Michael Walzer on Just War Theory | Big Think

yes well first of all it's a very old theory because no no no government in any high civilization and in many low civilizations no government will send young men into battle to kill and be killed without offering some justification for what they are doing and so just war theory is simply an argument about what justifications make sense what are the plausible justifications and how do we as citizens judge what governments do when they go to war and the Greeks had arguments about when to fight and how to fight and there are biblical accounts of arguments about when to fight and how to fight and in the Islamic tradition there are arguments and Just War theory as a as a doctrine it comes out of Catholic moral theology in the Middle Ages so it's a this is an ongoing of a very long ongoing argument and in and in among us the argument has has a double character there are arguments about when to go to war when is it just to fight this is called yad bellum the justice of war and and we hang on issues of aggression it's right to resist an attack just as you could resist on the city street if you were mugged you could fight back and that would be a just miniature version of a just war and it's also just to come to the aid of the victim of aggression as you might do on a city street if you were brave enough and that would be a just a--just war and we've also begun to think that when there is a massacre going on inside a state when a government is massacring some minority or maybe even not a minority a majority of its citizens the way the Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime did that it is just to go in and stop it by force if necessary so those are the just occasions of war and then there is justice in war you're in Bello Justice in the conduct of war and that hangs mostly on issues of noncombatant immunity of discrimination of attacking only other soldiers so it's it hangs on a very old idea that war is a combat between combatants from which non-combatants should be shielded non-combatants means women children old men it means medical personnel it means religious officials that it so it has even meant in some circumstances the merchants who sell weapons to both sides were in some accounts treated as non-combatants whom nobody should attack but basically for us it means the civilian population is not should not be subject to attacking war one challenge which I've written about is to add to you saw bellum the justice of war and yoson Bello justice in war a u.s. postbellum justice after war once you have once you have defeated the other side what are your obligations in this what might be a devastated country it might be a country if you've overthrown a regime like the Nazi regime in Germany and you've occupied the country what constitutes just behavior then and that's an issue obviously raised well we thought it was raised in Iraq except we never reached the postbellum we started to talk as if we were asked as if it was after the war but it wasn't and isn't so in Iraq we're still confronted with in Bello arguments about the conduct of of war but that's that's an important question and you can see it in the way in something like the NATO Protectorate in Kosovo we fought a mini war with the Serbs and Kosovo was then put under a kind of NATO Protectorate with UN authorization and and then what should NATO do we have soldiers in Kosovo what should they be doing what constitutes adjust just conduct when you're occupying somebody else's country

Channel: Big Think

Views: 143,007

Rating: 4.835443 out of 5

Keywords: bigthink, Big Think, BigThink, BigThink.com, michael walzer, michael walzer big think, michael walzer interview, michael walzer spheres of justice, michael walzer on just war theory, michael walzer just and unjust wars, michael walzer theory of justice, michael walzer justice, michael walzer terrorism and just war, michael walzer dirty hands, just war theory, just war theory explained, just war theory explanation, just war theory michael walzer, just war theory debate

Id: LcBovmGZSPU

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2011