I. Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars When Michael Walzer published his seminal Just and Unjust Wars (1977), it was becoming increasingly doubtful that Nixon and Brezhnev's policy of détente would provide adequate grounds for a long-term resolution to Cold War tensions; if we are to effectively analyze Walzer's argument, it is vital that we recognize that this is the unique historical context in which his scholarship is embedded and with which it is inextricably intertwined (Miller 2001). The conflict in Vietnam had run its course, but the United States and the Soviet Union continued to engage in indirect conflict (if on a far smaller scale) in a number of theaters in the developing world. In less than two years' time, such conflict—including
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That being said, however, Walzer is distinctly (and justifiably) opposed to any worldview with moral/ethical components that is prepared to issue a blanket pardon to any and all actions committed in the context of warfare. Indeed, in this sense a central component realist argument can be viewed as anti-ethical insofar as it rejects the is/ought dichotomy in an almost Machiavellian fashion, dismissing outright the possibility of distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate, acceptable and unacceptable, justified and unjustifiable—a categorization which is the core function of the entire field of ethics. Yet the realists are betrayed by their lexicon: the vocabulary of conflict is rife with morally-loaded words such as "atrocity", "massacre", "self-defense", and "cruelty". These terms have strong ethical, normative connotations despite the fact that they are also most salient in discursive contexts relating to conflict and war (p. 3). Walzer argues, therefore, that war itself must admit of some moral dimensions that can be discussed and
That being said, however, Walzer is distinctly (and justifiably) opposed to any worldview with moral/ethical components that is prepared to issue a blanket pardon to any and all actions committed in the context of warfare. Indeed, in this sense a central component realist argument can be viewed as anti-ethical insofar as it rejects the is/ought dichotomy in an almost Machiavellian fashion, dismissing outright the possibility of distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate, acceptable and unacceptable, justified and unjustifiable—a categorization which is the core function of the entire field of ethics. Yet the realists are betrayed by their lexicon: the vocabulary of conflict is rife with morally-loaded words such as "atrocity", "massacre", "self-defense", and "cruelty". These terms have strong ethical, normative connotations despite the fact that they are also most salient in discursive contexts relating to conflict and war (p. 3). Walzer argues, therefore, that war itself must admit of some moral dimensions that can be discussed and