A Review of Fearon’s “Rationalist Explanations for War” War and peace have played the central role in the field of international relations. In the paper “Rationalist Explanations for War”, Fearon provides three coherent rationalist explanations for the central puzzle about war, namely, why war occurs and recurs albeit war is inefficient ex post. Fearon first refutes five rationalist arguments that accepted as tenable in previous literature. These arguments are: 1) anarchy; 2) expected benefits…
March 23, 1999 marked the beginning of the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia lasting three months. The rationale for the campaign was on the basis of “humanitarian intervention.” It was said to be in prevention of the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians of Siberia by the authoritative regime of Slobodan Milosevic. The moral justification of this conflict has since been contested with the validity debated by a variety of theoretical schools of thought. This…
The Just War Tradition is like any other known tradition, this one has been passed down but it isn't just some hand-me-downs or grandpa's watch but a continuous argument for decades now. The article gives the long historical background on where the tradition originated from. Just War Tradition is also known as the Just War Theory meaning before the government could even demand soldiers to fight and survive for their lives there has to be justification. The theory goes far as the B.C. era and…
Pacifism is defined as “opposition to war or violence of any kind”. In theory, pacifism is an abstraction that would make the world an idyllic place, but when several parties are on the opposites side of the spectrum and decide to take what they want from others by using brute force, is pacifism plausible if one wants to survive? Over the past nine centuries, empires from all over the world have been invading countries, slaughtering thousands to claim land and anything else that they felt is…
Assess the contemporary coherence of the just war tradition. Realists describe war as an inevitable outcome of the anarchical international system in which states interact with each other. Based on this premise, throughout the centuries, has been witnessed the flourishing of a tradition of thought focusing on the ethics of war: The Just War Tradition. Its central hypothesis is that the use of force can be morally justified, or in other words that war can be morally right. This view differs from…
Peace can be achieved by understanding, and does not have to be fixed with violence. Some of the most famous peacemakers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, obtained peace without using violence. Words can do a lot to achieve tranquility. Understanding the other side's view can be the only thing you have to do to resolve a problem, and achieve peace. Also, obtaining peace through violence isn't really peace. First, words can do a lot to obtain peace, more than war and violence can ever do.…
War has been an ongoing thing for many centuries that we have become far accustomed to. From the very first World War to the present day, the world has not gone a day without a break of violence somewhere in the world. War is seen as the ugliest thing in the face of mankind and yet “Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous- an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage.” (Lama). Many young men see the opportunity of going to war as the…
The basic requirement of jus ad bellum is possessing just cause. The clearest example of just cause would be the right of self-defense: if a nation is attacked it has the right to defend itself. By extension, this also means the right to defend other nations from aggression to meet treaty obligations or under the direction of an international regime such as the United Nations. By further extrapolation, the right of self-defense allows for preemptive action if an attack is imminent.5 This does…
I heard the sirens as I ran upstairs. My old dog was found dead in my grandparents backyard in his doghouse. My grandfather told me people beat the dog up because he was always howling at night. Is killing another justifiable? No, because killing one another is not a justifiable act. Killing is a sin, which can be a terrible emotion that always makes us feel guilty about ourselves. There are other more moral solutions. In the case of military ethics, It is Very unethical To knowing kill…
World Peace- what a joke! Our world’s history revolves around destruction and War which is based simply on human nature and “survival”. Wars in history are caused by military and political conflicts which leads us to many wars such as World War II. By 1945, America has introduced the atomic bomb capable of ending life on earth as we know it. Many instances have almost led to this apocalypse, yet the closest has been the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Russia. What wars have proven…