Abstract

It will be argued in this study that, like the use of violence/deadly force in individual defense, the use of war in national defense is subject to certain moral restrictions and prohibitions. While traditional Just War Theory will be accepted as providing the guidelines for determining the justness of war, I will be concerned primarily with the jus in bello criterion of discriminating and affording immunity to non-combatants. ;In considering the criterion, I hope to remedy what I take to be the ambiguity and subsequent ineffectiveness of what I will term the "traditional interpretation" of the definitions and concepts necessary for identifying innocents. In so doing I hope also to establish the nature, scope, and liability of such categories as combatant/non-combatant. Then, given the jus in bello prohibition against the injuring/killing of non-combatants; that war--especially modern war--inevitably entails the harming/killing of non-combatants; and the failure of warists to defeat the jus in bello prohibition, I will argue that war is presumptively wrong. As I have arrived at such a conclusion as a consequence of having adhered to the demands and restrictions of the jus in bello criterion, Just War Theory, in my view, while attempting to provide the theoretical guidelines for prosecuting a just war, ultimately entails a presumptive condemnation of all war in practice--what I will term a "Practical Pacifism."