The Principles of Jus Ad Vim
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Towards a Theory on the Use of Force Short of War – The Principles of Jus ad Vim A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2020 HUY ANH LE School of Social Sciences Department of Politics 1 Contents Introduction Chapter .................................................................................................................................... 9 An introduction to vis: ............................................................................................................................ 10 Chapter structure: ................................................................................................................................... 16 Contributions of the thesis: .................................................................................................................... 19 Final preliminaries: .................................................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 1: War, Police Action and Force Short of War ............................................................................. 27 1.1 The rise of vis: ................................................................................................................................... 28 1.2 In Between War and Law Enforcement: ........................................................................................... 34 1.3 Conclusion: At the Crossroad: ........................................................................................................... 43 Chapter 2: Vis and standard accounts of Just War Theory – a bridge too far: ......................................... 46 2A.1 Traditional Just War and vis: ........................................................................................................... 47 2.1.1 Traditional just war theory: ....................................................................................................... 47 2A.2 Jus ad bellum and vis: ..................................................................................................................... 58 2.2.1 Operation Opera: ....................................................................................................................... 59 2.2.2 Operation Opera and Jus ad Bellum: ......................................................................................... 61 2A.3 The case for Operation Opera: ....................................................................................................... 70 Conclusion: .......................................................................................................................................... 75 2B Vis and the Revisionist Critique: ........................................................................................................ 76 2B.1 The Revisionist critique: .................................................................................................................. 77 2B.2 Rejecting the Redundancy Objection: ............................................................................................ 80 Conclusion: .......................................................................................................................................... 85 Chapter 3: The Desiderata of Jus ad Vim:.................................................................................................. 87 Introduction: ........................................................................................................................................... 87 3.1 B&B&E’ account of JaV: .................................................................................................................... 88 3.2 The drawbacks: ................................................................................................................................. 96 3.2.1 The Problem with Just Cause: .................................................................................................... 96 3.2.2 The Principle of Escalation and JaV Proportionality: ................................................................. 99 3.3 The Desiderata of Jus ad Vim: ......................................................................................................... 103 3.3.1 The first desideratum of JaV – contingent facts: ..................................................................... 103 3.3.2 The second desideratum – a broader concept of defence: ..................................................... 107 3.3.3 The third desideratum – the principles offer realistic recommendations: .............................. 109 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 113 2 Chapter 4: The Principles of Jus ad Vim: ................................................................................................... 114 4.1 Just cause: ....................................................................................................................................... 116 4.1.1 JaV just cause and punishment: ............................................................................................... 116 4.1.2 JaV just cause and prevention: ................................................................................................ 128 4.2 Last Resort:...................................................................................................................................... 137 4.3 Proportionality: ............................................................................................................................... 141 4.3.1 The shortcoming(s) of jus ad bellum: ....................................................................................... 141 4.3.2 JaV proportionality: .................................................................................................................. 142 4.4 Right Intention: ............................................................................................................................... 154 4.5 Right Authority: ............................................................................................................................... 164 4.5.1 The shortcoming(s) of jus ad bellum: ....................................................................................... 164 4.5.2 JaV Right Authority: ................................................................................................................. 165 Conclusion: ............................................................................................................................................ 173 Concluding Chapter: ................................................................................................................................. 175 Main arguments: ................................................................................................................................... 175 Contribution to the ethics of armed conflicts: ...................................................................................... 178 Contribution to the policy debate: ....................................................................................................... 179 Towards an account of jus in vi: ............................................................................................................ 180 WORD COUNT: 72,960 3 List of tables: Table 1.1 p34 Table 2.1 p50 Table 3.1 p89 Table 4.1 p115 Table 4.2 p148 4 Abstract: The film Eye in the Sky raises a number of interesting questions regarding the ethics of contemporary armed conflicts such as the ethics of autonomous weapon platforms, questions on proportionality and so on. The central plot depicts the tense discussion between Colonel Powell (played by Helen Mirren) and her bosses in a COBRA meeting. The primary issue concerns whether Colonel Powell can fire missiles from a drone to eliminate suspected terrorist targets in a safehouse in Nairobi. Doing so would eliminate the targets but would also likely kill Alia Mo’Allim, a young Kenya girl who was selling bread in the market next to the safehouse. By coercing her subordinates to manipulate the proportionality calculation to appear more favourable, Colonel Powell got her authorisation to fire the Hellfire missiles, killing the targets and Alia. The film ended as Lieutenant General Benson – who was sitting in the COBRA meeting – told a minister who berated the General for killing the girl to ‘never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war’. I want to draw attention to the final quote of General Benson: the idea that he thinks the operation was indeed an act of war, thereby justifying Alia’s death as just an unfortunate casualty of war. The strike was conducted against the terrorist group Al-Shabaab but they were on Kenyan soil, in the middle of Nairobi. But there was no doubt in General Benson’s mind that what just happened was an act of war, fought in Kenya who was (and is) a U.S. ally against a terrorist group originated from Somalia. This ‘war’ seems very different from the kind of wars that we often associated with large armies fighting on behalf of their respective states in designated lines of battle. My thesis takes issue with the conceptualisation of military operations described in this film as “war”. I argue that this kind of operation should be understood as belonging to the distinct category of “force short of war”, or vis and should be