Todd Burkhardt - Just War and Human Rights Fighting with Right Intention

JUST WAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS

FIGHTING WITH RIGHT INTENTION

Todd Burkhardt

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2017 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Burkhardt, Todd, 1969 author.

Title: Just war and human rights : fighting with right intention / Todd Burkhardt.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031449 (print) | LCCN 2016049368 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438464039 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438464046 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Just war doctrine. | Responsibility to protect (International law) | WarProtection of civilians. | Human rights.

Classification: LCC U22 .B88 2017 (print) | LCC U22 (ebook) | DDC 172/.42dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031449

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For Eileen, Missy, Abigail, and Ellie

A special thank you to
David Reidy for his support, guidance, and mentorship

Over the last twenty-five years, I have served the citizens and the government of the United States. I have been a soldier (a private, a noncommissioned officer, and an officer) in the U.S. Army. My assignments have been unique, enriching, and demanding. As a teenager, I enlisted for three years as an M1 tank crewman (loader and gunner). After my enlistment, I returned to college and enrolled in ROTC. Upon graduation, I was commission as an infantry officer.

As an infantry officer, I have served in mechanized and light infantry assignments (as a rifle platoon leader, support platoon leader, headquarters and headquarters company executive officer, company commander, and division G3 assistant planning and operations officer). I also have had the opportunity to train both U.S. and foreign soldiers. As an active component/reserve component observer controller, I trained and evaluated U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard units. As an infantry battalion executive officer I assisted, planned, and resourced training for a fourteen-week infantry soldier course. In addition, I have conducted security forces assistance for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and for the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

In Saudi Arabia, I spent a year as an advisor to two Saudi motorized infantry battalions. I assisted these units in becoming more efficient, effective, and lethal. My first two months in Afghanistan were focused on garrison life support activity and sustainment (food, security, potable water, electricity, and sewage treatment and removal) for a 2,500 Afghan soldier base. The remaining ten months of my deployment, as the G3 operations officer and then later as the deputy commander of a special operations advisory group, I oversaw the planning, resourcing, and execution of operations and intelligence, human capital, and logistics and sustainment of the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command. This is a ten thousand-plus force of Afghan Commando and Special Forces that work all across Afghanistan from its cities to its hinterlands in order to defeat nonstate actors (Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIL, etc.) in order to secure and protect its citizens and the legitimate governance of Afghanistan. While in Afghanistan for a year, I worked with U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine special operations forces as well as Canadian and Slovakian special operation forces.

In addition to the assignments listed above, I have also had the opportunity to earn my masters and doctorate in philosophy. With this undertaking came the opportunity to teach political and just war philosophy to cadetsour Armys future leadersattending the United States Military Academy, West Point. In addition, to the robust ethics of war class that I had the opportunity to teach to almost six hundred cadets over the course of five years, I had the opportunity to engage with and learn from other distinguished military and civilian professors (who teach at the academy, who visit the academy in order to present their ideas, or from conferences that I attended across the country), and they are just as deeply passionate and even more insightful about the ethics of war than I. West Point has been an incredibly enriching assignment. Nonetheless, I am currently the Professor of Military Science at Indiana UniversityBloomington, which will continually afford me the opportunity to train, educate, and (hopefully) inspire young men and women cadets who will become Army officers and future leaders. To say the least, I am incredibly thankful for the experiences and opportunities that I have had and to my future as a Hoosier.

The book that you are about to read is not autobiographical. It is philosophical. However, I do feel the need to explain my background. Although I have spent many years in college as a student learning philosophy and a few years teaching philosophy, being in the military for more than twenty-five years informs my perspective and worldview. Although academically trained as a philosopher, my experiences (stateside and abroad) as a soldierpure joy, thrill, accomplishment, brotherhood, camaraderie, love, humility, disappointment, fear, anger, pain, sorrow, and extreme griefinform (whether for good, bad, or indifferent) my views, my beliefs, and what I trust is worth arguing for. That being said, if the goal of just war theory is to restrain both the incidence and destructiveness of warfare, then it is the synthesis of my military and academic backgrounds that enlightens and compels mewhich I attempt to pursue and articulate in the following chaptersto argue for necessary changes in just war theory so that civilians can, as they should, be better protected from the harmful effects of war.

(Reasonable Chance of Success: Analyzing the Postwar Requirements of Jus Ad Bellum ) was originally published in Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War (Just War Theory in the 21st Century) , edited by Fritz Allhoff, Nicholas Evans, and Adam Henschke, (Routledge: London), 2014.

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The views and ideas expressed within this book are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the U.S. Government, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Army.

The nonideal conditions we face often involve conditions or circumstances of unjust international attacks and/or unjust domestic institutions that might seem to call for war as a just response. While war might be permissible as a response to severe injustice, there are limits on the conduct of war even when it is permissible (or even required) as such. A state pursuing a just war must do so with right intention. The idea of right intention is the overarching constraint on war; a right intention aims at a just and lasting peace. A lasting peace is not possible unless certain standards of basic justice are secure. Although this concept has been around since at least St. Augustines work in the fourth century AD, it has lost momentum over the years, but has resurfaced over the last century.