Walzer' s arguments in Just and Unjust Wars. Does Walzer succeed in refuting these "realist" views? Concentrate on two or three specific areas which Walzer discusses, in each case relating your discussion to Walzer' s general argument against "realism." If you defend Walzer, be sure to answer the best arguments of the "realist."

2. Argue for or against Walzer' s conception of the revisions needed to the legalist paradigm. [If arguing against, you could argue that additional revisions are needed or that not all of Walzer' s revisions are justified. You might wish to use contemporary cases, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, or Israel/Palestine as examples or test cases. Remember that examples are not themselves arguments but may be used to support arguments. First formulate the precise arguments.]

3. Argue for or against the claim that the weight Walzer gives to national sovereignty is morally inappropriate. (The exchange between Walzer and Luban is of course relevant to this question. Also see Doppelt article on CTools.)

4. "In war it is morally appropriate to employ any means necessary to achieve a just goal." Argue for or against this claim.

5. "Terrorism is never morally justifiable, regardless of the good being sought." Argue for or against this claim. ["Terrorism" would need to be defined, but it should include the willingness to kill innocent persons in pursuit of an objective. See Walzer.]

6. Evaluate Walzer' s treatment of moral responsibility in war. For example, evaluate his claim that citizens in a democracy, especially educated ones, have a special responsibility for their government' s actions in war.

7. "Trials like those that took place at Nuremberg after World War II [are] both defensible and necessary; the law must provide some recourse when our deepest moral values are savagely attacked." (Walzer, p. 288)

Argue for or against this claim. Connect this issue to Walzer' s general argument for a moral order applying to war (made throughout his book). Topics relevant to this issue include:

Can individuals be held morally responsible for "acts of state"? Doesn't this violate the principle of sovereignty? (See especially Walzer, pp. 289ff. Is obedience to orders of a superior an excusing condition?)

8. Argue for or against this claim: "A philosophically defensible form of pacifism is possible." If arguing in favor, specify the form. If against, you might be considering several different possible forms. (Cady is obviously relevant. This in many ways could be an evaluation of Cady. You will want to read more of Cady than assigned for the class.)

9. Apply Walzer's criteria to either the current "war on terrorism" or the war in Iraq and argue for a position on the ethical appropriateness of American actions or projected future actions. Any of these sub-elements might be expanded into a full topic or could be one element of a larger essay:

a) Is the war (e.g., in Iraq) a just war? (Consider preemption, humanitarian intervention, etc.) Also consider whether the goals are acceptable, taking into account Walzer' s claim that if the goals exceed what is acceptable, any additional effort needed to reach "excessive" goals is equivalent to aggression.)

b) Are the methods used in the war morally acceptable? Might the urgency of fighting terrorism and the fact that the terrorist threat may not be mainly from governments require loosening some of the usual requirements to protect civilians? Might torture ever be justified?

c) Are the methods being used at home under the Patriot Act morally acceptable means of fighting the war on terrorism? (Would require much additional research.)

Questions b and c might be related to question 2 in the next section below.

10. Compare Western and Islamic conceptions of appropriate behavior in war and argue that one represents a more rationally defensible ethical standard. (Walzer can fairly be taken to be representative of "Western" standards, but Johnson also discusses them.)

Good Questions from Students in Previous Classes

1. Argue for or against the claim that the curtailment of the civil liberties of all/most persons from a specific ethnic/religious group is never justifiable, even if empirical studies demonstrate that it promotes security by reducing the risk of terrorism.

2. An ethical evaluation of the war on terrorism requires a revision of Walzer' s framework since it does not involve a war between nation-states. Or: Argue for a modification of Walzer' s framework (legalist paradigm and revisions) that would be more suitable for evaluating the current American "war on terrorism."

3. A preventive (in contrast to a pre-emptive) war may be ethically acceptable if there is good reason to believe it will advance the long-term prospects for peace.

4. Argue for or against the claim that suicide bombings (of the kind practiced by some Palestinian organizations) may be morally justified in some circumstances.

5. Argue for or against the claim that foreign states must act "as if" other governments are legitimate, that they must presume a "fit" between a government and its citizens unless the absence of fit is "radically apparent."' (Does this give sufficient protection to human rights or give too much weight to national sovereignty?)

6. Argue for or against the following claim: Walzer' s idea of a nation-state (based on ways of life) does not take adequate account of the rights of minorities within the state. His ideas about self-determination are thus incomplete. Walzer' s argument for the sovereignty of nation-states fails because it disregards the minorities' rights for self-determination."

7. Walzer argues for nation-states as the necessary means for respecting a diversity of ways of life. He does not think this can be done in one world community. Does this contradict one of Walzer' s central assumptions in his book (and in his argument against moral realism); namely, that we share a moral vocabulary and a certain basic ethical framework? Is there a tension in Walzer between ethical universalism—the existence of ethical principles that apply to all cultures at all times and—ethical relativism, that ethical truths are dependent on particular cultures?

8. Argue for or against this claim: A leader may be faced with a "moral blind alley" (i.e. two immoral options where it is impossible to do the right thing) should nevertheless be held morally blameworthy for the choice he/she makes.

a) The idea of a "moral blind alley" is proposed by Thomas Nagel in the essay, "War and Massacre." Walzer refers to it at the end of chapter 19. You would need to read four articles, Nagel and three responses (one of them Walzer's in a separate essay). I can lend you these. This gets into some pretty heavy ethical theory and is appropriate for those with a good background in philosophy.

b) One could write simply on whether it is possible to face a "moral blind alley" at all.

c) Perhaps one could argue that a moral blind alley is possible but that the person who chooses, as Walzer claims a leader sometimes must choose, is not blameworthy, but I don' t know if that is a coherent position. Wouldn't one then be saying that there is no moral blind alley at all, and one should simply do the least of all evils?

9. Present an ethical analysis of some aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

a) The paper needs to focus on ethics rather than on the facts, but one choosing this topic would need already to be quite familiar with the facts and try to rely on some commonly shared ideas of what the facts are.

b) This topic needs a thesis and needs to be refined to focus on some particular issue; e.g., rights to land; right of return of Palestinian refugees; extent and limits of appropriate measures Israel may take to defend itself against terror bombings; extent and limits of appropriate measures Palestinians may take to overcome occupation and oppression, etc. You might want to look at the bibliography in my essay ("Zionism, Nationalism, and Morality") which includes the anthology, Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, ed. Tomis Kapitan, (Armonk, NY and London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. I could lend it to you so you can copy what you need.

10. Argue for or against the claim that a legitimate target for an American response to being attacked would be any nation that harbors terrorists.

a) Crucial here would be specifying some standard in more detail. How directly involved in the 9/11 attack would a nation need to be to be an appropriate object of American military action? Obviously if a nation itself launched the attack, it would be, but the distinctive feature of the attack is that it was not launched by a nation-state. So if "harboring terrorists" is the right standard, what does that mean? If it is not the right standard and you argue against it, what is the right standard? Should it be looser (e.g., a nation sympathetic with plans to help future terrorists against the US) or tighter (e.g., a nation that actively helped Al Qaeda, knowing their general intentions)?

b) If a nation was not involved in the 9/11 attack but harbors terrorists with "similar" intentions, on what basis is it appropriate (or not appropriate) for the United States to act? Should that be viewed as a preventive war, and if so, are Walzer' s standards for preventive war (chapter 5) the right ones?

11. Argue for or against the ethical appropriateness of American statements following 9/11.

a) This would require research into Presidential statements, news conferences by officials, etc. Then one would need to try to spell out from these documents several important ethical claims that seem to underlie American policy. Perhaps these should be reduced to 3 or 4. Seee for example and critique at . If you do a search under "Bush doctrine," you will find many links.

b) After identifying the clear ethical claims that underlie many different (not so clear and possibly not fully consistent) governmental statements, you would argue for or against each one. You could argue that certain elements of the American articulated response are morally sound and other elements are not.

12. Argue for a response to this question: to what extent may normal civil liberties guarantees be compromised, suspended, or violated in the United States as part of the "war on terrorism"?

a) Some of this might be based on actual actions but also on hypothetical scenarios. For example, how much evidence of a likely biological attack would the government need to have in order to round up suspects for preventive detention? Might there be circumstances where torture would be ethically appropriate; for example, if there were good reason to believe that a suspect has information that could prevent a terror attack that would likely kill a large number of people?

b) Among many other possibilities, see "Terror and the Attack on Civil Liberties" by Ronald Dworkin, New York Review of Books, November 6, 2003.

13. Walzer would consider both US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Churchill' s early bombing of German cities to be acts of terror, but he makes very different ethical judgments about them. Can his drawing the line the way he does be used to distinguish between different kinds of acts of terrorism in any current conflicts? Interesting, but I don' t know if a whole paper could be based on this. It is related to the next question

14. Argue for an appropriate end in the current war on terrorism. A former student elaborates as follows:

"An important idea in Walzer' s writing is the notion of legitimate ends in war. In the current U.S. war on terrorism where no single nation is being attacked, the U.S. is seemingly laying the groundwork for a worldwide manhunt for terrorists in any nation in which they can be found. [One might not want to go that far in describing US action. What does "harboring" mean here?—EB] This policy goes beyond the reach of creating ' a better state of peace' and becomes a morally unacceptable policy of aggressive action. Argue for or against this claim."

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