Spare Not a Naked Soldier: A Response to Daniel Restrepo

Journal of Military Ethics 21 (1):66-81 (2022)
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Abstract

In his recent JME article Daniel Restrepo argues that both legal and ethical rules should protect the so-called Naked Soldiers, combatants engaged in activity unrelated to military operations and unaware of the imminent danger threatening them. I criticize this position from several angles. I deny the existence of any link between vulnerability and innocence, and claim ignorance of deadly threats does not give rise to a morally distinguished type of vulnerability. I argue that actions not contributing to the war effort are nevertheless an inherent part of fighting a war, and that combatants do not signal intention to abandon their commitment to the war effort by undertaking these. I show that by granting hors de combat status to Naked Soldiers, we would unjustly disadvantage their opponents and engender significant and manifold practical difficulties that the proponents of the view fail to solve or even anticipate. Finally, I demonstrate that Restrepo’s general project of “making killing in war difficult to legitimately justify” regardless of why, how and by whom the killing is done is incompatible with just war theory’s basic assumptions. That project is in fact pacifist in nature and as such redundant in light of pacifism’s broader and stronger implications.

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Author's Profile

Maciej (Maciek) Zając
Polish Academy of Sciences

Citations of this work

Response to Maciek Zając.Daniel Restrepo - 2022 - Journal of Military Ethics 21 (1):82-87.

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References found in this work

Killing in war.Jeff McMahan - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Cosmopolitan war.Cécile Fabre - 2012 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Morality of War.Brian Orend - 2006 - Broadview Press.
Sparing Civilians.Seth Lazar - 2015 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.

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