The author examines and criticizes some of the key arguments from Security First, with a focus on issues related to Etzioni's discussion of "Illiberal Moderates." Etzioni's analysis of Christianity and Islam are found to be problematic. By looking at the just war traditions in both religions, the author finds very different models rather than the parallel ones suggested by Etzioni.
Analyzes competing understandings of peace. The first model of peace described holds peace & justice as one, either ignores or minimizes security concerns, & emphasizes eschatological pacifism that maintains a peaceful kingdom on earth is possible if human beings no longer study war. The second model acknowledges that peace is impossible without justice but recognizes that violence & conflict are sometimes unavoidable elements of the quest for peace & justice. Hull House founder, peace activist, & humanitarian Jane Addams was an advocate of this approach. Special attention is given to the thread of Kantian & neo-Kantian reasoning that connects the first two models. A third model of peace that avoids the eschatological & evolutionary certainties of the first two is examined. Called "hard-headed peace," it incorporates justice claims & recognizes that at least some civil order & tranquility are needed in order for other worthy goals to be worked toward. This "limited" peace is considered a "precious human achievement" whose advocates acknowledge the need for "disturbers of the peace should a `peace' be unjust.". J. Lindroth
In this article Professor Elshtain responds to the critiques offered by the symposium and, five years on from 11 September 2001 and three years on from the initial publication of Just War Against Terror, revisits her analysis of the moral issues facing America and the world in the context of the war on terror . She offers a stout defense of her original claim that the war on terror has presented America with many tough decisions to make, decisions regarding emergency ethics and the best way to carry on the struggle against global terrorism. Along the way, she expands upon her understanding of tragedy, her debt to Augustinian just war thought, and her conviction that America must assume some responsibility for the management of international peace and security.
In this article Professor Elshtain responds to the critiques offered by the symposium and, five years on from 11 September 2001 and three years on from the initial publication of Just War Against Terror, revisits her analysis of the moral issues facing America and the world in the context of the war on terror. She offers a stout defense of her original claim that the war on terror has presented America with many tough decisions to make, decisions regarding emergency ethics and the best way to carry on the struggle against global terrorism. Along the way, she expands upon her understanding of tragedy, her debt to Augustinian just war thought, and her conviction that America must assume some responsibility for the management of international peace and security. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2007.]
The basics of Walzer's argument are straightforward: is regime change a just cause for war? (Presumably this means can regime change as such ever be a just cause.) My answer to this question is, No, not in and of itself as an abstract proposition. However, in a given case and in light of other factors and additional information, regime change may well be one feature of the deployment of justifiable force. This is not equivocation but a recognition that the just war tradition does not present a series of boxes to check, and, should you get more than a given number, then war it is. Just war doesn't function like that, as Walzer points out in his classic work, Just and Unjust Wars, a text that has played a central role in the revival of just war thinking in our time. The just war tradition is thick with the soot of history and cannot be wrenched free from particular cases, as Walzer insists.
There is much that is interesting in Anthony Burke's essay. Unfortunately, Burke is unable to resist hyperbolic language and too readily substitutes rhetorical onslaught for compelling argument. For example, those he criticizes as being neo-imperialists in liberal internationalist clothing are many times over said to present "disturbing" or "disturbing indeed" arguments. We are told that liberty is a "hermaphrodite"; that the war on terrorism constitutes "the democracy that slaughters, the liberator that tortures" (p. 73), as if Abu Ghraib is standard policy rather than aberration and the deaths of civilians intentional rather than a tragic unintended consequence of fighting. Burke's opponents, he says, deploy "notoriously vague" and "fear-soaked rhetoric" as they "scandalously" mimic the ICISS report's title (p. 76). Citing Jürgen Habermas, he calls the war against Saddam Hussein an "unimaginable break" with existing norms (pp. 75, 76). This suggests that there are "imaginable breaks," but we do not know anything about the criteria he is applying. Reserving sunny language for his own proposed alternatives, Burke blasts the idea of state sovereignty itself as "violent and exclusivist," and "linger[ing], like a latent illness, in the very depths of modern cosmopolitanism" (p. 74). These excesses are distracting and cloud the observations in his essay that are perceptive and deserve serious consideration.
