Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2000353
Henrik Syse
Air Force General Curtis LeMay: the name alone instills fear in many. The key architect behind the firebombing of Tokyo, and later the ardent supporter of a U.S. military airstrike during the Cuban Missile Crisis, has often been portrayed as a man who cared little for military ethics, and who was cavalier about the prohibition against the intentional bombing of civilians. Robert McNamara’s famous description of LeMay in the film Fog of War (2003) did little to change that image. In his book about LeMay’s tenure at Strategic Air Command (SAC), Trevor Albertson is not out to confirm – or gainsay – previous legends and perceptions, although he clearly wishes to bring them closer to reality. He concentrates squarely and in detail on LeMay’s tenure as Head of SAC, showing that LeMay’s ideas about nuclear preemption, while seemingly brutal, were very much an extension of the political developments and threats of the time, and the product of a keen and determined mind. To LeMay, one could all too easily come to the point where nuclear war was simply unavoidable. Through a strategy of targeted first strikes and heavy reliance on bomber-delivered nuclear payloads, such a war could be won, argued LeMay. For those accepting President Reagan’s famous doctrine that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, LeMay represents a truly different view, born of the Cold War at its most intense and chilly. Many will probably take issue with the book’s partly neutral, partly even admiring stance towards General LeMay. The firebombing of Japanese cities and the ensuing nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – while not the focus of this book – are described tersely as contributing to the shortening and winning of World War II. One finds little explicit discussion of the Laws of Armed Conflict or the rights of civilians. But for that very reason, it is also an instructive and useful book. In concise, clear prose it presents the essence of LeMay’s arguments for preemption and for the possible winning of a nuclear war. Instead of fixating on the most controversial events of LeMay’s career – and they were several – we get a clear-eyed description of the options that many believed the U.S. faced during the Cold War. Not least, it shows how LeMay argued, from a utilitarian, lesser-evil point of view, for what many would consider both illegal and immoral actions in war. Albertson leaves us in no doubt that LeMay’s aim was unequivocal: avoiding war if one can, fighting it effectively if one must. LeMay thought that the latter in the end was the more likely scernario. There is much to learn from this story, even if one concludes that LeMay’s strategic willingness to sacrifice civilians for the sake of winning a war is in the end unconscionable.
{"title":"Winning Armageddon: Curtis LeMay and Strategic Air Command 1948–1957","authors":"Henrik Syse","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.2000353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.2000353","url":null,"abstract":"Air Force General Curtis LeMay: the name alone instills fear in many. The key architect behind the firebombing of Tokyo, and later the ardent supporter of a U.S. military airstrike during the Cuban Missile Crisis, has often been portrayed as a man who cared little for military ethics, and who was cavalier about the prohibition against the intentional bombing of civilians. Robert McNamara’s famous description of LeMay in the film Fog of War (2003) did little to change that image. In his book about LeMay’s tenure at Strategic Air Command (SAC), Trevor Albertson is not out to confirm – or gainsay – previous legends and perceptions, although he clearly wishes to bring them closer to reality. He concentrates squarely and in detail on LeMay’s tenure as Head of SAC, showing that LeMay’s ideas about nuclear preemption, while seemingly brutal, were very much an extension of the political developments and threats of the time, and the product of a keen and determined mind. To LeMay, one could all too easily come to the point where nuclear war was simply unavoidable. Through a strategy of targeted first strikes and heavy reliance on bomber-delivered nuclear payloads, such a war could be won, argued LeMay. For those accepting President Reagan’s famous doctrine that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, LeMay represents a truly different view, born of the Cold War at its most intense and chilly. Many will probably take issue with the book’s partly neutral, partly even admiring stance towards General LeMay. The firebombing of Japanese cities and the ensuing nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – while not the focus of this book – are described tersely as contributing to the shortening and winning of World War II. One finds little explicit discussion of the Laws of Armed Conflict or the rights of civilians. But for that very reason, it is also an instructive and useful book. In concise, clear prose it presents the essence of LeMay’s arguments for preemption and for the possible winning of a nuclear war. Instead of fixating on the most controversial events of LeMay’s career – and they were several – we get a clear-eyed description of the options that many believed the U.S. faced during the Cold War. Not least, it shows how LeMay argued, from a utilitarian, lesser-evil point of view, for what many would consider both illegal and immoral actions in war. Albertson leaves us in no doubt that LeMay’s aim was unequivocal: avoiding war if one can, fighting it effectively if one must. LeMay thought that the latter in the end was the more likely scernario. There is much to learn from this story, even if one concludes that LeMay’s strategic willingness to sacrifice civilians for the sake of winning a war is in the end unconscionable.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"295 - 295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43794525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2016454
Celestino Perez
ABSTRACT The just-war framework neatly distinguishes between jus ad bellum, the criteria that address political leaders’ decisions for waging war, and jus in bello, the criteria that address soldiers’ conduct during war. Yet developments in the empirical science of civil wars, the U.S. military’s recent preference that ground-level soldiers exercise initiative and autonomy, and the wartime experiences of U.S. soldiers fighting in the twenty-first century converge to reveal an unappreciated overlap between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. I examine three firsthand accounts of service in Iraq and Afghanistan to show how military leaders’ contingent decisions – insofar as they choose whom to marginalize politically, befriend as allies in combat, and oppose as mortal enemies – are susceptible, theoretically if not yet practically, of jus ad bellum critique. Drawing on the work of Avishai Margalit, Michael Walzer, and James Murphy, I then argue that military designations of friend and foe implicate ethicists, political authorities, and military educators in a network of obligations. Ethicists must discern how to evaluate commanders’ political decisions, polities must prepare soldiers for political work, and military educators must teach the relevant scholarship. This argument has significance for regnant conceptions of military expertise and military education.
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Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2006870
Darren Cronshaw
{"title":"Moral Injury among Returning Veterans: From Thank You for Your Service to a Liberative Solidarity","authors":"Darren Cronshaw","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.2006870","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.2006870","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"293 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45842233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2018176
Jovana Davidović, Forrest S. Crowell
ABSTRACT This article is a result of a unique project that brought together academics and military practitioners with a mind to addressing difficult moral questions in a way that is philosophically careful, but sensitive to genuine concerns practitioners face. This is why this article focuses primarily on trying to build a usable decision-making framework for difficult decisions about soldier enhancements. Our goal is not simply to identify key values and principles that ought to guide decision-making in cases of enhancement, but to build a mechanism for implementing those principles.
{"title":"Operationalizing the Ethics of Soldier Enhancement","authors":"Jovana Davidović, Forrest S. Crowell","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.2018176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.2018176","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is a result of a unique project that brought together academics and military practitioners with a mind to addressing difficult moral questions in a way that is philosophically careful, but sensitive to genuine concerns practitioners face. This is why this article focuses primarily on trying to build a usable decision-making framework for difficult decisions about soldier enhancements. Our goal is not simply to identify key values and principles that ought to guide decision-making in cases of enhancement, but to build a mechanism for implementing those principles.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"180 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42960050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2009154
Łukasz Kamieński
ABSTRACT Neither non-lethal violence nor psychochemical weapons are new concepts. History provides examples of attempts to use these both to limit the scope of war and to turn mind-altering compounds into weapons. One of these substances has been marijuana. Although previous efforts to find its military applications failed, the idea persists – as indicated by a US patent granted in 2017. As “weaponized cannabis” may again attract the interest of government agencies, the consequences of its potential deployment call for a debate. In an attempt to encourage such a discussion, in the context of the ongoing decriminalization/legalization of marijuana in some countries and US states, the article raises ethical issues pertaining to weaponized cannabinoids. It argues against the militarization of the drug, on the basis that such a development would constitute an ultimate instrumentalization of marijuana and result in a dangerous destabilizing reconstruction of its meaning along the lines of state coercion.
{"title":"On Weaponizing Cannabis","authors":"Łukasz Kamieński","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.2009154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.2009154","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 Neither non-lethal violence nor psychochemical weapons are new concepts. History provides examples of attempts to use these both to limit the scope of war and to turn mind-altering compounds into weapons. One of these substances has been marijuana. Although previous efforts to find its military applications failed, the idea persists – as indicated by a US patent granted in 2017. As “weaponized cannabis” may again attract the interest of government agencies, the consequences of its potential deployment call for a debate. In an attempt to encourage such a discussion, in the context of the ongoing decriminalization/legalization of marijuana in some countries and US states, the article raises ethical issues pertaining to weaponized cannabinoids. It argues against the militarization of the drug, on the basis that such a development would constitute an ultimate instrumentalization of marijuana and result in a dangerous destabilizing reconstruction of its meaning along the lines of state coercion.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"251 - 268"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49423221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.2019947
Henrik Syse
From their origins in Greek and Latin, the words ethics and morality have always contained an in-built ambivalence. Are they primarily concerned with individual character-building and virtue, or are they first and foremost about societal customs, habits, rules, systems, and institutions? And to add to that quandary: what is the relationship between the two levels? A brief introduction to this double issue of the Journal of Military Ethics can do little to address such a complex problem. But the basic, underlying question – and its accompanying ambivalence – should always be kept in mind as we read the contributions to military ethics found within our pages. After all, the most virtuous of human beings can hit a brick wall when faced with a corrupt system or with institutions that do not appreciate or employ their competence. Likewise, institutions built for great tasks can come to naught if there is no one to realize their potential and mission, or if individuals or groups destroy them through sabotage, incompetence, or corruption. Good systems must be maintained by good people. And good people must find their place within good systems. Often, however, one is better than the other, making for controversies and conflicts. To add to the complexity, we are faced with a pedagogical question, as well: Should we start with the proper ethical education of each individual, or should we start by creating the ethical institutions within which the individual can subsequently thrive? In practice, of course, the two must be developed side by side. It is the belief of this journal that critical ethical discussions of the one level should never come at the expense of equally serious discussions about the other. The ethical convictions of the individual – grounded, for instance, in an obligation towards the Golden Rule, discussed and analyzed in this double issue of our journal – can make a real difference as concrete decisions are made, either by high-ranking commanders or by more or less strategic corporals. But no less of a difference can be made by institutions bound by well-founded rules and deep-seated institutional habits. So there we are, caught in the dialectic – indeed, the tension – between virtues and rules, between the individual and society. This dialectical tension shows us also that ethics is never static. It is formed and realized in diverse historical and cultural contexts. One fascinating piece in this issue reminds us of the way in which ethics can be strongly – many would say too strongly – linked to a particular historical or national legacy. Another pleads for the importance of the basics of military ethics seen from the point of view of cultures and militaries that stand in danger of paying merely lip service to ethics. Of special importance, as we face these tensions, is the dialogue between academics and practitioners, beautifully carried on by two important contributions to this issue, one on soldier identity and another on soldier enh
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.1989840
A. Le
ABSTRACT This article critically engages with Christian Braun's article “The Morality of Retributive Targeted Killing” from the Journal of Military Ethics. Braun argues that retributive targeted killing can be justified within a Thomistic framework of Just War Theory. Importantly, however, this must be tempered by the virtue of charity and cannot result in any collateral damage. I argue that while punishment-as-retributivism is possible in theory, in practice, we cannot rule out the deterrent aspect and, thus, any retributivist justification is also necessarily deterrent in nature. Furthermore, following Braun's embrace of the virtue of charity, assuming that we know with certainty that a suspect would not pose any future threats, we ought not to proceed with the targeted killing. This means that the justification of retributive targeted killing is justified by its deterrent nature.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.1979925
James L. Cook
“Fear and I were born twins together,” said Hobbes, alluding to the Spanish armada-borne scare of 1588. The year 2001 birthed a similarly synergistic pair, the attacks of 9/11 and this journal, Journal of Military Ethics, or JME among friends: the dramatic catalyst of at least two wars, that is, and a journal focusing on the ethics of war. “The editing of this first issue was completed before 11 September 2001,” wrote Norwegian Major Dr Bård Mæland in his introduction, “so contributions related to terrorism and counter-terrorism will find their place in the next issue [...].” And the next, he might have added, and the next, and so on for twenty years and counting. Not surprisingly, it is a rare issue of the journal that lacks an article motivated or at least influenced by the wars of this century. At about the same time as JME’s first issue was undergoing final edits, George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War appeared in bookstores, recounting how the US had cooperated with Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and many western nations to support the successful mujahedeen resistance against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In 1989, the Soviets retreated, and so the story might have ended, but publication came just late enough for Crile to insert the 9/11 attacks along with a book-ending caveat: “To call these final pages an epilogue is probably a misnomer. Epilogues indicate that the story has been wrapped up, the chapter finished. This one, sadly, is far from over” (Crile 2003, 523). Six years later Universal Pictures released Charlie Wilson’s War, the film based on Crile’s book. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin condensed Crile’s sense of unfinished business into the two-word refrain of an anecdote recited by Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing the real-life CIA operative Gust Avrokotos, whenever Tom Hanks’s Congressman Charlie Wilson naively believes the good guys have won once and for all: “We’ll see.” Those two words capture a widespread sense of uncertainty since 9/11/2001, and perhaps a similar failure to converge on a single narrative will apply to 8/2021 as well. It surprised the literary world when one of the greatest English-language novelists of our time, John Banville, skewered a novel about this century’s wars by another of the greats, Ian McEwan. “If we all have a novel in us, nowadays it is likely to be a September 11 novel. It would have seemed that McEwan was one of the few who might profitably bring his out,” wrote Banville in the process of eviscerating McEwan’s Saturday. “[...] Are we in the West so shaken in our sense of ourselves and our culture, are we so disablingly terrified in the face of the various fanaticisms which threaten us, that we can allow ourselves to be persuaded and comforted by such a self-satisfied and, in many ways, ridiculous novel as this?” (Banville 2005) Hindsight is not just 20/20, as the saying goes; it is emotionally easy compared with the struggle to understand the events of one’s own times and react appropriately. S
{"title":"JME and Afghanistan Twenty Years On","authors":"James L. Cook","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.1979925","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.1979925","url":null,"abstract":"“Fear and I were born twins together,” said Hobbes, alluding to the Spanish armada-borne scare of 1588. The year 2001 birthed a similarly synergistic pair, the attacks of 9/11 and this journal, Journal of Military Ethics, or JME among friends: the dramatic catalyst of at least two wars, that is, and a journal focusing on the ethics of war. “The editing of this first issue was completed before 11 September 2001,” wrote Norwegian Major Dr Bård Mæland in his introduction, “so contributions related to terrorism and counter-terrorism will find their place in the next issue [...].” And the next, he might have added, and the next, and so on for twenty years and counting. Not surprisingly, it is a rare issue of the journal that lacks an article motivated or at least influenced by the wars of this century. At about the same time as JME’s first issue was undergoing final edits, George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War appeared in bookstores, recounting how the US had cooperated with Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and many western nations to support the successful mujahedeen resistance against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In 1989, the Soviets retreated, and so the story might have ended, but publication came just late enough for Crile to insert the 9/11 attacks along with a book-ending caveat: “To call these final pages an epilogue is probably a misnomer. Epilogues indicate that the story has been wrapped up, the chapter finished. This one, sadly, is far from over” (Crile 2003, 523). Six years later Universal Pictures released Charlie Wilson’s War, the film based on Crile’s book. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin condensed Crile’s sense of unfinished business into the two-word refrain of an anecdote recited by Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing the real-life CIA operative Gust Avrokotos, whenever Tom Hanks’s Congressman Charlie Wilson naively believes the good guys have won once and for all: “We’ll see.” Those two words capture a widespread sense of uncertainty since 9/11/2001, and perhaps a similar failure to converge on a single narrative will apply to 8/2021 as well. It surprised the literary world when one of the greatest English-language novelists of our time, John Banville, skewered a novel about this century’s wars by another of the greats, Ian McEwan. “If we all have a novel in us, nowadays it is likely to be a September 11 novel. It would have seemed that McEwan was one of the few who might profitably bring his out,” wrote Banville in the process of eviscerating McEwan’s Saturday. “[...] Are we in the West so shaken in our sense of ourselves and our culture, are we so disablingly terrified in the face of the various fanaticisms which threaten us, that we can allow ourselves to be persuaded and comforted by such a self-satisfied and, in many ways, ridiculous novel as this?” (Banville 2005) Hindsight is not just 20/20, as the saying goes; it is emotionally easy compared with the struggle to understand the events of one’s own times and react appropriately. S","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"91 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44085101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.1987643
R. Boyles
ABSTRACT This article contends that certain types of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) are susceptible to Hume’s Law. Hume’s Law highlights the seeming impossibility of deriving moral judgments, if not all evaluative ones, from purely factual premises. If autonomous weapons make use of factual data from their environments to carry out specific actions, then justifying their ethical decisions may prove to be intractable in light of the said problem. In this article, Hume’s original formulation of the no-ought-from-is thesis is evaluated in relation to the dominant views regarding it (viz., moral non-descriptivism and moral descriptivism). Citing the objections raised against these views, it is claimed that, if there is no clear-cut solution to Hume’s is-ought problem that presently exists, then the task of grounding the moral judgements of AWS would still be left unaccounted for.
{"title":"Hume’s Law as Another Philosophical Problem for Autonomous Weapons Systems","authors":"R. Boyles","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2021.1987643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.1987643","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article contends that certain types of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) are susceptible to Hume’s Law. Hume’s Law highlights the seeming impossibility of deriving moral judgments, if not all evaluative ones, from purely factual premises. If autonomous weapons make use of factual data from their environments to carry out specific actions, then justifying their ethical decisions may prove to be intractable in light of the said problem. In this article, Hume’s original formulation of the no-ought-from-is thesis is evaluated in relation to the dominant views regarding it (viz., moral non-descriptivism and moral descriptivism). Citing the objections raised against these views, it is claimed that, if there is no clear-cut solution to Hume’s is-ought problem that presently exists, then the task of grounding the moral judgements of AWS would still be left unaccounted for.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"20 1","pages":"113 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47239365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2021.1989839
C. Braun
ABSTRACT This article responds to Anh Le’s critique of my Journal of Military Ethics article entitled “The Morality of Retributive Targeted Killing.” Le argues that while retribution can in theory function as justification, purely retributive targeted killings cannot be found in practice. Moreover, pointing to the virtue of charity, which partly underpins my right intention argument, Le holds that it would be unmerciful to kill wrongdoers for past crimes if the acting state knows that those individuals do not pose a future threat. In response, I demonstrate that whilst focusing on the retributive rationale, I did not deny that other rationales play a role in targeting decisions. Rather, my intention was to direct attention to retributive uses of force that are nowadays oftentimes justified as self-defence. Additionally, I started from a different understanding of the relationship between charity and justice, which has an impact on the risk assessment just combatants should make in capture attempts.
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