Nucleaire wapens - Can ending war ever justify the use of nuclear bombings (and how does this apply PDF

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War terrorism and peace POLDr Adrienne de RuiterEvelien Kalazan:Can ending war ever justify the use of nuclearbombings (and how does this apply to the case of theHiroshima and Nagasaki bombings)?TABLE OF CONTENTSINTRODUCTION...........................................................

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War terrorism and peace POL8040 Dr Adrienne de Ruiter Evelien Kalazan: 190534529

Can ending war ever justify the use of nuclear bombings (and how does this apply to the case of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings)?

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................3 WAYS IN WHICH JUST WAR THEORY COULD POSSIBLY SUPPORT NUCLEAR WEAPONS ......4 IS WALZERS CRITERION FOR DISCRIMINATION TOO STRICT?..........................................6 COULD NUCLEAR BOMBINGS BE SEEN AS EXCEPTIONS TO THE CRITERION OF DISCRIMINATION?........................................................................................................7 COULD NUCLEAR WEAPONS FALL UNDER THE ‘SUPREME EMERGENCY’ EXEMPTION?.......8 CONCLUSION OF THE THEORETICAL PART..................................................................10 WERE THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI BOMBINGS A SUPREME EMERGENCY?..............11 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................12 BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................14

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Introduction The first use of an atomic bomb in warfare happened on August 6, 1945. The atomic bomb was dropped by the U.S. bomber Enola Gay on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and destroyed four square miles in the middle of the population center. The bomb killed 66,000 men, women, and children and wounded 69,000 civilians. A large percentage of Hiroshima’s buildings, transportation systems, and city centres were destroyed. The following atomic bomb was dropped over the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later. That shock killed 39,000 civilians and harmed another 25,000. Half of the city was irrecoverably destroyed. The Japanese government surrendered unconditionally to the U.S. the next day. At the time of the bombings there was widespread agreement among allied politicians (e.g. Churchill) and the American population on the importance of using nuclear weapons against civilians in this way. However, afterwards many authors have levelled grave criticisms against the deployment of atomic weapons in Japan 1 2. Conduct during wars is an enduring source of moral dilemmas that seems to require a different way of evaluation than human conduct during peacetime. Generally accepted moral values, most notably the right to life, seem to be evaluated differently in wartime. Accepting this as true, some authors have argued that the bombings were justified after all, on the basis that the bombings actually ‘saved lives’ by precipitating the end of the war 3. However, the argument from counterfactual lives saved, in addition to being hard to empirically investigate4 is a purely consequentialist argument5. Even if the calculation works out there may still be deontological reasons to condemn the bombings. Just war theory is an attempt to devise a set of principles that make moral evaluation of wars and human conduct during wars possible. Just war theory aims to be a compromise between a deontological approach (that would probably condemn most acts of war out of hand) and a pure consequentialism (that would seem to allow any kind of horrific means as long as the ends are justified). In this essay I will examine the moral value of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings through the lens of just war theory. 1 John Rawls, ‘Reflections on Hiroshima: 50 years after Hiroshima’ Dissent (1995): 322-327. 2 Elisabeth Anscombe, Ethics, Religion and Politics. Vol 3. (Blackwell: Oxford, 1981): 62-71. 3 Charles Landesman, 'Rawls on Hiroshima: An inquiry into the morality of the use of atomic weapons in August 1945', The Philosophical Forum, 34(1), (2003): 21-38. 4 Nobuo Hayashi, 'On the ethics of nuclear weapons: Framing a political consensus on the unacceptability of nuclear weapons', International Law and Policy Institute( ILPI), (2015). 5 Douglas Lackey, ‘Why Hiroshima was immoral: A response to landesman’,The Philosophical Forum 34(1) (2003): 39-42.

More generally, it seems that just war theory’s insistence that attacks discriminate between civilians and combatants precludes the use of any kind of weapon of mass destruction and would label any nuclear bombing as immoral. Therefore my research question is the following: Can ending war ever justify the use of nuclear bombings (and how does this apply to the case of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings)? My approach to this question is to first explain the basic tenets of just war theory as set out in Michael Walzer’s seminal book ‘Just and unjust wars’ 6and use these to list the different ways in which Walzer’s principles could possibly support nuclear bombings. Each of these possibilities will be discussed in turn. Finally I will evaluate the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings according to these criteria to find out whether the possible justification of nuclear bombings is merely theoretical or not. Ways in which just war theory could possibly support nuclear weapons Traditionally, just war theory requires both that a just war have a just cause and that it be waged in a just way. These requirements are commonly called the right to go to war (jus ad bellum) and right conduct in war (jus in bello). More recently, just war theorists have added an account of permissible action post-war, or jus post bellum7. Traditional just war theory construes jus ad bellum and jus in bello as sets of principles, satisfying which is necessary and sufficient for a war’s being permissible. Exactly because both conditions are necessary, nuclear bombings can only be justified when used in a war for a just cause. Therefore, to explore the possibility of justified use of nuclear bombings, it suffices to consider only the jus in bello conditions. In other words, I will assume that the nuclear bombings are already part of a war for a just cause and investigate whether there is a way in which the jus in bello conditions may be fulfilled as well. I will also limit the discussion to the use of nuclear weapons for the bombing of population centres. Other uses of nuclear weapons, like the use of nuclear weapons for deterrence, have their own moral conundrums that lie outside the scope of war proper8. 6 Michael Walzer, Just and unjust wars (New York: Basic Books,1991): 390. 7 Thom Brooks, Just War Theory, Vol.4 (London: Brill, 2012): 233. 8 Paul Meyer and Tom Sauer, ‘The nuclear ban treaty: A sign of global impatience’, Survival, 60(2), (2018): 61-72.

Typically the jus in bello list comprises: 

Discrimination: belligerents must always distinguish between military objectives and civilians, and intentionally attack only military objectives;

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Proportionality: foreseen but unintended harms must be proportionate to the military advantage achieved;

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Necessity: the least harmful means feasible must be used.

Nuclear weapons seem to make discrimination impossible. A nuclear weapon will always harm noncombatants. Therefore it seems there are two ways in which nuclear weapons could still be legitimized in just war theory: either the principle of discrimination is made less strict or the principle of discrimination is understood as not fundamental so that exceptions to its application may exist in certain conditions. Furthermore, Waltzer himself has introduced a special (and controversial) exemption to the principle of discrimination for cases of ‘‘supreme emergency’. This inclusion was inspired by the case of the bombings of German cities in WWII, which Walzer supports. In addition, firebombings like those in Dresden (and, for that matter, in Tokyo) are equally ill-suited for discrimination as nuclear bombings. To investigate the possibility of Walzers definition of discrimination being too strict, I will discuss several authors who have commented on the correct scope of the principle of discrimination. To investigate the possibility that discrimination is not a fundamental principle, I will argue that the principles of proportionality and necessity can be seen as describing conditions under which discrimination does not apply. To investigate the possibility that nuclear bombings might qualify as part of the ‘supreme emergency’ exemption I discuss a number of authors viewpoints on the role and meaning of the exemption in just war theory.

Is Walzers criterion for discrimination too strict? Many authors have commented on the meaning of the discrimination criterion. In international law, the discrimination principle has found its expression in the Geneva’s convention as the difference between civilians and combatants. This distinction is practical in actual cases because it is relatively easy to determine whether someone is a soldier or not. However this does not mean that the actual moral difference rests upon such easily measured characteristics. It may be quite hard to determine when exactly a soldier should be counted as a combatant9. Larry May argues that the moral status of a combatant depends on much broader humane values and cannot be reduced to his status as an active soldier. The example of the ‘naked soldier’, who is bathing in a river, shows that there may be cases in which it is at least morally permissible to not kill an enemy soldier. This shows that the principle of distinction is not fundamental and derives its validity from deeper humane values. Applying such values directly will (dixit May) likely result in a much more cautious application of the principle of discrimination, erring on the side of classifying a larger number of people as noncombatants. For the purposes of legitimising nuclear bombings however we would have needed a more encompassing demarcation of ‘combatant’ so that at least a large part of the bombed civilians could be seen as combatants. Such a view, that would paint Japanese civilians as aiding the war effort to such an extent that they should be deemed combatants, is implausible on its face. What about children for example? It seems rather that any change to the scope of the discrimination principle will be in the direction of making it even more strict, rather than less. Indeed, the fact that the principle of distinction may be hard to apply correctly in practice should not cause us to abandon the principle, but rather to simply try harder to apply it correctly, since the alternative is to justify total war 10. Therefore, the use of some form of the principle of discrimination is a necessary part of just war theory.

9 Larry May, 'Killing naked soldiers: distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants', Ethics & International Affairs, 19(3), (2005): 39-53.

10 Shannon French, ‘Distinction and Civilian Immunity’, in Larry May (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of the Just War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 152-166.

Could nuclear bombings be seen as exceptions to the criterion of discrimination? These all matter to the ethics of war, and will be addressed below. However, it is unhelpful to view them as a checklist of necessary and sufficient conditions. When they are properly understood, only proportionality and necessity are necessary conditions for a war, or an act in a war, to be permissible, since no matter how badly going to war fails the other ad bellum criteria (for example) it might still be permissible because it is the least awful of one’s alternatives, and so satisfies the necessity and proportionality constraints. 11This leaves room (in principle) within just war theory for a justified use of nuclear weapons. However, it would need to be shown that other means were not feasible (necessity) and that the harms to civilians were proportionate to the military advantage achieved. The criterion for discrimination is not fundamental and takes its importance from other more fundamental principles. In this line of thinking, the principles of proportionality and necessity can be seen as describing conditions that legitimize a failure to discriminate. However both of these principles only apply to collateral damage (i.e. foreseeable but unintended damage). Maybe the use of ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ can be seen to target combatants and inflict only collateral damage on noncombatants. But the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings clearly had the intention to target non-combatants. Restricting the discussion to non tactical nuclear attacks, we can see that such attacks cannot be justified by proportionality or necessity.

Could nuclear weapons fall under the ‘supreme emergency’ exemption?

11 Walzer, Just and unjust wars (New York: Basic Books,1991):390.

Michael Walzer explains that under supreme emergency conditions the country with jus ad bellum on its side (the victim of aggression) is permitted to set aside all three jus in bello rules and fight however it wants to without prudence. The victim’s country may wilfully violate non-combatant immunity and attack enemy civilians with lethal force. Traditionally, such offense has counted as the clearest violation of jus in bello rules and is seen as one of the worst war crimes. Hugo Grotius, one of the grandfathers of just war theory, once said that 'non-combatant immunity is a rule so powerful and morally resonant that it can not be changed, even by God'. The supreme emergency exemption is likely the most debatable, and consequential, amendment to just war theory ever suggested.

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However, Walzer makes an

exception for ‘supreme emergencies’ for which Walzer gives the example of the bombing of German cities in WW2. The term was coined by Churchill. The concept of supreme emergencies has been heavily criticized by later commentators such as Statman who says that there are no supreme emergencies that justify a failure to discriminate13. Bellamy claims there are no supreme emergencies that justify a failure to discriminate14 and Orend's view is that there are supreme emergencies (they do not justify failure to discriminate but create a ‘tragedy’ wherein all available actions are immoral).15 Even though Walzer sets up the principle of non-combatant immunity he permits two possible exceptions. The first one is that aggressors are sometimes legitimately allowed to behave aggressively against prisoners if the enemies stop committing the unjust acts that caused the reprisals. The second is the idea that non-combatant immunity may be abandoned during supreme emergencies. There are situations where the danger confronted in war is so big that requires the use of measures expressly forbidden by the ‘war convention’. An emergency becomes supreme when two conditions are fulfilled. First, the danger must be near , which brings two implications. The danger needs to be present and real (the fear of future danger is not sufficient). Also, the danger has to be so near that leaders are left with no other alternative but to waive the rights of enemy non-combatants. Walzer says that a 12 Brian Orend, Is there a supreme emergency exemption? In Just War Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005): 135. 13 Daniel Statman, 'Supreme emergencies revisited', Ethics, 117(1), (2006): 58-79. 14 Alex. J. Bellamy, 'Supreme emergencies and the protection of non-combatants in war, International Affairs', 80(5), (2004): 829-850. 15 Orend, Is there a supreme emergency exemption? In Just War Theory, 134-135.

threat neither pressures, nor permits attacks on the innocent, as long as other means of fighting and winning are available. This is a good reason to think that there are always better alternatives. The second element of the supreme emergency is the nature of the threat. Every state in times of war believes that it is confronting a supreme danger but this is not enough. Walzer explains that the danger must be of an unusual and horrifying kind. It needs to shock the conscience of humanity. According to Walzer most wars are not concerned with the defence of ‘ideal values’ but instead demand questions of relative gains. Nations face a supreme emergency only when the costs of losing are catastrophic when mass murder scale would be the result on a large. The first problem with Walzer’s doctrine of supreme emergency is that it contradicts his broader ethics of war. Although it can be defended against the charge that it resembles realism, it has to be recognized that it is an essentially utilitarian doctrine. However limited the occasions where a valid supreme emergency argument can be made, it nevertheless has the effect of providing conditional what Walzer elsewhere describes as fundamental rights. According to the supreme emergency doctrine, noncombatants lose their immunity because of the actions of others. This contradicts Walzer’s claim which reinforces his concept of the double effect which is that utilitarian claims are secondary to the deontological rights held by all noncombatants. The second reason for rejecting the supreme emergency argument flows from the discussion of utilitarianism. Specifically, the ethics and laws of war impose a complete ban on the direct intentional targeting of non-combatants. In addition, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the leaders of almost one hundred states would face criminal charges if they ordered the direct targeting of non-combatants, for whatever reason. The third problem with the supreme emergency exception is that it is based on a fictitious worst-case scenario, from which it assumes a moral exception with practical import. The paradox is the claim that political and military leaders confront one of two possibilities in supreme emergencies and refuse to break the rules of war and face destruction or directly target enemy non-combatants. The fourth problem with the supreme emergencies exception is that, rather than being stated on military reality, the idea that armed force should be used against non-combatants runs contrary to key aspects of contemporary strategic thinking. This means using force against non-combatants

contradicts the idea that militaries should employ an ‘economy of force’ and should endeavour to defeat the enemy’s armed forces and attack the enemy’s military mass center’. In such a way, with the exception of three notable approaches to strategy, military strategy turns to reject the direct targeting of noncombatants on prudential grounds. 16 Conclusion of the theoretical part I conclude out of the many critiques of the ‘combatant’ criterion 1718 that up to this point there is no simple criterion for discrimination that captures all our moral intuitions. More importantly, criticisms of Waltzers criterion tend to be more strict rather than less. So it seems unlikely that the true criterion will allow nuclear weapons. The second path seems more promising because it is at least conceivable that a nuclear attack on civilians would be proportional and necessary. However, it is hard to see how a nuclear bombing could be said to merely deal collateral damage to noncombatants (especially in the case of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings). This leaves only Waltzers infamous ‘supreme emergency exemption’. The validity of this exemption is questionable since allowing such an exemption risks collapsing just war theory to a purely utilitarian theory. So just war theory can only support the use of nuclear bombings if one is prepared to allow utilitarian considerations to trump all others (in some cases). However, if one is prepared to accept this premise one could still legitimately wonder whether the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings can be considerd as a case of ‘supreme emergency’.

Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings a supreme emergency?

16 Bellamy, 'Supreme emergencies and the protection of non-combatants in war', 829-850. 17 May, 'Killing naked soldiers: distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants', 39. 18 French ,‘Distinction and Civilian Immunity’, 152.

In a rejoinder to Rawl’s well known position against the bombings professor Charles Landesman defends Truman’s decision to drop the bomb exactly on these grounds. Landesman agrees with the main framework of just war theory within which Rawls was thinking (and that I s...