The Deadly Serious Causes of Legitimate Rebellion: Between the Wrongs of Terrorism and the Crimes of War

Abstract

This article challenges the tendency exhibited in arguments by Michael Ignatieff, Jeremy Waldron, and others to treat the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as the only valid moral frame of reference for guiding (and judging) armed rebels with just cause. To succeed, normative language and principles must reflect not only the wrongs of 'terrorism' and war crimes, but also the rights of legitimate rebels. However, these do not always correspond to the legal privileges of combatants. Rebels are often unlikely to gain belligerent recognition and might sometimes have strong moral reasons to exceed the rights of regular combatants. Where this gives rise to tensions between morality and the LOAC, a decision is needed to determine which to follow. Setting aside the idea of (a) suppressing just war theory altogether in favour of a more purely regulatory approach to war and (b) reforming law in the direct light of moral theory, I question the attempt by Waldron (among others) (c) to argue that moral weight of the legal conventions at the heart of the LOAC trump any moral reasons there might be for breaching them. Even if noncombatant immunity is, as Waldron suggests, a deadly serious convention, I argue that war is justified only if pursued for the sake of deadly serious causes which may even be serious enough to oblige agents to break the law. A political theory of the ethics of war is needed (d) to mediate between the moral and legal in such cases where they cannot be reconciled directly.

Personality characteristics of the participant in an armed or paramilitary unit not provided for by law

“…Only a few scientific studies devoted to this problem are known. Thus, Finlay (2017) in his scientific work raises the issue of legal protection of rebels. In particular, the scientist examines the observance of their right to resistance as persons who are not combatants and whose legal protection has not received proper legal regulation in international humanitarian law.…”

Justification and Legitimacy at War: On the Sources of Moral Guidance for Soldiers

“…But then there is also a third risk, which is that if they were to reject just war theory for the sake of avoiding the second risk, soldiers would also fail to discharge urgent moral duties to win in wars for "deadly serious causes." 70 This would arise if the only way of winning them was by means of morally justifiable but legally prohibited tactics such as those discussed in Section IV. These multiple risks and the ever-present potential for conflict between morality and law mean that the sources of moral guidance remain irreducibly plural.…”