Nonkilling Political Science in the Killing Fields of

International Relations

Piki Ish-Shalom

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A preliminary draft

Please do not cite without permission of author.

Comments very welcome: mspikiis@mscc.huji.ac.il

Paper prepared for delivery at the Santiago 2009 International Political Association

Convention, Santiago, Chile, July 12th

-16th

.

1

Introduction

Something terribly wrong happens to moral discourse when applied publicly. Just War

theory goes through plastic surgery to fit immediate public, political, and organizational

objectives. While Just War theory aims and functions as to proscribe impermissible

killing, its public, political, and organizational uses function as to prescribe permissible

killings. This seems like a tiny semantic change, but actually it involves a function

reversal and content sea change. Just War theory is about the ‘do nots,’ while its military

uses are about the ‘dos.’ This directive change might bring about much more tolerance

towards killing. What is so terribly wrong about this transformation process is that we—

theorists—provide military polemics with the intellectual foundation of prescribing

avoidable killings, and with an instrument to secure public atmosphere tolerating killing.

This sorry state of affairs should be, so it seems to me, the immediate goal of any

political science committing itself to nonkilling. Moreover, though more modest than the

aims of Glenn Paige’s proposal for global nonkilling political science, the aims promoted

here are both more achievable, and more commendable.

It is important to note from the outset that I find Paige’s arguments thought-provoking in

the good sense, and praiseworthy. Paige helps us to think differently about the world and

about ourselves, and he paves a new route, in a road not taken. This by itself is a laudable

achievement that we should all strive to follow. I do have, however, some misgivings

about this road, especially when it reaches the killing fields of international relations.

Some of the aspects, as will be shown below, are too demanding and totalistic, requiring

a holistic perspective, not shared by many of us. The paper will briefly summarize

Paige’s arguments, it will analyze some of its merits and shortcomings, and will proceed

2

to offer a more modest proposal for a nonkilling political science, one which aims to

eliminate our contribution to impermissible killings.

I

Paige’s aims are noble, but more so, they soar very high. He aims at no less than a society

free from every form of killing. Paige (2007, p. 1) defines nonkilling society as ‘a human

community, smallest to largest, local to global, characterized by no killing of humans and

no threats to kill; no weapons designed to kill humans and no justifications for using

them; and no conditions of society dependent upon threat or use of killing force for

maintenance or change.’ This would be a radically new kind of society, unheard of in

human history. For this novel society to exist a new and noble form of politics needs to

take over, and indeed Paige offers us a new definition of politics. Rather than the

conventional view, which comprehends politics as a form of public conflict over the

allocation of resources, we are offered a more harmonious understanding of politics.

Borrowing from the Korean political philosopher Hwang, Jang Yop, Paige (2007, pp. 91-

92) maintains that ‘Politics means the harmonization of the interests of all members of

society on the basis of love and equality.’ It is not the management of conflicts that is the

main function of politics, but rather the bringing together of people into a loving

association. It would be more correct to call this kind of association a community, and

not society; it is a communal association of human beings joined together by feelings of

empathy and love.

Yet, it is also important to note that this community is a community of individuals whose

interactions create those communal bonds and commitments to mutual nonkilling. As

Paige (2007, p. 96) asserts, ‘The basic unit of nonkilling political analysis is the

3

individual human being. Organizations, structures, and processes are the product of

aggregated individual behavior. World politics is the politics of world individuals.’

Though it would have been easier for Paige to take a communitarian perspective, he is

whole heartedly committed to the liberal tradition. It is liberalism which is vigorously

augmented by non-Western traditions, yet liberalism it is. This liberalism is inherently a

part of the project of nonkilling society, and it is manifested in several aspects in Paige’s

vision. Paige (2007, pp. 78-79, 117-119) is anxious to stress, for example, that nonkilling

is a value along other values and principles such as freedom, equality, justice, democracy,

human rights, and responsibility. For Paige, in order to have a nonkilling society we must

have a sincere and absolute commitment to those liberal values and principles.

Additionally, the nonkilling society can nourish and flourish only in a fully consolidated

democracy, be it local or global.

But Paige’s vision has more in it than those liberal and democratic dimensions. In a

sense, it is a totalistic program which forces us to concurrently address and solve several

problems of varied kinds. That is to say that for the aim of nonkilling society to succeed

no less than four other discrete global problems have to be simultaneously solved, ‘we

can engage five problems that are now globally salient: continued killing and the need for

disarmament; the holocaust of poverty and the need for economic equity; violations of

human dignity and needs for mutual respect of human rights; destructions of the

biosphere and the need for planetary life-support; and other-denying divisiveness that

impedes problem-solving cooperation (Paige 2007, p. 111).’ For Paige, all those

problems, discrete as they are, are weaved together to construct the background

circumstances of killing. Each of these problems contributes to the maintenance of

4

contemporary society, that due to lack of empathy and to different processes of

socialization and indoctrination, produces the circumstances and conditions of killing.

Those are the circumstances and conditions of killing that need to be strived against in

order to clear the way to nonkilling society. Paige portrays a holistic image of reality, and

calls for a holistic understanding of this reality and to a holistic action to change this

reality. A failure to address any of these problems will result in a failure to bring about a

nonkilling society. As will become clear this is a high bar indeed.

Paige provides us with many indications as to why the change towards nonkilling society

is possible. He does not claim that the change is necessary, or that it would be easy to

bring it about. However, with great efforts, carried out under a dark veil of skepticism, it

would be possible to produce the nonkilling society. As Paige (2007, p. 69) writes, ‘To

assert possibility, of course, is not to guarantee certainty but to make problematical the

previously unthinkable and to strengthen confidence that we humans are capable of

nonkilling global transformation.’ Or as he (2007, p. 20) asserts elsewhere, ‘It's not

possible, but it's possible to become possible.’ These efforts involve many actors

including political science as a discipline. Political scientists have a crucial role in

producing nonkilling society. They should help to problematize the existing

commonsense that killing is an unavoidable and inevitable phenomenon of human

existence, and they are those who can help to produce the understanding that the change

is possible. To discharge this possibility, political scientists are assigned with four

scholarly missions, ‘We need to know the causes of killing; the causes of nonkilling; the

causes of transition between killing and nonkilling; and the characteristics of completely

killing-free societies (Paige 2007, p. 72).’

5

On first glance, this is not such a radical demand from political science. Allegedly, what

is required of political scientists is not much more than adding four new interesting

research questions to their host of regular and daily research questions. However, this

superficial understanding is completely false, as Paige correctly and forcefully points out.

The requirement from political science is radical on two accounts which are related to

each other. First, political science must be totally committed to the mission of producing

nonkilling society, ‘nonkilling political science engages in efforts to end behavioral

violence, to change conditions of structural violence, and to solve problems of both in

interaction. It seeks to remove support for lethality, to assist existing institutions for

nonkilling service, and to create new nonkilling policies and institutions (Paige 2007, p.

100).’ Reading those lines it becomes quite clear that the scientific study of the causes of

killing and nonkilling and the transformation from the former to the latter, is not

something that should be conducted along other ‘regular’ missions. For Paige political

science should become nonkilling political science totally committed to the mission of

producing nonkilling society. This mission is so worthy, so urgent, and so demanding,

that it should take over other studies conducted by political scientists. In other words, the

project of producing nonkilling political science revolutionizes political science, by

totally transforming its research agenda.

For this revolution to take place political scientists must be morally committed. It is here

were the second radical aspect of Paige’s program is revealed. Political science should

not be conducted under the positivist philosophy of the social science. Neutrality and

objectivity should be pushed aside in favor of normative commitments. Or more

accurately, the false positivist belief that science is committed to neutrality and

6

objectivity should be replaced by the understanding that social science, including political

science, is and ought to be always morally committed, ‘Political scientists cannot evade

this responsibility by objecting to value-bias and claiming ‘realistic’ scientific neutrality

that in truth translates into readiness to kill. Such neutrality has never been true (Paige

2007, p. 155).’ This is evidently a non-positivist political science. That is to say that

along the new comprehensions of society as nonkilling, and politics as achieving

harmony and love, Paige advances a new1 conception and practice of political science, a

normative one that is committed to moral values and principles, presided by the principle

of nonkilling.

Paige’s proposal has many merits. First among them is putting into question what we take

for granted. We tend not to think of our society as a killing society. Of course, we are

aware that people are being killed, and at times, we are saddened by their killing, and we

mourn it. But because we tend to think of the phenomenon of killing as given we do not

question it, and consequently we do not see it as a problem to be solved. In this state of

affairs killing is bound to stay with us. Paige’s account of society works as an alarming

wake up call. By insisting that killing is not given, that the phenomenon is not inevitable,

Paige shatters the serenity, even servitude, with which we face the phenomenon of

killing. It is a kind of mental shock and awe that drives us into defining killing as a real

social problem, and moreover, as a solvable problem, that should and must be prioritized.

Paige conducts a first and necessary step in the way of emancipation from the shackles

and burdens of killing.

Second, and similarly, his novel definition of politics reminds us that politics needs not

have the same form all through history. Few will accept Paige’s definition of politics as

1 Though by all mean he is not alone in it, non-positivism is by now quite common.

7

resembling anything similar to nowadays politics. Few, however, will reject his definition

as the desired one. The question still begs is there anything in politics that inherently

prevents it from becoming a locus of love and harmony? I can think of one decisive

objection. Politics is the locus of contestation and conflict, by definition. Thus, the

alternative definition can be appropriate to a different sort of public coordination activity,

not of politics. I agree with this objection, but to some extent it is merely a semantic

objection, that requires us to reformulate Paige’s account a little. Maybe he offers us a

new kind of activity; let’s call it dialectics, a notion that encompasses in it the meanings

of dialogue, of reasoning, and following Hegel also the resolution of opposites by

synthesis. More important than the semantic issue, is that this new and noble kind activity

can replace politics, and become the main public coordination activity, by which we can

manage our public affairs. And Paige’s account can serves us as a signpost pointing the

correct way to achieve this higher state of public affairs, of society being ruled by

dialectics, rather than politics.

A third merit of Paige’s proposal is his understanding that to realize the possibility of

nonkilling society managed by dialectics, we should complement their accounts by a new

kind of political science; a political science morally committed. Substantiating the

positivist political science committed to neutrality and objectivity, we should rather strive

to a moral political science oriented to shape the society it studies. Only by concurrently

reshaping society, politics, and political science can we hope to realize what seems so

unrealizable: a nonkilling society.

8

II

But there are also some drawbacks in Paige’s proposal. First, it asks for too much and

moreover, for too much to be solved simultaneously. Second, it does not prioritize

between the different problems, nor does it prioritize between different values. Third, as

it stands now, Paige’s proposal might operate in favor of the wrong-doers. In this section

I will critically examine those three drawbacks.

As was mentioned above, Paige advances a holistic view of social and political reality.

Consequently all problems are linked together, and so are their assumed solutions. No

problem is an island to itself. In order to solve one of the problems, say the existence of

killing in society (namely, killing society), one has to aim and solve all other major

problems, which include global poverty, violations of human rights, and ecological

degradation. There is no denying the acuteness of all those problems. Moreover, a world

in which all those problems would not exist would be a much better place to live in, as

close as can be to utopia. And furthermore, solving all those other problems would indeed

remove most of the reasons for killing. Though, as I will indicate in a minute, it would

not eliminate all causes of killings. Economic equity,2 mutual respect for human rights

and dignity, and sound biosphere, can all contribute to a healthy society in which people

would not find reasons to resort to killing. First, there will be less need for that, as

redistribution of resources can abolish global extreme poverty (Pogge 2005, p. 1), and

hence render survival of individuals and collectives less acute. Second, killing would not

be seen as a fitting tool for achieving one’s aims, as people will respect each other lives

and rights, and (remember dialectics) will find reasoned dialogue a useful tool to realize

their individual and common aims.

2 Economic equity which, we should better add, would not be based on equity of scarcity!

9

However, it should be clear that this supposedly harmony between solving the different

problems can exist only as a final stage. It is only when all those problems would no

longer exist that we will be able to see them as complementing each other and

establishing a secured nonkilling society. In the process of getting there solving some of

the problems might clash with solving the others. That is to say that there are situations,

contexts, and conditions, in which to progress in one front (solving one problem) can

mean a retreat, at least a temporary one, in another front. For example, it may well be the

case that in order to safeguard the biosphere, we will have to enforce some harsh

measures on the way of life of people in the developed world. We will have to restrict

their culture of consumption. That may be justly considered as interfering with and

impairing their individual freedoms. Moreover, we may need to enforce some limitations

on the development of the developing countries and their societies, in a way that will

limit their chances of achieving affluence. Of course, we can then globally redistribute

more justly and equally global resources and technologies. But even then, there will be a

severe interference with people’s personal freedom and with people’s collective

sovereignty. Would this interference be just? Probably yes. However, interference it is,

and hence, we can reasonably forecast that saving the biosphere will contradict respecting

individual and collective human rights.

Similarly, of course, advancing equity can damage individual freedom by restricting (and

in some cases even taking away) property. Once again, this act can be just, but we must

be aware that not all will willingly embrace it and not all will voluntary accept those

limitations. That is not to say that restricting property will have to be conducted violently.

And definitely it needs not be done by resort to killing. But if not all will accept this

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imperative voluntary we will have to accept some violations of human rights (as they are

accepted today) on the way to equity.

In that regard, the holism of Paige is an obstacle on the way of achieving nonkilling

society. But the holism is evident in another aspect of Paige’s proposal. The definition of

nonkilling society is at once too loose and too wide. It is hard to understand what is

meant by killing in Paige’s proposal. In one place he (Paige 2007, p. 145) explicitly refer

to deliberate or intentional killing, but in the rest of the book even this restriction is not so

clear. Would negligent killing fall under the premises of nonkilling society? What about

reckless killing? Of course we do not want such killings; we even try to fight these

phenomena in our own regular killing society. But can we expect a society totally free

from those kinds of killing? Can we truly expect such a high degree of responsibility

from, say, teenagers? A case in point is, of course, road accidents which kill many across

the world. Again, we should not accept road accidents and we should not despair from

attempting to reduce their frequency. However, can we really equate negligent killing due

to an inexperienced teenager driver to the intentional killings that plague our societies? I

believe the answer is a definite no. We should learn to unhappily tolerate some scale of

unintentional killing in our future nonkilling society.

What about behaviors that we know cause death as their side effects? Would smoking

and selling tobacco be considered killing? Personally, I would be happy to consider them

as such, but can we achieve a wide agreement on that? But even intentionality does not

solve all problems. What about reasoned suicides? Say, due to terminal illness.3 Should

we tolerate that? And how about euthanasia? Should that be acceptable? All those are

3 Paige (2007, p. 10) does count suicide as killing. I find that odd, especially in cases like terminal illnesses

in which the suicide can be considered as reasoned.

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open questions that cast some doubts on the utility and practicality of the too wide and

loose definition of nonkilling society. The definition must be more stringent.

Yet another doubt may arise regarding the definition. In one place Paige (2007, p. 10)

refers to abortion as killing. This of course is an open question. Moreover, it is a

contested question, and as such it highlights another drawback in Paige’s proposal. Can

there be an agreement over the definition of killing? Abortion that some see as killing,

even murder, others see as operating one’s right over her body. Agreement on this and

other issues might be impossible as it relates to basic and fundamental systems of beliefs;

system of beliefs that result in different values, norms, and understandings. Those sets of

beliefs might prove to be bridgeable under the dialectic sort of coordination of public

affairs. Yet, they may also be found to be unbridgeable. If that will turn out to be the

case, dialectic would not do, and resort to old-fashioned politics (even though not

necessary violent ones) will be necessary, aiming to force one party’s beliefs on the other

party. If this indeed will be the case, the result will be disrespect for one’s rights and

dignity. In other words, though we should aim to a dialectical collective management,

there might be occasions and cases that politics would prove to be too resilient, along the

mutual disrespect it entails.

Let us turn to the second drawback of Paige’s proposal for nonkilling society. As

mentioned above, Paige (2007, pp. 78-79) calls ‘to place nonkilling along with questions

of freedom, equality, justice, and democracy, at the normative-empirical and empirical-

normative core of the discipline.’ It seems then that there is no prioritization among all

those values. However, as we saw above, some of those values may be at odds with each

other, especially in the critical moments of trying to realize them. Paige (2007, p. 155)

12

even implies that nonkilling is more fundamental and crucial in our era than the other

values, ‘Nonkilling is at least of equal importance because humanity has arrived at a

condition where all of these values are threatened without a powerful commitment to a

nonkilling ethic in political science and political life.’ But if indeed there is no

prioritization how can we treat the clashes and conflicts between the different goals and

values that I had described above? This is an open question that Paige does not answer.

Moreover, I am not sure that he is aware of this problem. One cannot list several values,

especially conflicting ones, without prioritizing them, or at least draw some guidelines as

to how to prioritize them in different circumstances.

So we are faced here with two possible problems. If indeed the values are of equal

importance, we will face unsolved dilemmas as to how to advance in various scenarios of

conflicting values. But if, alternatively, Paige do places nonkilling above the other values

we face a third kind of drawback. If political scientists are to be predominantly

committed to nonkilling over and above other values, we will be exposed to a powerful

charge: that we favor the wrong-doers, those who intentionally and systematically harm

the weak. In other words, a too strong commitment to nonkilling may favor evil. It is the

same objection that Leszek Kolakowski (1975) raised against neutrality, that it actually

acts in favor of the powerful. If one insists not to try and influence the outcome of a

conflict, one actually lends support for those with more resources. It is the weak that

needs the help of the bystander and of the third party, and if those deny her help for the

sake of neutrality, the odds will further lean towards the more powerful. The same is true

with regard to the value of nonkilling. If one is predominantly committed to nonkilling,

13

he will retain only weak enforcement tools in the face of evil. Moreover, he will not have

violent means at his disposal, not even as a deterring instrument.

This is not the problem of facing only Hitlers, as it is called by Paige. Evil comes with

many faces and in many degrees. And to be committed to nonkilling may abandon those

who are under threat. Today it is quite acceptable to speak of the responsibility to protect

(R2P).4 Under extreme circumstances, mostly a national leadership that commits

atrocities against its own citizenry, the international community may assume the

responsibility for the harmed citizenry. Now, we may wish those cases of atrocities not to

exist, and we can follow Paige’s optimism that in the future we can reach this blissful

state of affairs. But I will again refer to the convulsing nature of the process of getting to

this state of affairs. Those processes are very much processes of destabilization in which

violence is to be expected. As I described above it is reasonable to expect some

discontent among those who will feel themselves the losers of these processes, mostly

dictators facing democratization and the wealthy facing redistribution. As in Judaism

there are expectation of Pre-Messianic pangs, so it is reasonable to expect some eruptions

of violence and the international community, along with political scientists, must be

prepare to resolvedly face them. To forsake violent measures (or the threats to use them),

including resort to the extremity of killing, would be to abandon the weak to their fate; it

amounts to be in favor of those powerful evil that will be willing to kill.

Let me stress, my pessimism is not inherently so. Nonkilling society may be a realizable

goal. I certainly hope so. But the way to achieve it may result in some killing, and a too

holistic and strict commitment to nonkilling from the outset may be unequipped to face

the involved risks. Ironically, we may be sacrificing the possibility of nonkilling society

4 See for example Etzioni 2007.

14

by being too committed to it. This is doubly true regarding the killing fields of

international relations.

III

Where does it all leave us? We have not yet reached the phase in which as Paige (2007, p.

2) wishes, ‘Intellectuals do not apologize for it [killing].’ We still need today the tradition

of Just War Theory, as that moral theory that aims at regulating institutional violence, and

probably by moving to the realization of nonkilling society, we will need it even more

badly. This is not a dismissive remark in the style of Stalin that ‘when you chop wood the

chips fly.’ It is an argument that arises out of care for human life. It is an argument

derived from the real and tragic understanding that, at times, to save people’s lives we

need to resort to killing, and that the same will hold true while progressing towards

nonkilling society. War, including humanitarian intervention under the parameters of

R2P, is a social institution that essentially involves killing. We can try and develop as

many non lethal weapons as possible, yet there will always be occasions in war in which

we will have to resort to killing. It is better that we will retain this comprehension and

treat the capacity to kill as a resource of last resort for conducting a necessary war.

Otherwise the killing fields of international relations will sweep us and drown us along

with our hope for nonkilling society.

The true function of Just War Theory is not apologizing killing, but rather giving a

framework for curbing killing as much as possible. This is a crucial point which brings us

back to my opening remarks, in the introduction. As will become clear in a moment,

while the true function of the theory is curbing killing, it can easily serve as to justify

killing. This is the danger that can be adduced from the dismissive remark by Paige on

15

those intellectuals who apologize for killing. Just War Theory can, if politicized and

perverted, supply forceful arguments for impermissible killing. Put differently, in the

wrong hands, Just War Theory can expand killing, rather than restricting it. In what

follows, I will analyze this possibility, demonstrate it briefly, and indicate how we should

approach this possibility under the parameters of nonkilling political science.

Elsewhere I developed the concept of rhetorical capital defined as the aggregate

persuasive resources inherent in entities (Ish-Shalom 2008a). This theoretical concept

helps us to understand what attracts politicians and ideologues to rhetorically use, misuse,

and abuse certain entities (both material objects and idea constructs), and how this

rhetorical use, misuse, and abuse is being carried out. Examining the internal features of

moral theory in general and Just War Theory in particular will help us understanding why

and how they are being rhetorically used, misused, and abused. For the purpose of our

current analysis several features are mainly important. First, as their name imply moral

theories carry within them moral weight and stature. They are equipped as to serve as

moral guidance to those who wish to act morally (or at least pretend to act morally).

Second, and closely related, generally speaking moral theory addresses and conforms our

moral intuitions. Accordingly, if stated correctly, it concurs with our deep intuitions and

this concurrence gives moral theory a kind of familiarity which helps to establish it as

moral guidance. Third, moral theories, especially in its modern academic incarnations,

aim to build upon our intuitions and refine them. As such they are complex, composite

and subtle collections of arguments, asserted mostly in academic jargon. Accordingly, in

spite of the aforementioned intuitive familiarity, moral theories are difficult to be fully

comprehended. Thus, they are relatively sensitive to misunderstandings, and sometimes

16

to intentional misrepresentations. Four, the principle scope of moral theory is universal,

which gives it extra normative weight as its instructions are supposed to transcend

particular interests and points of view. In other words, moral theory constitutes an

elevated standard to appeal to in partisan political disputes. Supposedly one does not

serves his own particular interests, but rather those sentiments of humanity as a whole.

Five, and closely related to the former, though moral theory claims universal validity, to

be applicable to real world situations it must be supplemented by additional information.

To apply moral judgment one has to know more than theory itself. One has to know also

the factual environment of the situation-to-be-judged. For example, one has to know the

sequence of events and the causal chain that produces them, as well as the intentions of

the actors involved. To take a concrete example, we should know who initiated

hostilities, with what intentions, and how his initial act caused the escalation into the use

of lethal weapons and to war. Those are real world facts, and they do not order

themselves neutrally into an objective description of reality. Consequently, in order to

apply moral theory to real world situations one has to take on a narrative, usually one

narrative among several conflicting ones. The crucial role of narratives in applying moral

theory makes theory more elastic than its adherents usually are willing to grant. More

importantly, it makes its application more amendable to political cherry picking of those

facts and those recommendations that are suitable to one’s partisan interests. Thus, while

assuming a universal scope and standard of application, moral theory can be turned into a

political sectarian instrument. Accordingly, moral theory can serve as justification (both

honest and dishonest) to different, even conflicting, acts. When this feature is understood

in concert with the other four features it becomes quite understandable that moral theory

17

abounds with rhetorical capital and that this rhetorical capital is ripe to be used, misused,

and abused rhetorically.

Additionally, Just War Theory, as a specific kind of moral theory, has two more features

that add to its rhetorical capital. First, it has a long and prestigious tradition. Just War

Theory goes back as far as the fathers of the Church, to prominent figures such as St.

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Thus, it is deeply ingrained not only in our moral

intuitions, but also in our cultural connotations. Second, in its core, Just War Theory,

especially in its Jus In Bello dimension, is aimed and function as to curb as much as

possible the killing in war. It functions as to identify those few that their killing might be,

under very restricted conditions, permissible. All those that do not fall under this

category, are not a legitimate target for killing. Their killing is impermissible and

proscribed. What is important to our discussion on the rhetorical capital of Just War

Theory is that the quite sound outcome of pointing the impermissibility of killing some

individuals, can amounts to pointing the permissibility of killing the others. In other

words, it is quite easy to reverse the function of the theory inside out, and to stress the

permissibility of killing rather than its impermissibility; the prescription of killing rather

than its proscription. This is especially true when we combine this specific feature of Just

War Theory with those features of the rhetorical capital of moral theory in general. First,

marking the category of those that it is permissible to kill is far from straightforward. The

category itself is not precisely demarcated. There is a continuous and unresolved

discussion regarding the definition of those that are protected from killing, are they

civilians, non-warriors, un-involved, or innocents in the relevant sense.5 Each designation

takes in a somewhat different population. Moreover, the demarcation of the category is

5 See foe example McMahan 2006.

18

not constant. It is dependant on many criteria and conditions, some of them are quite

fuzzy. For example, one of the most important conditions for killing to be justified is

proportionality, but there are no generally-applicable guidelines of proportionality: is

sacrificing the lives of ten of our soldiers as to not risk the life of one enemy citizen is

proportional? Or is the proportional rate is 5 to 1, or is it 200 to 1? And what rates will be

proportional when we speak about risking our soldiers’ lives for saving enemy soldiers?

And what number of enemy citizens will it be proportional to risk when trying to

eliminate a legitimate military target, say an ammunition factory located in a crowded

neighborhood? 10? 100? 1000? Is it at all possible to come up with a ready-made number

suitable to any situation? Proportionality is a crucial yet fuzzy requirement (See also

Hurka 2005).

Furthermore, the demarcation of permissible killing is also changeable according to

different circumstances, for example is the war total? Is it really a last resort? Who is the

aggressive party? Those circumstances are dependent on interpretations which are

determent by the narrative one adopts. As was mentioned above, one can adopt a

narrative that is politically suitable to her. That is to say that it is far from a simple matter

of fact to decide categorically which killing is permissible and which is not. Adding

together all those features and we can see that Just War Theory is affluent with rhetorical

capital; it becomes very attractive to people who try to persuade in the permissiveness of

the killing they inflict on others.

We can witness the reversal in the function of Just War Theory and its dependency on

interpretations and narratives in many of the recent armed conflicts and wars. The 1999

NATO air campaign in former Yugoslavia, code-named Operation Allied Force, is a case

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in point. While conducted for the sake of the attacked Kosovo Albanians and with a

humanitarian cause, it resulted in the killing of about 500 Serbian civilians. NATO

claimed them to be collateral damage in the necessary pursuit of a just cause, hence as

regretful but permissible killings. This claim is very dubious as the air sorties were

conducted in a very high altitude in order not to risk the lives of NATO's air crews. The

high altitude made it difficult to correctly identify the targets and to take accurate aim.

Civilians' lives were sacrificed in great numbers to save military lives.6 In other words,

the distinction principle was not kept. However, NATO pointed out to the principle of

double effect, and insisted accordingly that under Just War Theory it acted justly and all

killings were permissible. Rather than curbing down killing, the theory was misused to

justify killing.

Similarly, the Iraq War was another occasion of the reversal of functionality of Just War

Theory. There were several declared causes for the Iraq War, including the (wrongly)

alleged relations between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, and the (wrongly again)

assumed Iraqi arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Additionally, though, the war

was justified as a humanitarian intervention following the atrocities conducted routinely

by Hussein’s regime, as well as a democratization campaign. Hence its code-name

Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those two last causes are indeed noble and moral. Yet, the

outcomes of the war, though not yet over, are very harsh and severe. The numbers of

Iraqi civilian victims are unknown but assumed to be in the hundreds of thousands. Civil

order is non existent, and generally speaking, the Iraq State is but a dead letter. These

results must surely be unacceptable under any moral parameters, yet Just War Theory

6 For this reason Neta Crawford (2007) gives this air campaign as an example to what she calls Systemic

Military Atrocity.

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was being repeatedly and successfully marshaled to justify the US and its coalition’s

conduct. Something here is evidently amiss.

And we can witness again the rhetorical capital of Just War Theory and its public uses in

the Israeli 2009 Cast Lead operation in Gaza. More than 1300 Palestinians were killed,

many of which were non-combatants, during the operation in which heavy fire power was

employed, causing enormous destruction to life and to civic infrastructure (including

some UN installations). It is not the place here to evaluate the justness of the operation, or

the permissibility or impermissibility of the killings in it. It is obvious, though, that this

scale of killing and destruction is not easily justifiable. However, all the fighting of the

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was conducted under the supervision and guidance of the

Military Advocates General (MAG), responsible for imposing the rules of warring

conduct. It is here, though, that we can see how the function of Just War Theory was

turned inside out. The main function of the MAG was to justify killing, not to ban it; it

was to provide IDF with the legal and moral justifications to the large scale killing and

destruction it inflicted on the Palestinians. And the way MAG justified killing was

through interpreting the circumstances of fighting such that the vast scale of killing could

be judged as permissible. It should be emphasized that the Palestinian fighting forces

gave ample support to the MAG efforts, by continuously rocketing Israeli civilian cities

and towns, and by hiding themselves and fighting from within Palestinian civil

population. Again, I would not try here to examine if the MAG interpretation can be

reasonable or unreasonable. What is important is the reversal in the operationalization of

Just War Theory from the curbing of killing to its increasing.

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In other words, political and moral theorists can unintentionally supply practitioners with

a powerful weapon: a supposedly moral and universal justification for impermissible vast

scale killing. When speaking of nonkilling political science in an era were killing is

sometime necessary, this is what we should be paying attention to. It is that that we

should be committed to, not to allow ourselves to be used, misused and abused

politically. We should be concerned with not providing practitioners unintentionally with

weapon of killing and destruction. We should be aware of the rhetorical capital embedded

in our creations, theories; rhetorical capital waiting to be politically misused and abused

with immoral outcomes, the support of wrong-doers and evil.

How ought we to discharge this responsibility in the case of Just War Theory should

probably be a subject for a sequel paper. However, as a first take I would say that we

must be sensitive to the complexity of our moral arguments and to understand that they

are open to different interpretations. We must also be watchful to cases in which theories

are being abused or misinterpreted and we must be willing in those cases to act as public

intellectuals, or better still as theoretician-citizens (Ish-Shalom 2008b), bringing in our

academic inputs. We should try and enrich public deliberation with our theoretical

insights in such a way that do justice to their richness and intricacy. We must not fall into

the attractive trap of trivializing our theories and instrumentally exploit their rhetorical

capital. This move might be convenient and easy in the short term, but destructive to our

academic and public stature in the longer term; a destructiveness that will limit our ability

to fruitfully and positively contribute to our society, including to its moral constitution

and its chances of progressing into a nonkilling society.

22

Moreover, we must be attentive to the requirement of contextualization our universal

theories. It is here were politics is ready to jump in and kidnap our theories as its needs

dictate. We must be ready to be involved in studying the context of theory’s application

and contribute our judgment in a manner which is both concerned and impartial;

concerned for all those involved in the conflict, and impartial in the sense of trying to

employ general rules in our judgment, independently of any particular case and partisan

interests (Kolakowski 1975, p. 72). All those measures combined together will allow us a

better control over the public fate of our theories and will enhance our abilities to

contribute academically to the progress of society towards a nonkilling society.

Conclusions

In the paper I examined Glenn Paige's proposal for a global nonkilling political science. I

explored both the merits and drawbacks of Paige's proposition. On the positive side are

his highlighting of killing as a real and acute, yet solvable, social problem; and his

advancement of novel and desirable comprehensions of society, politics (which I

preferred to name dialectics), and social science. Additionally, I pointed out some

drawbacks in Paige's proposal, mainly his too loose definition of what amounts as killing,

and his holistic view of social reality, its problems, and their assumed solutions.

Additionally, I claimed that a too strict commitment to nonkilling in our times might

results in abandoning the weak to the mercy of evil-doers. Especially in the killing fields

of international relations this abandonment might be a breach of our responsibility to

protect victims of atrocities.

Accordingly I argued for a more nuanced and modest approach to a nonkilling political

science than the holistic one proposed by Paige. Striving to a nonkilling society we must

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be aware that the process itself might involve violence and killing. To be able to address

those we must have at our disposal moral theories in general and Just War Theories in

particular; theories that aim at curbing killing as much as possible. However, we must be

aware of the rhetorical capital embedded in those theories, which might result in

justifying and prescribing killing much more than required. We must be ready and willing

to act against the political and rhetorical misuse and abuse of our theories. Only thus, in a

nuanced approach, can political science be really equipped to contribute to nonkilling

society, and only resolved political scientists will be able to employ it to the benefit of

society, achieving Paige's vision of global nonkilling political science and nonkilling

society.

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