Ethics As Response: A Critical Analysis Of Michael Walzer .
Ethics as Response: A Critical Analysis of Michael Walzer’s JustWar Theory in the Context of IraqA Thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree ofDoctor of PhilosophyIn the Faculty of Humanities2013Ronan O’ CallaghanSchool of Social Sciences
ContentsLIST OF ABBREVIATIONSABSTRACTDECLARATIONCOPYRIGHT ON: ENGAGING WITH WAR11PRELUDESITUATING THE ARGUMENTA DECONSTRUCTIVE APPROACH TO THE JUST WAR TRADITIONHISTORY AND THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATIONHISTORY AND REVOLUTIONSTRUCTURE OF THE THESISCONCLUSION111215192225271 MICHAEL WALZER'S MORALITY29INTRODUCTIONTHERE IS A THIN MAN INSIDE EVERY FAT MANSELF-DETERMINATION AND MEMBERSHIPDECLARATION AND THE BIRTH OF COMMUNITYMEMBERSHIP AND ALTERITYWAR AND MAXIMAL MORALITYTEMPORAL REVELATION AND BEINGDIFFÉRANCE AND SECULAR THEOLOGYCONCLUSION2931354146505760632 DERRIDA AND ETHICS66INTRODUCTIONETHICS AS FIRST PHILOSOPHYCOMMUNITY AS THE POSSIBILITY OF JUSTICEETHICAL ACTION AS SACRIFICEUNDECIDABILITY AS JUSTICE FOR THE OTHERCONCLUSION66687786941013 NONCOMBATANT IMMUNITY104INTRODUCTIONIDENTIFYING THE TARGETCOMBATANT RIGHTS1041071092
JUSTIFYING THE LOSS OF RIGHTSFREEDOM AND SACRIFICECONCLUSION1161171221301344 DOUBLE EFFECT AND ITS PARASITES136INTRODUCTIONTHE DOCTRINE OF DOUBLE EFFECTPARDON ME FOR NOT MEANING TO IN ALL GOOD FAITHPOLICING WITH DUE CAREDEEPENING DOUBLE EFFECTSIEGE WARFARE: AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLEETHICS AS DOUBLE EFFECTCONCLUSION1361371401461511571601651695 SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE VIOLENT RECONSTRUCTION OF IRAQ171INTRODUCTIONAIMING TOWARD A JUST RESOLUTIONTHE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND JUST RESOLUTION IN IRAQTHE FALL OF SADDAM AND THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAMTHE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATE AND THE UNITED IRAQI ALLIANCESUNNI RESISTANCE AND DE-BA'ATHIFICATIONRESISTANCE AS A POLITICAL RESPONSECIVIL WAR AND POSTWAR SION: RESPONDING TO IRAQ203ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY IS UNTIDYWHAT THE HELL IS WATER?SHATTERING SISYPHUSRESPONDING TO IRAQIS203208211214BIBLIOGRAPHY217SIMPLY BY FIGHTINGDANGER AND THREATWORD COUNT: 81,5993
List of abbreviationsCOINCounter InsurgencyCPACoalition Provisional AuthorityIEDImprovised Explosive DeviceIGCIraqi Governing CouncilIRInternational RelationsSCIRISupreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in IraqiTALTransitional Administrative LawU.S.United States of AmericaUIAUnited Iraqi AllianceUNUnited Nations4
AbstractEthics as Response: A Critical Analysis of Michael Walzer’s Just War Theory in theContext of IraqA Thesis Submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophyin the Faculty of Humanities,Ronan O’ Callaghan, The University of ManchesterIn recent years, human rights discourse has become increasingly intertwined in thejustifications presented for Western wars and interventions. The aim of this thesis is toillustrate the problems implicated in human rights based justifications of war and violence.To achieve this aim, this work makes three primary contributions to International Relationsscholarship. First, the thesis provides a robust critique of Michael Walzer’s conception ofethical responsibility and his rights based justification of war. Second, I describe analternative understanding of ethical responsibility that follows from the work of JacquesDerrida, ethics as response. And third, I demonstrate, thorough a reading of the 2003 IraqWar, how ethics as response can provide us with a better understanding of what it means toact ethically in times of war.The central argument presented in this thesis is that rights based justifications of war arepredicated upon the belief that moral rules of conduct help us to resolve questions of ethicalresponsibility in war: moral rules tell us what the right thing to do is and show us how wecan act in a morally justified way. This thesis argues that moral rules narrow ourunderstanding of ethical responsibility by promoting adherence to the law rather thanresponsibility to other people. In contrast, ethics as response provides a model of ethicalaction that denies the possibility of satisfaction and, thereby, advocates sustainedengagements with the consequences of violent action. Ultimately, the idea of ethics asresponse calls our attention to the uncertainty and uncontrollability implicated in violentactions justified in the name of human rights.5
DeclarationI hereby declare that that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted insupport of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university orother institute of learning.6
Copyright Statementi.The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) ownscertain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University ofManchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes.ii.Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, maybe made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) andregulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which theUniversity has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made.iii.The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectualproperty (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, forexample graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not beowned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductionscannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) ofthe relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions.iv.Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication andcommercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or ster.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/intellectual- property.pdf), in any relevantThesis restriction declarations deposited in the Universityregulations(seeLibrary, The University utus/regulations)University’s policy on presentation of Theses.7andinThe
DedicationTo Laura, you are my centre.8
AcknowledgementsWorking on a PhD is a difficult task, one in which your mind threatens to collapse in on itselffrom all the nagging doubts and insecurities that permeate your head on a daily basis. Asmost people who have successfully completed a PhD will attest, getting to the point ofsubmission is possibly only because of the love and support offered by a group of fantastic,and patient, people.First, I would like to thank my supervisors, Maja Zehfuss and Peter Lawler for theirincremental help throughout my PhD. When I started a MA in International Relations fiveyears ago I had no intention of going on to do a PhD: this was supposed to be a quick job, inand out in one fell swoop. It is a testament to your support, encouragement and belief in methat I not only decided to embark on a PhD, but actually completed it. I am immeasurablygrateful for everything that both of you have done for me during the last five years, thank you.I would like to thank my colleagues (former and present), who have been a constant source ofsupport and inspiration throughout the last few years. I would especially like to thank JamieJohnson, Julia Welland and Róisín Read. I have had the pleasure of working alongside youfor the past five years and I could not have asked for better friends to share this journey with.I thank my colleagues at the University of Manchester for improving me and my work in amultitude of ways: Veronique Pin-Fat, Gareth Price-Thomas, Cristina Masters, EmmanuelPierre Guittet, Henrique Furtado, Thomas Gregory, Tom Houseman, Oliver Turner, KathrynStarnes, Astrid Nordin, Rebecca Ehata, Sara Marie- Siobhán Kallock, Rachel Massey, EmmyEklund, Tomas Maltby, Aggie Hirst, Giulia Sirigu, Rob Munro, James Alexander, GuroBuchanan, David Tobin, Precious Chatterje-Doody, Dean Redfearn and Laura White. I amalso grateful to the ‘core’ members of the Levinas reading group, Alexander Samely, AndrewWilshere and Reuven Silverman, our discussions helped me grasp the basics of some reallycomplicated ideas, and I would not have been able to make the arguments I have made in thisthesis without your input. In addition, I would like to thank Cian O’ Driscoll for his continuedinterest in, and support for, my work.9
This thesis was made possible by generous funding from the University of Manchesterthrough the University of Manchester, School of Social Sciences Politics PhD Studentship.Additional funding was received from the Norman Chester research grant fund and theBritish International Studies Association Founders Fund.Parts of this thesis comprises of revised versions of a work that I have published elsewhere.Aspects of Chapters One, Two and Three are included in “Secular theology and noblesacrifice: the ethics of Michael Walzer’s just war theory”, Review of International Studies,Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp.361-383.I would like to express eternal gratitude to my family and friends for dragging me through thelast few years. None of this would have been possible without the love and support of mypartner Laura. I am lucky to have met such a uniquely kind, caring and compassionate person,who for the past six years has been at the centre of everything good in my world. To myparents, Tom and Mary, who have been putting up with my crap for the last thirty years, I amforever grateful for you and your love. My brother Cian, you have been one of my bestfriends and have pushed me to become the person I am today. My sister Orla, you havegrown into a fantastic person and I am proud of you in many, many ways. My grandparents,Lilly and Paddy-Joe O’ Callaghan, you are the type of wonderful and loving people that Iaspire to be. I would also like to thank Cillian Ó' Flathabháin, Barry Collins and PatriciaWhite for supporting me in turbulent times. Finally I would like to thank my little boyMcNulty. You’re a cheeky pup (and a deviant rebel who got himself kicked out of doggy daycare), but you’re my cheeky pup and you have stuck right by my side through the last twoyears.10
Introduction – Engaging with WarOne describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself orto the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate themap, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory,and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map which is theterritory. You must remember this (Gaiman 2007: 10).PreludeStories of politics, society and subjectivity are inseparable from the spectre of violence.When we try to account for who we are, where we come from and the type of world we wantto live in, we construct an inside (of self, nation and society) coherently separated from theoutside. Violence, in this respect, represents the lingering threat that what lies outside mayforcefully intrude upon our inner sanctums: the threat that others may destroy the worlds wehave built. Violence is the ultimate figure of the outside-of-self, a malevolent alterity thatseeks to disrupt the calm tranquillity of the inside at peace with itself. In the well versedHobbesian narrative, the threat of violence grounds the possibility of politics: the threat posedby others necessitates the formation of an authority capable of maintaining inner peace. Assuch, political authority forms as a response to the ever-present threat of violence. In turn, theinternational realm is imagined as an arena in which violence operates unchecked bydefinitive political authority. The international is the threatening outside from which the statemust be protected, a space marked by combustions of war. The state is formed in response tothe threat of internal violence and is maintained to defend people from the threat posed by theinternational.This is, of course, a mythical story. Yet, it is a mythical narrative that shapes and reshapes theworld. The discipline of International Relations (IR), for example, was founded in response tothe questions posed by war, seeking to reconcile the peaceful inside with the dangerousoutside. Indeed, the continued importance of war to the discipline indicates a sustainedinterest in the links between politics and violence. In many respects, this project continues thetraditional IR focus on violence and war. However, this work departs from the tradition in itsaim to resituate the purported violent outside, not as a threatening menace, but as the positivepossibility of ethics and politics.11
Situating the ArgumentThis project offers three main contributions to contemporary IR. First, the thesis provides arobust critique of Michael Walzer’s conception of ethical responsibility and his justificationof war. Second, I describe an alternative understanding of ethical responsibility that followsfrom the work of Jacques Derrida. And third, I illustrate how this alternative account ofethical responsibility can help us understand and respond to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and itslegacy.Michael Walzer was chosen as the basis of this critique because there is something valuablein his work: Walzer is, as will be outlined in the next chapter, saying something unique andinteresting about the relationship between ethics and war. Walzer’s work, in important ways,retains a sense of tension between the purported moral necessity to endorse certain violencesand the realisation that war often reaps devastating consequences. Perhaps more importantly,Walzer’s work is a direct attempt to reframe our understandings of war in a way that isattentive to ethical responsibility. In the preface to his primary discussion on war, Just andUnjust Wars, Walzer declares his intention to “recapture the just war for moral and politicaltheory” (2006a: xxii). What is paramount to Walzer’s reclamation is the idea that criticaljudgments about war should not be the province of political leaders who often deployviolence as a means to achieve their own strategic ends. Instead, Walzer contends thatordinary people who suffer from war’s consequences should be empowered to make moraljudgments. In this sense, Walzer is arguing that questions of war should be democraticimperatives rather than the privilege of elite opinion. 1 Walzer’s overarching ambition tostimulate active public discussions about war remains both admirable and desirable because itarticulates the belief that people should be engaged and concerned with questions of war. Thefollowing argument aims to challenge Walzer’s response to the questions of war and justice,while retaining the fidelity of his reconceptualisation of war in terms of active political andethical engagement.1In this respect, Walzer’s argument is not entirely distinct from Kantian liberalism. For example, see AndrewLinklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982).12
There have been a number of influential critiques of Walzer’s work in recent years. JeffMcMahan’s Killing in War (2009), for instance, challenges Walzer’s principle of ‘moralequality between combatants,’ and the traditional just war separation of jus ad bellum (justrecourse to war) and jus in bello (just conduct in war). More directly, Veronique Pin-Fat(2010) provides a critical examination of Walzer’s depiction of ethics, subjectivity andpolitics from a postructural perspective. This work, however, moves beyond the recentcritiques of Walzer’s work. In the case of McMahan, this project, as will be explained, rejectsthe rule based system of morality that McMahan employs to justify war. On the other hand,while this thesis largely agrees with Pin-Fat’s critique of Walzer, Pin-Fat does not engagewith Walzer’s just war theory or provide an illustrative account of how Walzer’s moralityrelates to the ‘real world’. In contrast, this thesis emphasises the links between Walzer’scommunitarian based morality and his justification of war, and draws upon examples fromthe Iraq War to help frame and inform the critique.Walzer’s conception of justice in war broadly fits within human rights discourses that, invarying ways, justify war in terms of the defence of individual or collective rights.2 In thissense, Walzer’s understanding of war provides an exemplary, and robust, account of therelationship between human rights discourse and the possibility of justified violence. WhileWalzer undoubtedly articulates a unique and particular account of this relationship, hisexposition helps us to illustrate a number of more generalised problems in human rightsbased justifications of war. In turn, the preceding discussion on the 2003 invasion of Iraqaffords us with a valuable platform to begin talking about the relationship between humanrights and contemporary justifications of violence.As a Westerner born in the 1980s, Iraq has become the defining symbol of war in my lifetime.Although I have vague memories of the Gulf War in 1990, the 2003 invasion coincided with2For example see, Alex Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), J.L. Holzgrefe andRobert O’ Keohane, Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003), Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars Organised Violence in the Global Era(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), James Pattison, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect:Who Should Intervene? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Thomas Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention(War and Conflict in the Modern World) (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), and Nicholas J. Wheeler, SavingStrangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).13
the start of my undergraduate degree and, as such, represented the first time when I began tothink critically about the ethical and political implications of war. To most of my peer groupand me (undoubtedly influenced by Noam Chomsky), the United States of America’s (U.S. 3)invasion of Iraq was an amoral and illegal attack upon Iraq and its people. However, therewas a simultaneous recognition that Saddam Hussein’s rule was predicated upon thebrutalisation of a large proportion of the Iraqi people. The fact, that the U.S. was morallywrong in their actions did not nullify the injustices inflicted by the Ba’ath regime: it did notundo the mass repression of Iraqis, the systematic state torture, the mass starvation of Iraqis,or justify the thousands of Kurds and Shi’a killed in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The 2003invasion, in this respect, retained a pervasive ethical tension: my rejection of the U.S.justifications for the war was coupled with the knowledge that ordinary Iraqis were beingrepressed on a daily basis. This was a morally wrong war against a morally wrong regime,and Iraqi lives and liberties would be violated regardless of outcome. Iraq posed difficultethical decisions. Did we have a responsibility to save Iraqis from Ba’ath repression? Did wehave a responsibility to stop the U.S. war? And how could we condemn the U.S. war withoutendorsing the Ba’ath government and their persistent violations of human rights? Iraqbrought together the problematic relationship between humanitarianism and the spectre ofwar: how could we defend the rights of Iraqi people without violent intervention. Moreimportantly, Iraq illustrated how politicians could justify, or at least attempt to justify, war asa defence of human rights.There has already been a rich critical response to the Iraq War within the IR community.Chomsky (2004), for example, argues that Iraq represents the symbolic reasser
Ethics as Response: A Critical Analysis of Michael Walzer’s Just War Theory in the Context of Iraq A Thesis Submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Hum
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