Justifying War

Warfare is a practice of unrivalled gravity, and yet we lack an adequate account of the morality of war. Traditional just war theory reached plausible conclusions, through implausible arguments; the current orthodoxy is better defended, but leads to untenable conclusions. I will develop a new just war theory, which matches the new orthodoxy for philosophical rigour, but delivers more defensible conclusions in practice—in particular, vindicating the principles of national defence and noncombatant immunity. In doing so I will radically rethink the conceptual and normative structure of war's morality, focusing on the fundamentally collective nature of armed conflict, and our duties to protect those with whom we share valuable relationships.