Complicitous liability in war

Authors: Saba Bazargan

Publish Date: 2012/04/22

Volume: 165, Issue: 1, Pages: 177-195

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Abstract

Jeff McMahan has argued against the moral equivalence of combatants MEC by developing a liabilitybased account of killing in warfare On this account a combatant is morally liable to be killed only if doing so is an effective means of reducing or eliminating an unjust threat to which that combatant is contributing Since combatants fighting for a just cause generally do not contribute to unjust threats they are not morally liable to be killed thus MEC is mistaken The problem however is that many unjust combatants contribute very little to the war in which they participate—often no more than the typical civilian Thus either the typical civilian is morally liable to be killed or many unjust combatants are not morally liable to be killed That is the liability based account seems to force us to choose between a version of pacifism and total war Seth Lazar has called this “The Responsibility Dilemma” But I will argue that we can salvage a liabilitybased account of war—one which rejects MEC—by grounding the moral liability of unjust combatants not only in their individual contributions but also in their complicit participation in that war On this view all enlistees regardless of the degree to which they contribute to an unjust war are complicitously liable to be killed if it is necessary to avert an unjust threat posed by their side This collectivized liability based account I develop avoids the Responsibility Dilemma unlike individualized liabilitybased accounts of the sort developed by McMahan

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