A History of Military Morals

Killing the Innocent

Series: 

Author:
Brian Smith
The history of noncombatant immunity is well established. What is less understood is how militaries have rationalized violating this immunity. This book traces the development of how militaries have rationalized the killing of the innocent from the thirteenth century onward. In the process, this historiography shows how we have arrived at the ascendant convention that assumes militaries should not intentionally kill the innocent. Furthermore, it shows how moral arguments about the permissibility of killing the innocent are largely adaptations to material changes in how wars are fought, whether through technological innovations or changes in institutional structures.
Copyright Year:
2022
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-51548-2
Publication:
25 Apr 2022
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-51343-3
Publication:
21 Apr 2022
Cover A History of Military Morals

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Brian Smith, Ph.D. (2016), Boston University, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Nazarbayev University. He has published many articles on intellectual history and a monograph, John Locke, Territory, and Transmigration (Routledge, 2021).

List of Figures

Introduction
 1 Introduction
 2 Theory of Moral Development
 3 Methodology
 4 Overview of Chapters

PART 1: Killing the Innocent: Three Discursive Traditions from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries


1 The Origins of Double Effect: The Scholastic Tradition
 1 Recovering the Primitive Christian Tradition
 2 Before Double Effect
 3 The Rise of Double Effect
 4 Killing the Innocent
 5 Killing the Innocent after Aquinas
 6 Repurposing Double Effect in the Sixteenth Century
 7 Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Scholastics on Siege Warfare
 8 English and Scottish Protestants
 9 Conclusion

2 Martialists: Soldiers and Tacticians
 1 Introduction
 2 Early Martialists
 3 Seventeenth-Century Martialists
 4 Shifts in the Martialist Tradition
 5 Conclusion

3 Humanists and Republicans
 1 Introduction
 2 Machiavelli
 3 Erasmus
 4 Gentili
 5 Grotius
 6 Pufendorf
 7 Jeremy Taylor
 8 George Dawson
 9 Christian Wolff
 10 Vattel
 11 Conclusion

PART 2: The Nineteenth Century


4 Killing Noncombatants in the Nineteenth Century
 1 Introduction
 2 Counting Casualties
 3 Noncombatants
 4 Sovereignty and Self-Preservation
 5 Utilitarianism
 6 The Link between Philosophical Utilitarianism and Military Necessity
 7 Conclusion

5 Deliberately Targeting Noncombatants
 1 Introduction
 2 Enduring the Hardships of War: Laying Waste
 3 Laying Waste and the Laws of War
 4 Starvation and Blockades
 5 Sieges
 6 Siege and the Laws of War
 7 Reprisal, Retaliation, Retorsion
 8 Change in Norms
 9 The Spatial Dimension of Noncombatant Death
 10 Noncombatant Death in the Early Twentieth Century
 11 Military Manuals
 12 Conclusion

PART 3: The Twentieth Century: Aerial Bombing and a Shift in Norms


6 New Possibilities and Problems: Aeronauts, Inventors, and Future-War Fiction on Aerial Bombing
 1 Early Experiments
 2 Deterrence, Annihilation, or Nonfactor?
 3 Future-War Fiction
 4 Conclusion

7 Interwar Approaches to Bombing: Two Discursive Traditions
 1 Introduction
 2 Interwar Period Debates on Aerial Bombing
 3 International Liberals: Regulation and Disarmament
 4 Bombing Realists
 5 Strategic versus Terror Bombing
 6 Conclusion

8 The Return to Intention: Post World War I
 1 Introduction
 2 German Guilt
 3 The Laws of Humanity and Intentional Harm
 4 The Return of the Scholastics
 5 The Rediscovery of Vitoria and Suarez
 6 Catholics against Bombing
 7 Conclusion

9 Postscript: Intention in the Twenty-First Century
 1 Introduction
 2 Intention and Folk Psychology
 3 Are Intentions Relevant for Twenty-First Century War?
Bibliography of Primary Sources 445
 Prior to the Sixteenth Century
 The Sixteenth Century
 The Seventeenth Century
 The Eighteenth Century
 The Nineteenth Century
Index
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