Fratelli tutti and the Responsibility to Protect

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Drew Christiansen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
The Military

Fratelli tutti expresses skepticism about the ability of the just-war tradition to provide guidance on the state use of force. It is dismissive of a whole range of rationales for going to war. In rejecting humanitarian “excuses,” Pope Francis puts to question the Church’s support even for armed enforcement of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In place of abstract moral reasoning, Francis invites contemplation of the suffering of the victims of war. He expands the horizon of analysis from particular acts to consideration of the cascading consequences of war. He invites the military to color their warrior ethic with the kindness of Christ. In practice, his teaching implies increased attention to the ius postbellum and “the responsibility to rebuild” after armed conflict.

scholarly journals Responsibility To Protect: What For?

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Adelaida Rivera
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
The State ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Resolution 1973 ◽  
The Military

On March 17th 2011, the United Nations Security Council approved the Resolution 1973 which authorized the use of force in Libya in order to protect civilians from the attacks performed by the state armed forces. The military action by NATO in Libya has resulted in diverse and divided opinions. The recourse of Responsibility to protect appeared later as a measure intended to be implemented in the ongoing conflict in Syria, but after two failed resolutions, it became clear that some UN Security Council members are not willing to repeat the Libyan scenario. This text aims to examine some basic notions of the R2P concept, its application in Libya and the implications of the results after the Libyan case on its possible application in Syria. Should the discussed objectives behind the application of Responsibility to Protect in the Libyan case and its results be determinant on the decision whether this doctrine can be applied in Syria? Is it possible that the mistakes committed in Libya, the atrocities now experienced in Syria and the non-response by the international community could mark the end of the whole concept of Responsibility to Protect? These questions are intended to be discussed in this paper.

Jus post vim Revisited

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-254
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brunstetter
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Ethical Consideration ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Ideal Form ◽  
Grey Area ◽  
Risk Principle ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Enforcement Mechanisms

This chapter revisits the theme of jus post vim in the non-ideal form. It begins by looking at the grey area between vim success and failure, characterized by shaky containment (the lingering doubt that the enemy is really contained) or by persistent contested order that threatens the ability of law enforcement mechanisms to uphold a minimalist view of order in certain states. Among the vim failures are the unjust escalation to war, the unfazed enemy outcome, the recurring last straw scenario, and the intractable contested and fragmented sovereignty dilemma. The chapter continues by exploring jus ex vi, or the ethical consideration of terminating the use of limited force, further to tease out what success and failure might look like. The key to defining success and knowing when to end vim operations depends on the just management of military risk principle. The chapter concludes by exploring moral options in cases of failure. Building on the observation that framing the use of force as punishment can be more restrictive than open-ended justifications based in self-defense constructed as prevention or protection against future acts of aggression, the chapter concludes by arguing states might have recourse to the punishment principles. Drawn from an interpretation of the just war tradition privileging a presumption against war as being at the heart of just war thinking, the escalation management and demonstrable retribution criteria depict the narrow moral logic where the legitimate goal of limited force is something other than the moral truncated victory of jus post vim.

Blurring the Lines

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Brunstetter
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Forces ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
The Government ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
Clear Line ◽  
Western Democracies

Law enforcement is often seen as the de facto, and relatively pure, alternative to contemporary just war. If we are not at war, then the more restrictive law enforcement is the viable paradigm. This chapter interrogates two assumptions underlying this view. It begins by demystifying the unwritten assumption that the liberal law enforcement paradigm associated with Western democracies is the idealized foil to just war. Using France, whose postcolonial legacy complicates the turn to the Western liberal paradigm as an illuminating case, the chapter explores how domestic warlike violence creates a state of fractured order—the violence and potential for abuses of power that permeate society as the government seeks to balance security and individual rights. The chapter then turns to the transnational context to challenge the view that there exists a clear line between the state of war and the state of peace. Mali serves as a paradigmatic case to illustrate how the effectiveness of law enforcement is curtailed in spaces of contested order where heavily armed terrorist groups challenge the authority of the state, thus prompting a turn to Special Forces and drones to restore order. In both contexts, the chapter identifies a shift away from the restrained norms that typically govern the use of force in law enforcement to more warlike uses of force that blur the lines between peace and war. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how this shift might inform the ethics of limited force, which lies between law enforcement and just war.

Force and the international community: Blair’s Chicago speech and the criteria for intervention

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Five Factors ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
Kosovo War ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Tony Blair’s April 1999 Chicago speech is widely seen as foreshadowing his later decision to support the invasion of Iraq. Two sets of context for the speech are described: other criteria for the use of force, going back to the Just War tradition and more recent contributions from Caspar Weinberger and Colin Powell, and the December 1998 strikes against Iraq and the Kosovo War, which began in March 1999. The origins of the five factors mentioned when considering force are explored and their implications assessed.

International Law and Armed Conflict

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ward Thomas
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Raison D’État ◽  
The One

International law and armed conflict have a rather contentious history together. One the one hand, armed conflict implies and absence of law, and yet, on the other, international law plays an important role in codifying the use of force. The UN Charter’s restrictions on the use of force, drafted in the waning days of a second cataclysmic world war, were intended to radically transform the centuries-old ideology of raison d’état, which viewed war as a sovereign prerogative. More precisely, Article 2(4) of the Charter forbids not just war but force of any kind, or even the threat of it. On its face, the Charter system is a model of simplicity, consisting of a clear prohibition and two exceptions to that prohibition. The apparent simplicity is misleading, however. Article 2(4) is violated so often that experts disagree about whether it should even be considered good law. The Chapter VII enforcement exception is rarely used, and the meaning of self-defense under Article 51 is the subject of contentious disagreement. Moreover, even some UN bodies have supported creating another exception (humanitarian intervention) that coexists uneasily with the organization’s foundational principles. In addition, there is yet another exception (the use of force by national liberation movements) that may be as significant as the others, yet is little discussed by contemporary commentators.

Just War Theory & the Conduct of Asymmetric Warfare

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Allen S. Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Moral Equality ◽  
Asymmetric Warfare

A central element of the dominant view of just war theory is the moral equality of soldiers: combatants have equal rights to wage war against one another and are entitled to certain protections if captured, without regard to which side's cause of war is just. But whether and how this principle should apply in asymmetric armed conflicts between states and nonstate groups is profoundly unsettled. I argue that we should confer war rights on fighters for nonstate groups when they are engaged in violence that has risen to the level of armed conflict, and when the state against which the war is being waged is not entitled to assert its monopoly on the legitimate exercise of force, either because 1) the nonstate group has established sufficient control over territory to assert its own governing authority; or 2) because the group is located abroad. Conferring war rights on nonstate fighters does not, however, permit them to engage in acts that violate the laws of war. Fighters who commit such violations are individually subject to prosecution without regard to their group's entitlement to war rights.

Repression by Proxy

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 924-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristine Eck
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Intelligence Control ◽  
The Military

Why do regimes delegate authority over a territory to nonstate militias, in effect voluntarily sacrificing their monopoly over the use of violence? This article argues that two factors increase the probability of states delegating control to a proxy militia, namely, military purges and armed conflict. Military purges disrupt intelligence-gathering structures and the organizational capacity of the military. To counteract this disruption, military leaders subcontract the task of control and repression to allied militias that have the local intelligence skills necessary to manage the civilian population. This argument is conditioned by whether the state faces an armed insurgency in a given region since intelligence, control, and repression are needed most where the state is being challenged. This hypothesis is tested on unique data for all subnational regions within Myanmar during the period 1962 to 2010 and finds that proxy militias are more likely to be raised in conflict areas after military purges.

From Humanitarian Intervention to the Responsibility to Protect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Mills ◽  
Cian O’Driscoll
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Just War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World Summit ◽  
The World

In contrast with humanitarian access or the provision of humanitarian assistance, humanitarian intervention is commonly defined as the threat or use of force by a state to prevent or end widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied. In support of their cause, advocates of humanitarian intervention often draw upon and reference the authority of the notional “just war.” The four main ways by which humanitarian intervention has been connected to the idea of the just war relate to the ideals of self-determination, punishment, responsibility, and conditional sovereignty. For a humanitarian intervention to be considered legitimate, there must be a just cause for intervention; the use of force must be a last resort; it must meet the standard of proportionality; and there must be a good likelihood that the use of force will contribute to a positive humanitarian outcome. The historical practice of humanitarian intervention can be traced from the nineteenth century to the recognition of the Responsibility to Protect by the World Summit in 2005 and its application in Darfur. Major conceptual debates surrounding humanitarian intervention include the problematic relation between sovereignty and human rights, the legal status of intervention, the issue of multilateralism versus unilateralism, and the quest for criteria for intervention.

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