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The Ethics of the Strong against the Tactics of the Weak: A Response to Kasher and Yadlin’s ‘Military Ethics of Fighting Terror’

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Notes

  1. See, for instance, the data assembled by the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, available online at: http://www.tkb.org/ChartModule.jsp. See also the ITERATE database on terrorist incidents, in Todd Sandler and Walter Enders, ‘An economic perspective on transnational terrorism,’ The University of Alabama Economic, Finance and Legal Studies Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 03–04–02. Available online via http://www.cha.ua.edu.

  2. Alistair Horne, A savage war of peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 206–7.

  3. Maj. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli & Major Patrick R. Michaelis, ‘Winning the peace: The requirement for full-spectrum operations,’ Military Review, vol. LXXXV, no. 4, July–August 2005, p. 8.

  4. Alistair Irwin, ‘The ethics of counter-terrorism,’ in Patrick Mileham (ed.), War and morality, Whitehall Paper 61 (London: RUSI, 2004), p. 97.

  5. Ibid, p. 100

  6. Michael Herman, Intelligence power in peace and war (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 65.

  7. The Kasher/Yadlin position is, in essence, that put forward by the ‘precautionary principle’ favoured by environmentalists – that if in doubt about the harmful consequences of something one should act to prevent it. As I have explained elsewhere, however, the precautionary principle is a very shaky one on which to take action, and can just as easily justify inaction: see Paul Robinson, Doing less with less (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2005), Appendix 8.

  8. General Sir John Hackett, The profession of arms (London: Times Publishing Company, 1963), p. 23.

  9. Cited in Albert C. Pierce, ‘Vice Admiral Stockdale: A life of masterful existence and graceful eloquence,’ Shipmate, October 2005, p. 16.

  10. See, for instance, Andrew Mason, ‘Special obligations to compatriots,’ Ethics, vol. 107, no. 3, April 1997, pp. 427–47, and Richard Vernon, ‘Compatriot preference? Is there a case?’, Politics and Ethics Review, vol. 2, no. 1, 2006, pp. 1–18.

  11. Robert Goodin, ‘What is so special about our fellow countrymen?,’ Ethics, vol. 98, no. 4, July 1988, p. 663.

  12. Ibid, p. 674.

  13. Annette C. Baier, Moral prejudices: Essays on ethics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 28–9.

  14. David Rodin, ‘The ethics of asymmetric war,’ in Richard Sorabji & David Rodin (eds), The ethics of war: Shared problems in different traditions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 161.

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  1. Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, Canada

    Paul Robinson

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Correspondence to Paul Robinson.

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‘In the twenty-first century, political effect deserves recognition as a fundamental principle of war.’ (Thomas M. Kane)1

1Thomas M. Kane, ‘Building thrones: Political effect as an emerging principle of war,’ Comparative Strategy, vol. 24, no. 5, Dec. 2005, p. 431.

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Robinson, P. The Ethics of the Strong against the Tactics of the Weak: A Response to Kasher and Yadlin’s ‘Military Ethics of Fighting Terror’. Philosophia 36, 195–202 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9111-7

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