Most in the West see Russia's war in Ukraine as immoral and unjust. Some lay the blame solely at Putin's feet, seeing him as an authoritarian leader and the Russian soldiers as being forced to do his bidding. But, argues the University of Oxford’s Jeff McMahan, this picture is too simple. We must see Russian soldiers as morally responsible for their actions during the war in Ukraine. Fighting in an unjust war is a morally impermissible act, despite Putin's tyranny.
Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford, Jeff McMahan, is one of the most influential ethicists writing today. McMahan has conducted groundbreaking research on a host of controversial topics, including abortion, euthanasia, and killing in combat, and he recently contributed to a special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica entitled ‘Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War’. In this interview, Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at King’s College London, A.J. Wendland, speaks with McMahan about his motivation to study philosophy, the intersection between philosophy and armed conflict, just war theory and its application to the Russia-Ukraine war, and what morality demands of the international community in the face of Russian aggression.
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Thus, according to traditional just war theory, Russian soldiers in Ukraine do nothing wrong provided they obey the rules of engagement, for example, by refraining from intentionally attacking civilians.
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A.J. Wendland: You have spent much of your academic career analyzing the ethics of various life-and-death issues, including abortion, euthanasia, and killing in combat. What initially prompted you to study philosophy? And what motivated you to conduct significant research on the ethics of killing?
Jeff McMahan: When I was in secondary school in the US, young men had to think about the Vietnam war, as we were all at risk of being conscripted to fight in it. I opposed the war, and when I was later sent my draft card, I registered as a conscientious objector. At university, I read a book about the war by Bertrand Russell, which prompted me to read more of his books, including two on the threat of nuclear war. Although I was studying English literature, I was drawn to authors, such as Samuel Johnson, Tolstoy, and Orwell, whose work addressed moral issues, including war. But what was largely missing in the literary works, yet present in Russell’s books, were arguments. So when I received a scholarship to do postgraduate work at Oxford, I decided to switch from literature to philosophy in order to pursue my concerns about war, nuclear weapons, and the morality of harming and killing generally through careful reasoning and rigorous argument.
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AJW: War and the reality of combat clearly had an impact on your thinking from early on. That said, can you tell me about the connection between philosophy and war as it is expressed in traditional just war theory?
JM: The traditional theory of the just war was developed over many centuries by theologians, philosophers, and judicial theorists. The latter have been surprisingly important, earlier because they claimed that the morality of war was a matter of natural law, and later because the “law of nations” they developed promised to give morality real influence in regulating the practice of war. But as just war theory and the law of war began to evolve in tandem, there was pressure to recognize as moral principles the same rules that would be most successful in constraining war through law. All along there had been a distinction between the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and those governing the conduct of war (jus in bello). Legal theorists judged that, as a matter of law, these two sets of principles had to be independent. This is because there are insurmountable objections to making it a criminal offense for soldiers to fight in an illegal war. For example, because most soldiers who fight in illegal wars have many excuses, such as ignorance and duress, there would have to be fair trials for all, which would be an intolerable burden on any legal system. And, because of the excuses, the penalties would have to be relatively mild and would thus have little deterrent effect. Legal theorists therefore made it illegal only to violate the laws regulating the conduct of war, which combatants on both the just and unjust sides can supposedly do. Similarly, just war theorists made the parallel claim that, while it is impermissible to violate the principles governing the conduct of war, it not impermissible to fight in an unjust war. Thus, according to traditional just war theory, Russian soldiers in Ukraine do nothing wrong provided they obey the rules of engagement, for example, by refraining from intentionally attacking civilians.
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AJW: You are a leading proponent of what is known as ‘revisionist just war theory’. How does revisionist just war theory differ from traditional just war theory?
JM: The main difference is that revisionism rejects the independence of jus in bello and jus ad bellum. Revisionists argue that it is impermissible to fight in an unjust war. Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom were civilians when Russia invaded, are acting permissibly – and indeed are arguably fulfilling a moral duty – in trying to defend their fellow citizens from unjust Russian aggression. They are doing nothing that could make them morally liable to attack, or that could make it morally permissible for Russian soldiers to kill them. Compare: if a person tries to murder my child, that person has no right of self-defense if I use force against him to defend my child. Revisionists also argue that it is impossible for those who do fight in an unjust war (“unjust combatants”) to obey the moral principles that govern the conduct of war. They cannot discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate targets because they have no legitimate targets. Consider, moreover, the requirement of proportionality, which is that the bad effects of an act of war must not be excessive in relation to the good effects. But acts of war by unjust combatants are intended to achieve goals that are unjust; these acts therefore have no good effects. Unjust combatants cannot, therefore, satisfy the requirement of proportionality.
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But civilians who make important contributions to an unjust war – for example, Heisenberg when he was trying to make an atomic bomb for the Nazis – can make themselves liable even to military attack.
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AJW: Just war theory seems to cover the rules of military engagement between states and soldiers, but what does it say about the role of civilians in the context of war?
JM: Traditional just war theory distinguishes sharply between civilians and combatants, claiming that while all combatants are legitimate targets of intentional attack, no civilians are. While it can be permissible to cause proportionate harm to civilians as an unintended side effect of military action, intentionally harming civilians as a means of achieving goals in war is terrorism and is always wrong. Revisionist theory, by contrast, distinguishes between those who have acted in a way that makes them morally liable to be harmed and those who have not. On this view, those who fight in a just war and in conformity with the principles of jus in bello (“just combatants”) do nothing to make themselves liable to be harmed and are therefore not legitimate targets of attack. As I indicated earlier, this applies to Ukrainian soldiers in the current war. But civilians who make important contributions to an unjust war – for example, Heisenberg when he was trying to make an atomic bomb for the Nazis – can make themselves liable even to military attack. It is arguable that this applies to highly effective propagandists for Russian aggression, so that if, for example, the attempted killing of Aleksandr Dugin had been successful, it would have been a morally justified killing insofar as it might have been effective in reducing popular support for the war among Russians.
AJW: Speaking of Russian civilians, to what extent do they bear responsibility for the war and to what extent are they liable to be punished?
JM: Ordinary Russian citizens – even those who enthusiastically support the war in Ukraine – in general make no significant causal contributions to Russia’s war and thus do not make themselves liable to be significantly harmed as a means of preventing them from making whatever small contributions they might make. Attacking them militarily would be like killing a person to prevent him from pinching you. And killing them as a means of trying to intimidate Putin would be terrorism. Ukrainian forces must never do that. Still, ordinary Russian civilians have a duty to oppose their country’s war, if only in covert ways, given the draconian penalties Putin has established for overt protest. Those who fail to fulfill this duty, who constitute the vast majority of the population, do, I believe, make themselves liable to suffer minor harms if that would be an effective means of reducing the probability that the Russians will succeed in achieving their unjust aims in Ukraine. This is an essential part of the moral justification for imposing economic sanctions. It would be disingenuous to insist that such sanctions are intended only to harm the Russian leaders. But if sanctions are intended to harm civilians only in minor ways to which most of them are liable, then sanctions are justified so long as they are likely to do more good than harm. I should add that the minor harms caused by sanctions should not be understood as punishment but only as part of the effort to defend Ukraine.
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This illustrates the tragic fact that the most immoral people can sometimes make it morally impermissible for others to oppose them in the way that would be most effective.
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AJW: Ukraine’s war-effort is largely dependent on financial and military aid from its western allies, but what does just war theory tell us about the moral obligations of the international community vis-à-vis the Russia-Ukraine War?
JM: The just war tradition has actually had very little to say about the conditions in which third parties have a duty to assist the victims of unjust wars. There has been general agreement that third parties are permitted to aid the victims of aggression, provided that intervention would satisfy the conditions of proportionality and necessity. But these conditions are not always easy to satisfy. Early in the war in Ukraine, there were justified concerns that even supplying weapons to Ukrainian forces could have been disproportionate because it risked provoking Putin to use nuclear weapons, leading to uncontrolled escalation. At present, Putin’s reckless threats to use nuclear weapons make it disproportionate for any country, and particularly any NATO country, to intervene militarily in defense of Ukraine. This illustrates the tragic fact that the most immoral people can sometimes make it morally impermissible for others to oppose them in the way that would be most effective. The earlier concern that even arming the Ukrainians might be disproportionate has receded. The concern is now about the threat of a Russian military victory as a result of the failure of other countries to provide Ukrainians with the weaponry they need to defend themselves. It would be comprehensible if the American government thought that foreign aid could save more lives if it were devoted to providing food and medicine to people in desperately impoverished countries rather than to providing weaponry to Ukraine. But the appalling selfishness of Republicans in the US who now repeat the rallying cry of American supporters of the Nazis – “America First” – just shows the depths to which they have sunk.
AJW: Just war theory attempts to explain what is right and wrong in war, but what impact does just war theory have on the reality of combat?
JM: Just war theory does affect the way that some wars are fought. Students at the various US military academies at which future officers are trained have for decades been taught courses in the ethics of war in which they have read Michael Walzer’s classic defense of traditional just war theory, Just and Unjust Wars. They are now taught revisionist just war theory as well. These officers then often go into command positions and also positions in which they advise political leaders and help to determine military policy. I have known and taught many of these officers and all of them have been among the finest people I have ever known. The problem is that this does not happen in authoritarian countries such as Russia. At one point it was reasonable to hope that it would. In 1989, I was a member of a small delegation of American philosophers who were invited to give lectures and participate in discussions about the ethics of war and nuclear deterrence in the Soviet Union. There were then grounds for optimism. But that was under Gorbachev, and Putin has subsequently returned Russia to its totalitarian past and eradicated every trace of Gorbachev’s benign influence on Russian politics and culture.
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