This study is a transdisciplinary inquiry into the reasons for waging war, for fighting, and for repudiating war as an instrument of foreign policy. In Part I, its essential premise is that there are many ways for analysing the ethics and morality of war, and that to develop a comprehensive understanding of this subject one must be willing to engage with a broad range of alternate views. Though moralists usually argue about the rights and wrongs of conduct from within a given set of ethical ideas, the author's aim has been to move beyond the accepted boundaries of current philosophical argument.Questions raised include: To what extent is it morally right to adopt non-violent, pacifist or abolitionist attitudes?; How should the morality of domestic and ethnic wars be considered?; What are the human costs of war? Case studies such as the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Rwanda are used. In Part II, three inescapable observations add to the foundation of the thesis.First, war is not inevitable. Second, the need to prevent war is increasingly urgent.Third, preventing war is possible.Examples from 'hot' spots around the world illustrate that the potential for domestic war can be diffused through the early, skillful and integrated application of political, diplomatic, economic and military measures / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Social Ecology)

Should U.S. political decision-makers decide to wage a moral war, it is not as easy a merely saying go do it. To ensure moral targeting decisions, American national political leaders must suffer the costs of monitoring in terms of time and money, and provide not only detailed direction, but also constant oversight to ensure objectives are clear and subordinates carry out directions. Military officers must ensure that their motivations align with those of their principals, and they must ensure that constraining doctrine for planning and executing combat operations is followed. Having satisfied these variables, moral targeting decisions, wherein proportionality of non-combatant casualties is weighed against target necessity, should then be easily attainable. The process of aligning motivations with respect to desired outcomes, and the process of planning strategies according to doctrine together lead to moral targeting decisions. By following the processes of getting war plans approved according to published U.S. doctrine, a deliberate dialogue is followed with direction and feedback through several steps of planning and approval that result in multiple people working on a product that results in a sort of corporate buy- in. I posit that it is difficult to follow this process and end up with targeting decisions that do not weigh harm to non-combatants against the necessity of individual targets, especially when principals and agents come together to deliberately ensure they align their motivations with respect to objectives. This theory is applicable to U.S. involvement in war, but is not necessarily generalizable to other countries. Through case studies of American involvement in Desert Storm (the first Gulf War), Operation Allied Force (NATOs air war over Serbia), and the U.S. War on Terror (campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq), I find that only in the War on Terror were moral targeting decisions consistently made by US national leaders. Furthermore, that was the only case study wherein both constraining doctrine was present and principal-agent motivations were aligned with respect to objectives. The other two cases showed that the variables were not followed and proportionality- necessity decisions were not made.

Since the end of the Cold War, traditional justifications for war have diminished in relevance and importance, while the use of Humanitarian Military Interventions (HMI) has proliferated, to the point that formerly traditional wars – e.g. Afghanistan and Iraq invasions – have become retroactively redefined as HMIs. While HMI suffers from a number of problems, from international law to historical track record, its proponents have managed to turn aside all arguments by claiming they represent either statistical outliers, improper implementation, or at best indicate a need for a certain degree of fine-tuning. Crucially, the validity of the HMI practice is never brought into question. In order to attempt to break this dialectic stalemate, this dissertation recasts HMI as a Kuhnian paradigm. Doing so provides for a better understanding of HMI as a holistic Weltanschauung, and allows the problems of HMI to be understood as anomalies. Unlike arguments, anomalies need not engage with every discrete position held by the paradigm. Instead, they serve as a direct demonstration of the untenability of a position, as evidenced by systemic failure to produce the desired results. Consequently, the paradigm approach allows for a binary resolution to the problems of HMI: either the anomalies can be explained by the paradigm, or the paradigm has failed. The present analysis begins with an examination of paradigms and their structures, and then follows the history and context of HMI is considered from a philosophical and historical perspectives. Then, the structure of HMI as a paradigm is unpacked, with the attendant ends, means, justifications, and implications. Finally, four categories of HMI anomalies are presented, leading to the conclusion that the HMI paradigm is a failed one.

Pentecostals were the largest religious group among conscientious objectors in Sweden between 1967 and 1971, a time characterized by passionate debates on the ethics of war in the shadows of Vietnam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This thesis aims to review and analyze how the Pentecostal periodicals Evangelii Härold and Dagen described and ethically motivated military violence and pacifism in different contexts during this period. The purpose is to identify potential motivations for pacifism and/or military support during a time when a large number of Pentecostals refused to bear arms, with particular interest in how these motivations related to ethical evaluation on contemporary wars.  Pacifism and conscientious objection were regularly promoted and seldom criticized, while most contemporary military violence was condemned with one glaring exception: Israeli warfare. Unlike the American war effort in Vietnam, Israel’s wars were commonly viewed as eschatologically significant and biblically predicted holy wars, with several writers suggesting that God himself has waged and will wage war on Israel’s behalf. Pacifism was primarily motivated by obedience to the Bible rather than empathy, fitting with Lisa Cahill’s theory of obediential pacifism being distinct from empathic pacifism in the Christian tradition. Support for Israeli warfare was also derived from biblical interpretation, primarily based on Old Testament texts. It was further motivated by ideas of Jewish suffering and death being part of God’s plan, with several Pentecostal writers speculating that an apocalyptic genocide greater than the Holocaust would precede the second coming of Christ. Many Pentecostals did not see this as standing in conflict with personal pacifism and conscientious objection, as both views were perceived as biblical. Future research could further explore the relationship between Pentecostal eschatology and empathy, along with how mid-century Pentecostal Zionism might have been influenced by antisemitic ideas from the 1930’s. / Pingstvänner utgjorde den största religiösa gruppen bland vapenvägrare i Sverige mellan 1967 och 1971, en tidsperiod som karaktäriserades av passionerade debatter om krigsetik i skuggan av Vietnamkriget och Israel-Palestinakonflikten. Denna uppsats ämnar presentera och analysera hur de pentekostala tidskrifterna Evangelii Härold och Dagen beskrev och etiskt motiverade militärt våld och pacifism i olika kontexter under denna period. Syftet är att identifiera möjliga motiveringar för pacifism och/eller stöd för militärt våld i en tid då många pingstvänner vägrade bära vapen, med ett särskilt intresse för hur dessa motiveringar relaterade till etisk reflektion kring samtida krig. Pacifism och vapenvägran förespråkades regelbundet och kritiserades sällan, medan majoriteten av det samtida militära våldet kritiserades med ett uppenbart undantag: israelisk krigföring. Till skillnad från den amerikanska krigsinsatsen i Vietnam ansågs Israel bedriva eskatologiskt signifikanta och bibliskt förutsedda heliga krig. Flera skribenter menade att Gud själv har stridit och kommer att strida å Israels vägnar.  Pacifism motiverades framför allt utifrån lydnad till Bibeln snarare än utifrån empati, vilket stämmer väl med Lisa Cahills teori om att lydnadsbaserad pacifism är distinkt från empatibaserad pacifism i kristen tradition. Stödet för israelisk krigföring motiverade också med bibeltolkning, främst utifrån gammaltestamentliga texter. Därtill motiverades det med idéer om att judiskt lidande och död är en del av Guds plan. Flera skribenter spekulerade i att ett apokalyptiskt folkmord större än förintelsen kommer föregå Jesu återkomst. Få pingstvänner uttryckte att dessa idéer stod i konflikt med personlig pacifism och vapenvägran, då allt ansågs vara bibliskt.  Vidare forskning skulle vidare kunna utforska förhållandet mellan pentekostal eskatologi och empati, samt hur pentekostal sionism i mitten av 1900-talet kan ha influerats av antisemitiska idéer.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1922.