How Is a Man to Decide? Unjust Combatants, Duress and McMahan’s Killing in War

ABSTRACT

Jeff McMahan’s much-discussed work Killing in War is an important part of the revisionist school of just war studies. This paper avoids discussion of McMahan’s use of human rights and examines the practical consequences of his argument about duress on soldiers to fight an unjust war. These arguments are found to be wanting and to be impractical ones that do not fit battlefield realities. The importance of the Law of Armed Conflict and the legal equality of combatants that is part of it is emphasised and accepted as the most practical way of regulating battlefield behaviour and saving lives. It is concluded that attempts to tell soldiers what to do when they may be fighting an unjust war add to their burdens and are misplaced.

KEYWORDS:

• Just war
• McMahan
• duress
• conscientious objection

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for their support to Don E Scheid, Don Carrick, Charles Garraway, Philip McCormack, Nigel de Lee, Simon Trew, Dennis Vincent, James Kitchen, Patrick Tomlinson and, especially, to two anonymous JME referees. This paper was given at the Euro-ISME conference in Vienna in 2019 and benefited from discussions there. As ever, the author is solely responsible for the arguments herein. The arguments in this paper are those of the author alone and they are not necessarily those of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Stephen Deakin teaches at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and across the British Army. He also travels widely, teaching military students around the world. His interests include military ethics, leadership and defence policy. He has published widely within these areas. Among his recent articles are “Killing Your Own: Confronting Desertion and Cowardice in the British Army During the Two World Wars”, Journal of Military Ethics 17 (1) 2018: 54–71 and “The Virtue of Temperance and Military Leadership”, in Michael Skerker, David Whetham and Don Carrick (eds.), Military Virtue (Havant: Howgate, 2019).

Notes

1 The word “soldier” is used in this paper to designate all military personnel, male and female, unless otherwise specified.

2 I am grateful to Don E. Scheid for this suggestion.