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Editorial
Welcome to this third issue of The
IPT Beacon. We
are delighted to present, in addition to our usual featured articles section
and ÔsnapshotÕ of the literature, our first specially commissioned article.
Mark RigstadÕs state-of-the-art report on ÔJus Ad Bellum After 9/11Õ provides a timely
and thorough treatment of a critically important topical issue.
Two of the previously-published
articles featured also address questions related to war. David Mellow
provides a clear and careful analysis of the just war criterion of
proportionality. If the good ends a war is intended to achieve must
outweigh the bad effects it will cause, an assessment must be included of
what bad effects not embarking on war would have. This involves
counterfactual considerations, and thus the attendant difficulty of knowing
which counterfactual situation to take as the baseline of comparison. In
response to this difficulty Mellow sets out a framework for determining a
Ômorally qualified counterfactual baselineÕ, illustrating how it might be
applied. His approach also helpfully shows how, in contemplating war,
considerations of proportionality bear in practical ways on the question of
last resort. Where MellowÕs
question pertains to ius ad bellum, Michael L.Gross writes on an issue within ius
in bello. Or,
rather, part of the very problem Gross examines is that the question of
targeted killing - killing of identified individuals as opposed to
anonymous wearers of enemy uniforms - does not unequivocally fall within
the scope of just war theory. While the use of targeted killing
specifically by Israel is the originating context for GrossÕs
deliberations, these are of more general applicability. Are the targets of
assassination ordinary soldiers, war criminals or illegal combatants? While
justifications for such killings have appealed to
both self-defence and law enforcement, Gross points out these are fundamentally
incompatible paradigms. The paradigm of law enforcement demands due
process, and, if this is set aside, the only possible justification lies in
self-defence. While named killings might be defensible on the grounds that
there are no other ways to disable combatants when they fight without
uniforms, the costs, he argues, should be sufficient to view the practice
with a good deal of caution.
Two articles focus on
normative questions concerning institutions for global governance. Simon Caney
asks Òwhat should they be?Ó while Allen Buchanan and Robert O.Keohane ask
Òwhat makes them legitimate?Ó
Both articles are concerned with how existing institutions can be
improved rather than with mounting more abstract, ideal, arguments about
Ôfirst bestÕ possibilities. When considering questions of institutional
design, it is not a matter of starting from a theory of justice and then
simply reading off the instrumental functions to be served. Nor, though,
does appropriate institutional design simply follow from a conception of
democracy. Caney emphasises that we need to combine insights of both the
instrumental and the democratic view. The Ômixed viewÕ advocated by Caney
would have the global political system so designed that it ensures personsÕ
fundamental interests are protected and, above that threshold level,
competing ideals of justice are mediated fairly. He argues for some
suprastate institutions protecting core human rights and providing fair and
legitimate procedures for choosing which rules should govern the global
economy and environment. In complementary vein, Buchanan and Keohane seek
to establish a global public standard for the normative legitimacy of
global governance institutions. This is intended to guide reform efforts in
circumstances even of deep disagreement about the demands of global
justice. In developing their conception of legitimacy they seek to avoid
conflating it with international legality understood as state consent,
while also refusing the unrealistic view that
legitimacy for international institutions requires the same democratic
standards as are applied to states.
Eamonn CallanÕs
reflections are of relevance to questions of justice in both war and peace.
In an exceptionally humane and nuanced essay, he brackets his considered
view, that the world would probably be a better place overall without
patriotism, in order to examine, more carefully than its critics generally
do, the reasons why its wholesale moral repudiation is a mistake. Central
to his argument is the difference between loving well and loving
idolatrously - a difference that is not confined to love of country, but
has some distinctive implications in that context. A morally defensible
love of country, as Callan portrays it, is a project of collective self-rule
in which the achievement of domestic justice is combined with due regard
for the rights and interests of others with whom the world is shared. He is
under no illusion that this is what patriotism always amounts to in
reality, but his argument is significant in identifying the conditions
under which patriotism might count as a virtue.
Regular readers will be aware
that the appearance of this issue of The IPT Beacon was somewhat delayed. In the
period since issue 2 it has undergone the first stage of editorial
reorganisation. The IPT Beacon is now edited by a three-person team based at the
University of Edinburgh: Lynn Dobson, Cecile Fabre, and myself. I extend
personal thanks to my two colleagues for stepping in, with commitment and
hard work, to help establish an editorial basis from which to maintain
regular quarterly publication into the future.
Tim Hayward
June 11 2007
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