Customer Reviews

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations (Basic Books Classics)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Professor Michael Walzer examines just war theory in a clear, methodical and rigorous fashion. Concrete examples clarify and flesh out the theory. It covers not just conventional warfare, but also several offshoots that have become much more relevant since the 1950: peacetime reprisals, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism. In addition, he dissects the notions of "war crimes" and official/bureaucrat/citizen responsibility for war. These analyses are especially useful as today's violent conflicts become more fragmented and in some ways "messier". Walzer's viewpoint is definitely from a left-of-center perspective (not *far* left), but I think people of any political persuasion would find reading it to be extremely insightful. He doesn't shy away from controversy yet his arguments are always well-reasoned. Highly recommended to both the layman and political scientist/philosopher, especially as we enter the uncertainty of the post-9/11 world.

After reading the Oct 2004 review of Seth J. Frantzman, I feel the need to answer his question of why Walzer does not deal with the question of Sept 11. The simple answer is that the book was first published in 1977. It is true that it is now in its third edition, but even the newest edition is 2000 and it is simply a reprint of the old edition with a new preface added. Granted, the reviewer is correct that Walzer focuses on Western conflicts (though again, the Iran-Iraq conflict also hadn't started yet when Walzer was writing) but I would have to say "Go with what you know." Walzer does a good job of setting the context for the situations that he does discuss.

In fact, the reviewer's comment that "THe question of 'just wars' was obviously aimed at the recent Iraq war" just makes Walzer's case for him. The fact that his text is still clearly relevant today makes his historical points that much more powerful. In our philosophy department there has been a major resurgence in teaching Walzer in the last 3 years for just this reason.

Even though Walzer's opinions on the current US-Iraqi war can be fairly clearly determined from "Just and Unjust Wars", if you want a more explicit version of what he would say, you should pick up "Arguing About War" which is Walzer's 2004 book of recent essays. He discusses the Iraq war explicitly, although books published in May are already a bit dated. Walzer's philosophical arguments are timeless though and need to be thought about and discussed.

I would highly recommend the book and recommend that the reader keep current conflicts in mind while reading the historical episodes of other conflicts to help put Walzer's arguments in perspective.

Michael Walzer's book is an in-depth look at the morality of war. It is not an easy read especially for the laymen. It helps if the reader has a good grounding in philosophy and understands the idea of "moral relativism". His book makes an in depth study of many facets of what takes place in warfare. The chapter that I found most interesting because it is in the news so much was on pre-emptive warfare. Walzer does believe that countries have the right to go to war pre-emotively but he does set the bar quite high. He believes a country must really be under eminent attack before it acts pre-emotively. He did believe that Israel acted justly in its pre-emptive attack against the Arabs in the 1967 war. He also defines terrorism as a criminal act and not a justifiable act of war. He makes a clear distinction between terrorism and guerilla warfare, deeming guerilla warfare a moral method of warfare.

I recommend this book for military, political professionals and for philosophers.

This book was required reading in philosophy class when I was a sophomore at West Point. I recently pulled the book out of storage to review it. Was our invasion of Afghanistan a "Just War"? Would an invasion of Iraq be a "Just War"? It covers more about war than just these topics (and not specifically these actions), and it reveals that just and unjust war/fighting is not always so easy to define.

Walzer's book is a superb introduction to Just War. It addresses both justice of war and justice in war. Most importantly, it is philosophical and deep while at the same time always clear and well illustrated with concrete examples and historical cases. It really could not be better written. Every chapter is concise, fascinating and provides an excellent overview/introduction to its respected subject.

The main framework for Justice of War is the legalist paradigm/domestic analogy. In society, one is allowed to defend oneself if attacked. Analagously, a country can fight a war in self defense. Similarly, if evidence is uncovered that someone is plotting a murder or robbery, domestic authorities don't have to wait until he actually commits the crime to intervene. When the evidence accumulates to a certain level, beyond reasonable doubt say, they can intervene and pre-empt him. Same thing applies on the international scale: pre-emption is legitimate. Walzer illustrates this with the Six Day War of 1967, a preemptive war initiated by Israel. Of course, the current War on Iraq is supposed to be preemptive as well. But, as Walzer shows, it is in fact preventive. Prevention is when you intervene against a known bad person or country without specific evidence of an imminent attack because one believes that this person or country would harm one if it could and it can't be allowed to gain more power, because then it will attack, even though it won't now. Or roughly that ;) Walzer claims that preventive wars sometimes lead to unnecesary wars, to wars against countries that never would have attacked. Therefore, they are unjustified; we should wait until we have sufficient evidence for plans of a definite attack at some point in the near future. I find if persausive.

The stuff on justice in war is just as good. Non-combatants should be immune since they pose no threat. But, of course, who counts as a non-combatant? What about workers in a munitions factory? What about factories pumping out clothes and supplies that the military depends on? Other rules of conduct in war such as unnecessary suffering, double effect, proportionality and torture are discussed. So is the issue of who is responsible for war: just the political leaders? Citizens, too? Very interesting stuff.

I don't completely agree with Walzer, on things like Humanitarian Intervention and some other things, but this is nevertheless a great book. Read this and "Anarchy, State and Utopia" and you'll have a great foundation for a well reasoned political philosophy.

Greg Feirman (gfire77@yahoo.com)

This is an erudite work examining the philosophical subtelties and ethical issues that war evokes. Any one seriously interested in war, applied ethics, political philosophy, and international relations should be familiar with the arguments Walzer uses. The historical examples are standard dilemmas and problems which are useful in class discussions in philosophy as well as history. The only critique I have of the book (which I often use for my own philosophical writing) is that Walzer's ethical examination of war ends with nuclear war--in this I think he is wrong, we should not stop our analysis even with the nightmare scenario of a holocaust, for that is to give the moral hand over to those who would use nuclear arms. The book is challenging and insightful and deserves further reprints.

No other book has created so much discussion about just war theory than this. It is really a modern classic. Book deals with two essential just war theory questions: 1) when it is morally permissible to go to war and 2) what it is morally permissible to do in war. Walzer draws many historical examples and his theory can be summarized:1) non-intervention is primary principle because nations right to self-determination must be respected. 2)Interventio to support states such right is permissible on three circumstances: a) when nation wants to make seccion out of original state and wants to create own state b) when intervention has already done and idea of new intervention is to counter original intervention effects. c)humanitarian interventio when severe and large human right violation have occured in state. Walzer's view is communitarinist: community is vital to human beings. Without community there can not be human rights. Book is easily readable and has very little or nothing philosophical jargon. I can recomment warmly this book to anyone who is interested in moral question of war.

As a high school AP teacher, I use excerpts from this book inmy European History class. ... My HIGH SCHOOL students both understandand love Walzer's analysis which they find very topical. His discussion on humanitarian intervention and on the ethical dilemma involved in the bombing of Dresden are of particular note. This is not your typical war book but asks that you think and consider war's ethical dimensions.

Walzer's historical approach to examining just war theory is, I think, the most useful way to understand morality in war. That is so because empirical facts back up all the philosophical evaluations. Walzer describes experience and draws conclusions here; he is laying a philosophical foundation and implying, if not prescribing, moral norms from which the rules have been extracted. Be forewarned, he does not cut the reader any slack. This book requires some serious attention to the author's train of thought.

Just war theory has two categories: the justice of going to war, and the justice of fighting once in a war. Walzer's discussion usefully and clearly separates the two and examines via historical events what we regard as right and wrong within each sphere. In doing this he has done the modern world a tremendous service. His logical breakdown speaks to thousands of years of tradition about what thinkers have considered right and wrong in war. One of the best outcomes of this landmark work is the complete debunking of the notion that "all is fair in love and war." That is the path of least moral resistance (or as Clausewitz would say, "friction"), yet we all know that soldiers are honored for fighting well and loathed for behaving like armed thugs and murderers. What is amazing from the discusion is the realization that Walzer knows he has to attack that age-old notion, something our collective sense of justice has historically always rejected. Yet it remains a prevailing idea for many. Originally coined by the Romans it seems (Walzer quotes them, "In war the laws are silent"), they themselves were self-consciously contrite over the fates they inflicted on the Greeks and Carthaginians. The book rates five stars for rigorously addressing this issue alone.

Some make the mistake of thinking Walzer is a pacifist--far from it. On the otherside some critics find his argument about "supreme emergency" a moral failure and a cop-out. The case of Nazi Germany is his paradigmatic case of supreme emergency, one where normal rules may be relaxed, if ever so little, because of the especially pernicious nature of state-sponsored genocide. In contrast Walzer does not see Imperial Japan, for instance, as having represented a supreme emergency, and so the atomic bombings and the fire bombings of cities could not be morally justified. Readers may want to compare his view to Paul Fussell's perspective in the essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb." Walzer's argument here has lent unintended tacit support to many ideas about torturing terrorists at Gitmo and elsewhere. It's pretty obvious Dick Cheney, for instance, thinks the same relaxation of restraints would apply to Islamic terror (but the analogy seems weak). I recommend readers to Tim Challans' book Awakening Warrior for a critique of Walzer's idea of supreme emergency and a very impressive logical attack upon the recent trend toward torturing POW's in prisons outside the USA.

Significantly for current events, readers interested in the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive war will find a well articulated argument in Just and Unjust Wars. The US attack on Iraq was and still is often justified as pre-emptive. That impulse on the part of the neo-conservatives who devised or whipped up the casus belli reflects, I think, a need to cloak a morally questionable war in the robes of legitimacy. There is no way that attack can be justified under the historically accepted norms of "pre-emption." Michael Walzer's well-thought distinction between pre-emption and prevention makes sense even in the milieu of asymmetric warfare against terror and Islamic radicalism, and it clearly shows why the Iraq war was a moral mistake from the start, regardless of its practical success down the road, if we are fortunate enough to see that. The moral precedent of engaging in preventive war will continue to haunt America long into the future. The fact that Iraq was not even on the spectrum where the fine line between pre-emption and prevention exists is a telling aspect of the overall ongoing strategic fiasco. Where one fails to recognize the moral high ground, one is doomed to moral failure. Walzer was vocal about the run-up to war in 2003, and those who read his book would do well to find his comments about the Iraq invasion; they are edifying in terms of understanding the overall argument in this book and, not coincidentally, where we are going in this role as the world's police force.

This is a great book. Perhaps those with more of a political background would take away something different, but I found it to be a thoughtful look at the (moral) causes of wars and the decisions that come into play. There's always a line in the sand, but Walzer looks at when it is more acceptable to cross it and how those decisions play out. And it's also an interesting book if you are interested in the history of war but get saturated easily. I didn't find this dry.