Just War Theory

I am working on a research paper these days on just war theory. The idea is very simple. Just war theory is about the admission that wars cannot be eliminated, but its frequency can be minimized. In order to minimize wars, the just war theorists draw a line in the sand and call some wars just, the others unjust. Then with the power of moral debate and public discourse, hopefully the unjust ones can be eliminated. Or at least crippled as a result of lacking public support.

This is a fine cause. It is however interesting to see where that line in the sand is drawn. As of now, only self defense wars and certain humanitarian interventions are deemed just. This seems arbitrary. Rather than have a substantive set of war causes, the focus of my paper is to analyze the source of wars, see what can be eliminated and what cannot be, then based on that, I propose a set of procedural hurdles to qualify wars for being just.

To be specific, I offer that wars occur as a result of not just isolation, but cooperation as well. The fact that people rely on each other in order to achieve a greater good weaves a close knit social net among the nation states. But this cooperative model allows the possibility of self interested states backing out of the cooperation, leaving everyone else much worse off. Since the cooperative model is a more stable one that the isolated one, states should be just in using force to deter such reckless moves by individual states to leave the cooperation. Deterrence is only credible when force is actually deployed if the preset conditions are met.

An example I plan to give is the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Everyone is better off with it. But backing out my those rogue states destabilizes the system, leading to a race to the bottom.

To account for this, just war theory must let the people of the time to decide whether certain causes are just. The UN provides a forum for this to be discussed. Therefore, we should create procedural hurdles that help to expand the set of just war causes to make it more flexible and to allow timely changes based on the prevailing morality at the time.

I am however running out of steam.. hope i can finish this paper on time.