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185 9 The Ethics and Policy of War in Light of Displacement J. Bryan Hehir The question addressed in this chapter is what are the challenges and implications for the just war ethic (JWE) arising from the human, moral, and political situations of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) produced by modern wars? To respond to this question, I will examine four themes: (a) the historical model of the JWE; (b) the development of doctrine in the JWE; (c) the reality of refugees and displaced persons; and (d) the rethinking (again) of the JWE. The Historical Model: A Synthetic Statement The JWE today appears, explicitly or implicitly, in a wide range of publications, policy debates, official documents, and military manuals of discipline and instruction . Often these contemporary uses of the JWE are made without attention to or awareness of the historical narrative that has brought the tradition to its present form. Intellectual and/or moral traditions are inevitably open to use in this fashion; their arguments have achieved the status of public property, and the understanding of them is often divorced from earlier formulations. Since the specific purpose of this chapter is to ask if change, expansion, or reconstruction of the moral categories of the JWE is necessitated or warranted by the persistence of thousands of refugees and displaced persons issuing from wars across the globe, it is useful to survey the ways in which the ancient ethic (now spanning sixteen centuries) has developed in the distant and recent past. Such an approach requires a style that rightfully makes professional historians apprehensive, but it may provide resources for addressing a contemporary situation that is unlikely to be solved soon. LeRoy B. Walters concluded his detailed textual study of the JWE with the guidance that it is best understood as a tradition of moral argument rather than a single theory. The tradition admits of diverse theoretical statements best distinguished from one another rather than understood as a tight, parsimonious product. At the root of the multiple theories, however, lies a basic conviction that war fits within 186 J. Bryan Hehir the moral universe, that in spite of its tragic character and consequences, war can be justified within stringently drawn conditions. The fundamental condition is that war be used in defense of multiple moral values. The shorthand formulation, war on behalf of justice, points to a broader range of values that legitimates the uniquely challenging action of the systematic, organized killing always inherent in the act of war. From this basic assertion that some killings are not murder arises the corollary that many killings and many wars do not meet the standard of moral justification. Attending to this dual assertion of moral principle, the tradition of the JWE then builds a complex fabric of principles, rules, distinctions, and conclusions that shapes the contemporary statement of the ethic. The development of the fabric of the ethic is commonly identified with (but not fully explained by) its association with key individuals. The position of Augustine (d. ), a moderate realist reading of human nature and human history, joined with his moral understanding of war as a public, political act, established the early formulation of key categories in the ethic. War must have a just cause (a significant public harm that must be opposed for the good of the community) and a proper authority (those with the responsibility for the community). Augustine acutely joined these public arguments about war to an awareness of the powerful psychological forces at work that are catalyzed by warfare. The moral argument of right intention addressed both issues of motivation (war should not be fought out of hatred) and purpose (not revenge but the establishment of a just peace). Aquinas (d. ) perpetuated Augustinian insights about the public character of justifiable violence, but he also opened consideration of the means of warfare in more detail than the Augustinian legacy provided. The most significant example of the means question is Aquinas’s treatment of self-defense, which yielded the insight into the subsequently named principle of double effect, a modern staple for analyzing all uses of power. John Finnis’s detailed treatment of Aquinas focuses extensively on his prohibition of the directly intended killing of civilians. James T. Johnson locates the defense of civilian life in a broader set of authors (including canonists and professional soldiers). By the end of the medieval period, the fundamental distinction in the JWE between just cause (jus ad bellum) and just means (jus in bello) is established...

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