On Michael Walzer, Gaza, and the Lebanon War

For the last thirty years Michael Walzer has been acknowledged as the most eminent and authoritative political philosopher dealing with questions of war and morality. In his most important work in this vein, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), Walzer argues that we must make two separate evaluations of the morality of war: the justice of the cause or purpose for which war is fought and the morality or justice of the methods of warfare. After developing his just war theory with great sophistication and persuasiveness, Walzer then applies his analysis to many specific cases of warfare, from the ancient world until the present. No informed and serious discussion of morality and warfare can take place today without reference to Just and Unjust Wars and the debate it has engendered.