Dr. Lonneke Peperkamp is a research fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations (University College Dublin) and an assistant professor in philosophy of law at Radboud University (Nijmegen). Lonneke has an interdisciplinary background in law, philosophy, and conflict studies, and holds a Ph.D. in just war theory (specifically jus post bellum and peacebuilding). Her main research interests are war and political violence, military ethics, peacebuilding, space law and security, global justice, and human rights. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Military Ethics in Europe (EuroISME).
Can you give our readers a short introduction to just war theory? What is the status of the research on this topic?
Just War Theory is a historical tradition that goes back to classic philosophers like Cicero, Saint Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. Yet, it was after the war in Vietnam that what has been defined as conventional or traditional or legalistic just war theory was formulated. In 1977, Michael Walzer published Just and Unjust Wars, which is the “bible” of modern just war theory. Walzer, who wanted to give a philosophical foundation to international laws of war, drew inspiration from the historical tradition but he also firmly grounded his theory in the experiences of soldiers.
Walzer received some criticisms from the very beginning already. More specifically, one of the main problems in his theory is that it is ultimately derived from individual human rights. Yet, Walzer is also a communitarian and pays attention to political communities. Therefore, he tried to marry individual human rights with the rights of states. Many scholars find this marriage incoherent, because if you ground your theory in individual human rights then it is difficult to justify a war that is only aimed at repelling aggression without there being a threat to or violation of individual human rights. These early criticisms came mainly from individualists (some of them cosmopolitanists) who claimed that only individuals are the locus of moral concern. If we embrace such an approach, it is difficult to account for collective self-determination of the people or territorial integrity and sovereignty because it is not clear how states can have value without being instruments to secure the individual human rights of their citizens.
In the last two decades, criticism of Walzer’s theory got more sustained. Revisionists like Jeff McMahan, Helen Frowe (The Ethics of War and Peace. An Introduction, 2016), and Cécile Fabre (Cosmopolitan War, 2012) defend a more abstract and theoretical form of just war theory. While Walzer built his theory on historical examples, experiences of soldiers, and memoirs, revisionists use artificial cases and individual experiences to test how we feel about individual self-defense, humanitarian intervention, and so on. They applied analytical philosophy to war. Revisionists differ from traditionalists like Walzer not just for their methodology but they are also more focused on individual human rights, and, generally speaking, they are more idealistic, which means that, sometimes, their theories are less applicable to the reality of war. They also seem to have different audiences. For instance, philosophers tend to prefer revisionist theories, while politicians, military practitioners, political theorists, and international law scholars lean toward traditional or conventional just war theory.
This is more or less the status of the research today. I have to say, the debate on just war theory can be very fierce and heated, and theorists belonging to different schools do not always interact with each other.
Nowadays the three branches of just war theory are jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum (although some propose more branches, like jus ante bellum), and those govern the rules of entering into a war, of how combatants should behave in war, and of what happens in the aftermath of a war. However, jus post bellum has a somewhat puzzling status, in the sense that it was not acknowledged as an official branch for quite some time. In your article “On the Duty to Reconstruct After War: Who is responsible for jus post bellum?” (2016), you argue in favor of adding jus post bellum to the other two official branches. What sparked your interest in jus post bellum? What has happened since then?
Truth be told, jus post bellum is not entirely new. It is present – albeit implicitly – in the theories of Aquinas and Saint Augustine with their focus on peace and right intention, and Immanuel Kant addressed this topic explicitly. But, yes, as an autonomous branch, jus post bellum started to receive more attention in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were also the two events that triggered my interest in this topic. Whether or not the U.S. had a good reason to intervene in Afghanistan, the biggest challenge seemed to be the aftermath, although the distinction between “conflict” and “aftermath” is not so clear-cut, and, in many cases, it is not obvious when the peacebuilding process starts. Anyway, after these two events, it became apparent that the biggest challenge was the political vacuum that came after the war, and the attempt to impose the democratic values that “we” find important upon a different society with a different political history.
Despite the interest that these practical issues sparked among philosophers and politicians, jus post bellum is not an established branch as the other two are. In part, this has to do with the fact that while jus ad bellum and jus in bello have clear criteria and conditions (for instance just cause, right intention, combatant liability, and non-combatant immunity), jus post bellum focuses more on areas of concern. Moreover, there are also disagreements on how jus post bellum is understood. According to minimalistic interpretations of jus post bellum, the victor(s) in a conflict have rather modest duties, and they should mainly concern themselves with basic safety and security. On the contrary, maximalistic interpretations of jus post bellum impose on the victor(s) quite comprehensive obligations, such as the one to achieve political justice. One of the conclusions of my Ph.D. thesis (Jus Post Bellum and the nature of peace, 2017) was that jus post bellum considerations should be reflected upon before embarking on a military intervention, which is something that did not happen enough in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also believe that if you have post-war goals, they should be modest ones. Achieving those modest goals would already be a fantastic improvement compared to what has been achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan, just to mention two examples. I think it is better to set the bar not too high and try to achieve that first. States should be aware that even achieving minimal goals can take a lot of time and money.
Another topic you have a strong interest in is humanitarian intervention. One of the principles that govern humanitarian intervention is R2P (or Responsibility to Protect). Can you say something about it? Why is humanitarian intervention so difficult to justify, in your opinion?
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is “a global political commitment to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing” (UN World Summit Outcome Document 2005) and it comprehends three pillars. The first pillar gives every state the responsibility to protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. According to the second pillar, the wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that responsibility. Finally, the third pillar – which overlaps to a large extent with jus post bellum considerations – claims that if a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and following the UN Charter. Libya was, in a way, the first test of the R2P, and what we saw in Libya is that the last pillar was not met. It is easy, of course, to talk about these things from an office in Nijmegen, but I think what lacked in Libya was that the intervening forces did not see it through and did not anticipate the power vacuum that came afterward.
This can tell us something more about humanitarian intervention more generally in the sense that humanitarian intervention is not difficult to justify on paper. In theory, it is easy to justify intervention in case of very severe human catastrophes (Cambodia in 1978, Uganda in 1979, Somalia in 1992, Rwanda in 1994, Kosovo in 1999, and perhaps, very recently, Myanmar). Yet, in reality, it has been proven very difficult to protect people. Intervening to protect another state’s population comes with many risks. The conflict might escalate or there might be many civilian casualties not because of the regime you are trying to topple but as a side effect of your own actions. There is the risk of arbitrariness, why intervene here and not there? Moreover, it is difficult to determine when a mass atrocity is severe and widespread enough to justify an intervention. Think about the recent events concerning the Rohingya people in Myanmar. Finally – and as it happened in Libya – you might find yourself in the middle of challenging political dynamics, and you might contribute to creating a political vacuum that you do not know how (or are not willing) to handle.
Recently, ecological intervention caught your attention. Why do you think it is an important topic to discuss? Does it have some links with humanitarian intervention?
It depends. If you believe that the justification for ecological intervention lies in a violation of the human rights of the citizens that you want to protect from potential ecological damage, then it is more of a variation to humanitarian intervention. But if you ground the justification for ecological intervention in the rights of nature, then it would be a “proper” ecological intervention, so to speak.
I am still trying to wrap my head around this topic and see where it leads me. My general feeling is that it is wise to consider other just causes for war besides self-defense against military intervention. Climate change, scarcity of resources, technological developments, are all important contextual factors that should motivate scholars to re-think the just causes for war. I am not saying that we should add more causes for war, and I do not want to defend a very permissive just war theory. Rather, I am wary when it comes to justifying war. Yet, I think the framework we currently have is very much military-aggression-focused and that it does not reflect and fit the world we live in anymore. For example, just war theorists like Walzer in 1977 still had in mind state-to-state wars with conventional armies meeting on the battleground. Very often, this is not the case anymore. Nowadays, there are more hybrid forms of warfare. There is more (cyber) bullying, criminal activities, political influencing, fake information, and so on. You might see some acts of war in between but those are often combined with other forms of warfare. The reality of war changed, and maybe the just causes for war need to be reconsidered too.
I have the feeling that meeting the standards to be justified in engaging in ecological intervention is more difficult than meeting the standards to be justified in engaging in humanitarian intervention. Let me put this differently. When a state intervenes in another country because of humanitarian reasons, let’s say because the government is committing ethnic cleansing, the intervening state would not be considered justified in its intervention if it was committing ethnic cleansing within its own borders. If the same applies to ecological intervention, then it would be difficult to consider a state justified in attacking another state for ecological reasons because most of the countries around the world are guilty of polluting and damaging the environment in important ways. Do you agree with that? Would that mean that only non-state actors, such as the UN, are allowed to intervene?
I think it is always better to have support from the UN but that proves to be difficult in practice. There are indeed scholars who argue that only states that respect basic human rights themselves are allowed to intervene for humanitarian reasons. I am not sure whether I agree with that or not. First, there is no universal agreement on what counts as a basic human right. Second, if there is an actual massacre going on, then I think this is reason enough to intervene and stop it. I am not sure that what happens within the borders of the intervening states really matters in such cases.
With regards to ecological intervention, I am still doubting whether it could justifiable or not. I cannot think of any real-world examples in which my intuition would answer that question affirmatively. Yet, let’s assume that it is justifiable. In that case, the threshold for intervention is very high. Only mass atrocity crimes – or, in Walzer’s words, “acts that shock the moral conscience of mankind” – justify a humanitarian intervention, and the same goes for ecological intervention. The bar should be set at very widespread, severe, and systematic violence to the environment. Most contributions of states to climate change do not amount to that threshold.
Another problem with ecological intervention seems to be that it is not “one” event. Rather, ecological damage is the result of many events that add up in a long period. Isn’t it more difficult to single out who’s responsible for it and whom should be intervened against?
Exactly, and subsistence wars have a similar problem. In my chapter “On the possibility of justified subsistence wars” (Poverty and Human Rights. Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 2021), I argue that most so-called “subsistence wars” or “redistributive wars” cannot be justified, but that under certain conditions it is possible to justify a subsistence war if the subsistence rights of a population are directly violated that is when the causal connection is clear and direct. For example, it seems that if a government builds a dam that leaves the neighboring population without water, creating in this way an immediate humanitarian catastrophe, military action could be justified as last resort to prevent such catastrophe. However, most of the violations of subsistence rights are the result of structural injustices to which many (state and non-state) actors and even private citizens contribute. In that situation, it is indeed very difficult to single out a perpetrator and a victim, and a clear link between the actions of the perpetrator and the damage done to the victims. This is the most serious problem that comes with rethinking the just causes for war and including violations of a wider range of human rights among the reasons that justify violent resistance. And also, if you are concerned with actually addressing global poverty, or ecological damage for that matter, it is questionable whether military action is the most promising route to explore.
Last year you wrote a paper on the militarization of outer space, “An Arms Race in Outer Space?” In it, you say that if the current situation continues, space might become a new battlefield. What do you mean by this and what is the “current situation” you are referring to?
This is a topic I am very enthusiastic about – I wrote a research proposal on the militarization of outer space, and I hope it will be funded in the future – because it is a very problematic normative vacuum. States are both excited and nervous about what is happening in space. Many states are developing new space technologies, space weapons proliferate, and space situational awareness (seeing what happens in space) is high on the agenda. For example, NATO officially acknowledged space as a warfighting domain, military doctrines for space are formulated, Trump has established the space force and France has recently done the first military exercise in space. Yet, we do not have clear and specific rules about what can and cannot be done in space, and the rules we have are not well equipped for the space domain. This is, by the way, not only problematic for military activities in space, but also for economic activities such as space mining and tourism in space.
The space domain shares its problematic normative status with the cyber domain, another unconventional arena of warfare, which raises similar questions. An authoritative yet non-binding legal manual has been published in 2013, the Tallinn Manual, which is the result of the joint effort of twenty renowned international law scholars and practitioners, who translated existing laws of war (and broadly international law) to the cyber domain. The Tallinn Manual 2.0 has been published in 2017, and now scholars are working on a 3.0 version. Currently, two groups of experts are busy doing the same job for the space domain. On the one hand, the University of Adelaide, the University of Exeter, the University Of Nebraska, and the University of New South Wales – Canberra are working on the Woomera Manual. On the other hand, a team of experts under the direction of the McGill University Centre for Research in Air and Space Law – and with the support of many organizations and institutions – is composing the McGill Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space (MILAMOS). I cannot wait to read what will come out of these two works.
You are a philosopher doing research and teaching at the Law Faculty. Oh, wait. Would you describe yourself as a philosopher?
Not really but I never know how to answer this question. Although I graduated in both law and philosophy, and I have also studied conflict studies, I am trained more as a lawyer than as a philosopher. I have never been interested in purely theoretical questions, I am a fan of interdisciplinary research and interested in very practical global issues, which, by their very nature, cannot be looked at from one perspective only. Therefore, I always feel like I do a bit of everything. When I am around philosophers, I have the feeling that I do not fit in entirely, but I have the same with lawyers. Nonetheless, given my research focus of the last decade, if I had to pick something, I would describe myself as a philosopher.
Okay, so let’s say that you do research on philosophical topics. Yet, you are at the Law Faculty here at Radboud University. Why are you not at the Philosophy Faculty?
I am very happy here at the Law Faculty, and I am with the Philosophy of Law section, working with people that study the philosophical aspects of the law. But when I went to Hong Kong as a visiting assistant professor I was at the Social Sciences Faculty, and in Florence, I was at Social and Political Sciences. The research center SPIRe, where I work now, is the School of Politics and International Relations of University College Dublin. If I had to give myself a “label”, I would say that I do applied philosophy. I apply philosophical thinking to various global problems, mainly war and violent conflict, in the hope of contributing something to addressing such problems. In a way, I feel comfortable at the Law Faculty because I would be afraid that my research is not theoretical enough for philosophers.
What’s the next challenge for just war theorists?
I think one theoretical challenge would be to bridge the theoretical differences between different schools of just war theory, such as revisionists and traditionalists.
However, the most important substantial challenge is finding ways to deal with the new technological developments in war and with new forms of warfare. For example, artificial intelligence will definitely play a major role in new forms of warfare, and it will pose many more difficult ethical, political, and legal challenges. The same goes for space weapons, cyber, and autonomous weapon systems. And looking a bit further into the future, anticipating technological developments is a challenge in itself.
Anyway, the normative framework we have had for decades is especially suited for intra-state wars and traditional kinetic weapons. This is not our reality anymore. The situation is changing and just war theory and international law need to keep up so as to effectively regulate war and warfare in the future. The challenge is to future-proof just war theory.
Ilaria Flisi is a graduate Research Master's student in Social and Political Philosophy at Radboud University. She wrote her Master's thesis on the interrelationships between aesthetics and ethics, and - more specifically - on the ethical duties of aesthetic experts and art institutions. She completed her Bachelor's degree in Humanities for the Study of Culture at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She has been editor-in-chief of the faculty philosophical journal Splijtstof for the past three years. You'll have her most undivided attention by bringing up any of the following topics: art history, museum practices, epistemic (and real-life) injustice and discrimination, and (sour) beers.
