1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:07,920 It's going to be my business today. Is that some of it very, very tough because actually, really, it's from the other place. 2 00:00:08,490 --> 00:00:17,880 But he's changed the spots and gone down business mainly. He is associate professor of philosophy and public policy at the School of Government. 3 00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:25,320 He was fully educated at Cambridge in both his undergraduate degree, master's and doctorate. 4 00:00:26,610 --> 00:00:32,249 He then took a rather unusual step of joining the Royal Marine Commandos for a period of 5 00:00:32,250 --> 00:00:38,280 five years were amongst the first of all was Northern Ireland and ended up in Afghanistan. 6 00:00:39,090 --> 00:00:50,309 He was also 82 general. So what from some people here who know him so well that they're very sore also in Iraq and not surprisingly, 7 00:00:50,310 --> 00:00:53,490 obviously in Helmand, not Khalistan, where he was an ops officer. 8 00:00:53,490 --> 00:01:03,690 And some of he's now returned to his academic life and his sea research model and lost a lot of both in different programs, 9 00:01:04,350 --> 00:01:10,110 including a doctoral program at that school of government. And your subject is the baroness's of unconventional force. 10 00:01:10,510 --> 00:01:14,070 Tom Petty Great. 11 00:01:14,190 --> 00:01:16,890 Well, thank you very much, Rob, for that very generous introduction. 12 00:01:17,190 --> 00:01:25,080 And I'll assume that the centre of gravity for the audience here is non philosophical. 13 00:01:25,440 --> 00:01:32,549 So I'm a philosopher by training, but I'm assuming that the majority people here are from a diversity of disciplines, 14 00:01:32,550 --> 00:01:37,260 history, international relations, strategic studies and so forth. 15 00:01:37,710 --> 00:01:42,030 So in order to help that, what I've got is a handout, which hopefully everyone's got, 16 00:01:42,360 --> 00:01:48,540 and all the key points that I'll make will be on there and I'll talk, if I may, for about 30 minutes. 17 00:01:48,860 --> 00:01:53,010 That should be about 20 minutes for questions and discussion afterwards. 18 00:01:53,850 --> 00:02:03,000 Okay. So let's, let's just dive into the topic. And so my interest is in unconventional forms of one of my interest of interest in study. 19 00:02:03,820 --> 00:02:15,990 And I mean by this is the use of force outside of either war time, war by police for internal security. 20 00:02:16,380 --> 00:02:25,140 So we've got very established bodies of theory for thinking about the ethical questions for the use of force throws up in these two contexts. 21 00:02:25,380 --> 00:02:30,750 So the first one, we've got this big body of work known in general terms as just war theory, 22 00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:35,010 and there's debates and discussions about the requirements, just war theory on that. 23 00:02:35,010 --> 00:02:38,190 That's been a question that's a very, very longstanding I mean, 24 00:02:38,190 --> 00:02:48,210 to many or at least goes back to August and earlier we did there's not so much work on police ethics, but you can find it. 25 00:02:48,390 --> 00:02:53,850 But what there is, is a huge amount of discussion about foundational questions with political authority. 26 00:02:54,180 --> 00:03:02,100 And right at the heart of political authority is that monopoly on the use of violence that the state is supposed to legitimately enjoy. 27 00:03:02,820 --> 00:03:06,809 What we don't have is any really serious theory, 28 00:03:06,810 --> 00:03:16,440 moral theory about what the conditions are on which force may be permissible used outside these two contexts. 29 00:03:17,730 --> 00:03:25,200 Right. But it's quite important that we get this body theory because you only need to be moderately attentive to the world over the last ten, 15, 30 00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:34,200 20 years or so to see there's an increasing amount of force being used by governments of every stripe that are not being declared wars. 31 00:03:34,200 --> 00:03:37,859 I mean, actually declared wars are the exception rather than the rule. Correct. 32 00:03:37,860 --> 00:03:43,410 And saying that those who are better on the empirical side, I don't think war was even declared in March in 2003 against Iraq. 33 00:03:43,700 --> 00:03:52,950 I think it was straight out. So my question today is, what are the moral limits on the use of unconventional force? 34 00:03:53,340 --> 00:03:57,240 And this is not a detective story. So I'm going to tell you the answer now. 35 00:03:58,530 --> 00:04:07,320 And the answer that I'm going to defend this is roughly and then in a slogan form, is that spies and special forces played by Big Boys Rules. 36 00:04:07,950 --> 00:04:12,990 So that's a kind of English euphemism for basically English as a second language. 37 00:04:13,230 --> 00:04:21,389 The kind of sense is, okay, so another euphemism when you're playing ice hockey, I'm in the fight, you know, it's getting serious. 38 00:04:21,390 --> 00:04:26,670 When the gloves are off, there's a kind of sense, right, that both sides have adopted different rules that are going to work. 39 00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:30,210 And that's the basic thought that I'm wanting to defend today. Okay. 40 00:04:30,630 --> 00:04:34,860 So let me pass quite quickly over the nature of unconventional force. 41 00:04:35,220 --> 00:04:38,960 So there are two purposes to run the structure. 42 00:04:38,970 --> 00:04:45,810 You talk about the nature. I'm going to talk about a a natural way of thinking that you might be drawn to just think about this. 43 00:04:45,820 --> 00:04:49,380 I'm going to say walking. That's false. And then I'm going to propose an alternative in this place. 44 00:04:49,560 --> 00:04:56,760 Okay. So what's the nature of unconventional force? There are two purposes. Firstly, to gain intelligence in the pursuit of national security. 45 00:04:57,210 --> 00:05:04,420 And this may take a variety of forms. So there's all the. SIGINT means O.S., etc., etc., which we're used to. 46 00:05:04,870 --> 00:05:09,760 And it may include the the non-consensual access to property. 47 00:05:10,510 --> 00:05:16,660 So physical inside. So if you stick a memory stick in someone's computer and I haven't given you permission to do so, 48 00:05:16,840 --> 00:05:20,469 you are non-consensual accessing their property equally. 49 00:05:20,470 --> 00:05:22,330 If you pick someone's lock, you're doing the same. 50 00:05:23,650 --> 00:05:30,760 You may also states also gain access to this information through interrogation and at the extreme, through torture. 51 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:35,590 And I'm making no value judgements here. I'm just reporting what goes on. 52 00:05:35,860 --> 00:05:42,189 So another purpose that unconventional force forces used for which I think has been growing in prominence, 53 00:05:42,190 --> 00:05:46,360 is the interdiction and disruption of enemies. 54 00:05:46,630 --> 00:05:52,540 And this could take a variety of forms. So at the soft end, sowing false information, blackmail or bribery, 55 00:05:53,530 --> 00:05:59,890 moving up like sabotage or destruction of property, and then at the kind of the shops and assassinations, 56 00:06:00,400 --> 00:06:09,790 targeted killings, rendition and detention and just to kind of hone in there to folk kind of appraisal, 57 00:06:09,790 --> 00:06:14,770 there are two points at which these kinds of activities could be appraised. 58 00:06:15,160 --> 00:06:18,820 So one is the kind of force that's employed. 59 00:06:19,540 --> 00:06:24,370 And the second is the target against whom the force is employed. 60 00:06:25,330 --> 00:06:29,020 So that's just the structure. Okay. So that's this is all just the way of set up. 61 00:06:29,020 --> 00:06:32,740 I'm now going to turn to a natural way of thinking. 62 00:06:34,540 --> 00:06:39,720 So you might think parallel to the question, what are the moral limits on use of unconventional force? 63 00:06:39,730 --> 00:06:46,840 And you might say, well, look, what we should do is we should look at just war theory, which is very dependent. 64 00:06:47,380 --> 00:06:56,710 And we should take the principles from just war theory, and we should see how they apply by analogy in the context of unconventional force. 65 00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:00,580 So just war theory has two central planks. 66 00:07:00,910 --> 00:07:05,820 That's what's called use ad bellum, the justice of going to war and then use in that mode. 67 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:14,200 So the justice of what you can do when you're fighting. And very roughly the thought is politicians are responsible for use activity. 68 00:07:14,890 --> 00:07:19,410 Whether or not it was right to go to war in 2003, what's something that Tony Blair has to answer for? 69 00:07:19,420 --> 00:07:25,850 That's the predominant thought. And then soldiers are responsible for use in Bello. 70 00:07:26,080 --> 00:07:28,480 They shouldn't target hospitals and so forth. 71 00:07:28,990 --> 00:07:38,290 And there's a variety of principles that are proposed under these two heads and principles like proportionality, 72 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:44,430 principles like necessity, principles like last resort, like lawful authority and public declaration of war. 73 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:56,919 These would be standard principles in the just war tradition. Now there is a we're fortunate that a lot of the people who work in the agencies which 74 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:04,450 conduct unconventional force are quite reflective individuals and are sometimes troubled, 75 00:08:04,660 --> 00:08:09,790 at least wanting to question what the moral basis of their work is about. 76 00:08:10,330 --> 00:08:16,930 And so there's a growing body of discussion of literature by these reflective practitioners, 77 00:08:17,620 --> 00:08:21,010 and this tends to be the approach that most of these people take. 78 00:08:21,490 --> 00:08:26,260 And as a case study of this, David Ammons, who's former head of she says. 79 00:08:26,290 --> 00:08:35,440 Q Is that correct? He's got a book that came out recently in which he takes exactly this approach, an analogical approach to just war theory. 80 00:08:35,770 --> 00:08:39,190 And I cite some other examples of that. Okay. 81 00:08:39,280 --> 00:08:42,689 Now there's something that's wrong about this and there's something that's right about this. 82 00:08:42,690 --> 00:08:50,560 So what's wrong about it is that ideological arguments on just about the worst form of philosophical argument that you can get. 83 00:08:51,040 --> 00:08:55,930 So whenever anyone proposes an analogy, we all have to sit there scratching our heads and thinking, 84 00:08:56,470 --> 00:08:59,890 Well, okay, I can see that in fact respect as an analogy. 85 00:08:59,890 --> 00:09:05,640 But in that respect, there isn't an analogy and it's it's just like chasing a bar of soap around the ball. 86 00:09:05,740 --> 00:09:12,420 It just kind of slips and go. And you can never actually pin down what the point of disagreement is. 87 00:09:12,430 --> 00:09:16,930 So as a method, it's a stunningly bad way of going about it. 88 00:09:18,680 --> 00:09:26,739 There's something that's right about it, however, and this is that this approach, the logical approach, is sort of almost unwittingly. 89 00:09:26,740 --> 00:09:35,080 I mean, I don't mean this pejoratively, but unwittingly stumbles upon a way of thinking about the ethics of force that 90 00:09:35,080 --> 00:09:41,200 has very considerable currency in contemporary philosophical discussion. 91 00:09:41,980 --> 00:09:49,870 And this is what's called reductive ism. So it's a particular position about the ethics of force and reductionism. 92 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:59,020 On the for a says the following ethical permissions and prohibitions on the use of force derives solely. 93 00:09:59,590 --> 00:10:05,110 Individuals are permitted and prohibited to do to each other. 94 00:10:05,260 --> 00:10:08,620 Okay. So here's the implication. 95 00:10:09,430 --> 00:10:12,670 We want to think about the rights and wrongs of the use of force in war. 96 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:16,929 What we need to do is imagine a case. You know, Robin, 97 00:10:16,930 --> 00:10:24,640 I have come across each other in the street and you can construct the cases according to different facts of the matter about who's done what. 98 00:10:25,060 --> 00:10:29,710 And then we think about what we're individually entitled to do to each other. 99 00:10:30,760 --> 00:10:40,629 And once you've got that, you then simply have to extrapolate from a dyadic personal person interaction to a group versus group interaction. 100 00:10:40,630 --> 00:10:48,430 You've got to work out on the basis of the rights that individuals hold to the rights that groups might hold by transfer, but not by analogy. 101 00:10:50,230 --> 00:10:59,530 And the implication that comes from this is that the morality of force is insensitive to social context. 102 00:11:00,070 --> 00:11:03,610 So it doesn't matter whether a war is declared or not, 103 00:11:03,850 --> 00:11:09,130 because that's irrelevant to the rights and wrongs that have been conducted between us, for instance. 104 00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:14,710 All that matters is who's done what and what the rights and wrongs are that arise from it. 105 00:11:16,360 --> 00:11:24,050 And and as a result, there's no such thing as the ethics of war or the ethics of the police. 106 00:11:24,070 --> 00:11:31,120 There's just the ethics of force. And there's just these different contexts in which force is used. 107 00:11:31,750 --> 00:11:36,060 And I gave a quote there under Fauci Force, Geoff McManus has just moved. 108 00:11:36,310 --> 00:11:42,250 It's a very good thing for Oxford. He's a he's not a professor of moral philosophy here. 109 00:11:42,520 --> 00:11:47,440 And he's probably the most prominent reductionist that's writing today. 110 00:11:47,440 --> 00:11:52,480 And he says this The conditions of war change, nothing at all. 111 00:11:53,020 --> 00:11:58,060 They merely make it more difficult to ascertain certain facts. 112 00:11:58,390 --> 00:12:04,240 So you get that the conditions of war change nothing at all. They merely make it more difficult to ascertain certain facts. 113 00:12:04,780 --> 00:12:10,090 So whether or not we're right to use force, totally irrelevant whether special forces, green troops, 114 00:12:11,080 --> 00:12:18,280 people in police, uniform, etc., etc. the rules that govern use of force identical in every single context. 115 00:12:23,280 --> 00:12:28,050 Now, I disagree with this and I'm going to try and explain why. 116 00:12:28,830 --> 00:12:34,500 What I can't do in this relatively short discussion is give you a full and conclusive argument, 117 00:12:34,800 --> 00:12:37,920 in part because it's just a very big and very light debate. 118 00:12:38,220 --> 00:12:41,220 And in part, I'm still working it out myself. 119 00:12:41,220 --> 00:12:42,990 It's so it's a kind of longer term project. 120 00:12:44,040 --> 00:12:52,410 But what I want to do is I want to put to a discussion two sides of discussion and then indicate why I endorse the contrary. 121 00:12:53,010 --> 00:13:03,420 Okay. So I think so I endorse what what I this is my term, what I call exceptionalism, about the use of force. 122 00:13:04,680 --> 00:13:14,010 And this claims that the ethics of force can be and indeed is sensitive to the social context in which it occurs. 123 00:13:15,270 --> 00:13:19,830 And therefore, the principles of just war theory have a different structure of justification 124 00:13:20,100 --> 00:13:25,649 to that which derive from interactions between individuals qua individuals. 125 00:13:25,650 --> 00:13:34,670 As insofar as we are individual autonomous agents act in the social context within which that individual's action becomes significant. 126 00:13:34,680 --> 00:13:38,850 I'm going to try to explain why that's the case. So firstly. 127 00:13:39,210 --> 00:13:48,990 MCMAHON So this is the disagreement that I'm not going to explore. So McMahon distinguishes what he calls the deep morality war from the laws of war. 128 00:13:48,990 --> 00:13:57,900 So the Geneva Conventions are laws of war. The UN charter instructions about conditions under which war is just one of the would be laws of war. 129 00:13:58,290 --> 00:14:01,349 And. McMahon Contrast that with the morality, of course. 130 00:14:01,350 --> 00:14:09,180 I think there's moral facts which determine the rights and wrongs of war before it gets to law. 131 00:14:10,380 --> 00:14:15,870 Now, what's the point of the divergence? So the latter the laws of war have to be formulated, he says, 132 00:14:16,080 --> 00:14:22,440 to take account of the likely effects of its promulgation of its institutionalisation and its enforcement. 133 00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:29,350 So an example might be and something like that. 134 00:14:29,460 --> 00:14:36,890 So I think I think the example, if I remember I mean, if he gives us one, right? So you might think that perpetrators of rape deserve that. 135 00:14:37,260 --> 00:14:43,980 You think that capital punishment is permissible. That's plausibly one of the crimes for which that punishment is put is permissible. 136 00:14:45,390 --> 00:14:53,310 But you might think that having mass punishment on the statute books would deter certain kinds of reporting. 137 00:14:53,730 --> 00:15:02,940 And you may value the reporting of rapes over and above the immediate justice that perpetrators of rape deserve. 138 00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:09,570 And therefore, you might have a law which specified a different punishment to that which morality requires, 139 00:15:09,630 --> 00:15:16,200 that my views of the extent of other kinds of examples where the incentive structure effect of having a law on the 140 00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:23,880 books maybe such that it changes behaviour and we want to take that into account in the laws that we can act. 141 00:15:24,360 --> 00:15:32,040 Okay. Now McMahon's view is that when you've got the morality of law and the laws of war where these come apart, 142 00:15:32,520 --> 00:15:39,630 basically you should follow it more restrictive. So sometimes morality may say that you're allowed to do something, but the law says you not. 143 00:15:39,990 --> 00:15:49,770 I mean, you should follow the law. So McMahon, for instance, has the view that if you are a significant causal contributor to the cause of a war, 144 00:15:50,130 --> 00:15:53,340 you are a legitimate target for those prosecution. 145 00:15:53,790 --> 00:15:57,750 So in particular terms, if you're a politician will prosecute, such as Tony Blair, 146 00:15:58,260 --> 00:16:02,670 he thinks that you are legitimate, morally speaking, you're legitimate target for attack. 147 00:16:03,300 --> 00:16:06,240 As it happens, we have a convention, a very, very robust convention, 148 00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:13,470 which says people in uniform are allowed to be attacked, people not to shoot politicians, they're not legitimate targets. 149 00:16:13,860 --> 00:16:17,490 So in that case, that would be an instance where morality permits something. 150 00:16:17,730 --> 00:16:21,720 That law forbids it and only his you should do what law requires. 151 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:24,090 And that's usually equally you have the converse. 152 00:16:24,090 --> 00:16:32,160 You have something where the law permits something, but morality forbids it and you should follow prohibition, the grounds he gives. 153 00:16:32,550 --> 00:16:36,990 And in the tiebreaker case where the law says you should do something about it, 154 00:16:36,990 --> 00:16:40,170 he says you shouldn't do something, but you should follow morality in this situation. 155 00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:43,800 So that's McMahon's view now. 156 00:16:43,980 --> 00:16:47,520 Okay. What's going on here? Because I think this is my suggestion. 157 00:16:47,850 --> 00:16:56,910 I think you can understand his inquiry as one into the morality force in the state of nature. 158 00:16:57,540 --> 00:17:03,019 So I'm sure you prefer you say to nature of this conflict, you imagine a world in which the statement exists. 159 00:17:03,020 --> 00:17:09,900 It's just people running around the earth getting on with activities. What would be the ethics of force in that situation? 160 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:14,940 And because he's been a very rich notion of the rights that people hold in that situation, 161 00:17:15,840 --> 00:17:21,090 it's the state of nature that John Locke espouses from one that Thomas Hobbes. 162 00:17:22,070 --> 00:17:25,970 Spouses. Okay. But this is really puzzling, right? 163 00:17:26,060 --> 00:17:29,390 Because we don't live in the state of nature. 164 00:17:29,600 --> 00:17:34,580 I mean, we we explicitly live under the state and certainly domestic categories. 165 00:17:35,150 --> 00:17:43,850 That's very definitely the case. And there are very good reasons why we don't live in the state of nature, because on any plausible construal, 166 00:17:44,990 --> 00:17:51,590 governments have got to be really, really bad in order for life to be worse under the government than it would be in the States. 167 00:17:51,860 --> 00:17:56,000 I mean, we institute government's sort of basic insight on the contract, our intrusion. 168 00:17:56,180 --> 00:18:02,420 We institute governance because life goes better. And it's not just that life goes better in some kind of, oh, it's nice for us, 169 00:18:02,780 --> 00:18:09,080 but the effects of life going better are so much more serious that if you're going to be any kind of moral obligation at all, 170 00:18:09,350 --> 00:18:12,830 there's going to be moral obligation for each of us. 171 00:18:12,860 --> 00:18:17,659 There's a natural duty of justice for each of us to play our part in ensuring that we 172 00:18:17,660 --> 00:18:21,790 bring about a condition where we live under the state rather than living roughly, 173 00:18:22,150 --> 00:18:25,280 roughly benign state rather than living in the state of nature. 174 00:18:26,090 --> 00:18:32,389 As a Henry said, this is a very, um, uh, incestuous city, too strong. 175 00:18:32,390 --> 00:18:35,470 It's a very low price set of contributors. 176 00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:39,560 Henry she also a professor emeritus here in Oxford, disagree. 177 00:18:39,650 --> 00:18:42,980 At the time of writing, they were different parts of the world. But so. 178 00:18:43,030 --> 00:18:48,800 But they're not now. And so, Henry, she replies to McMahan on this, and he says, quote, On the handout, 179 00:18:49,280 --> 00:18:55,460 We do not have to choose between the what the morally best laws permit and require and what morality permits and requires. 180 00:18:55,790 --> 00:19:01,640 Because morality requires that where we need laws, we formulate the best laws and then follow them where they apply. 181 00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:07,070 We can take the morally best action by being the morally best law where we ought to follow the law. 182 00:19:07,490 --> 00:19:12,240 We may, of course, have to choose between the actual laws and what morality requires the law to be. 183 00:19:12,500 --> 00:19:16,570 But that is because. And when the actual laws are not best laws. 184 00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:20,000 So do you see the basic claim that she's making there in contrast to the man, 185 00:19:20,060 --> 00:19:25,770 which is that morality enjoins us and indeed requires us to obey the law. 186 00:19:27,380 --> 00:19:28,850 So there's going to be a caveat. 187 00:19:29,210 --> 00:19:35,690 You know, under certain conditions, the laws can be so corrupt and so unjust, Nazi Germany, etc. The wrong to your conscience defy the law. 188 00:19:35,930 --> 00:19:42,590 But that's a kind of that's a particular question about scope of political authority, absent that dealing with legitimate laws. 189 00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:45,830 Morality requires us to obey the law. 190 00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:57,890 And this this just seems to me, obviously the right way to go on in terms of this particular debate and one sort of supporting 191 00:19:57,890 --> 00:20:05,420 consideration one way see why this is the case would be to imagine what denying it would require. 192 00:20:05,470 --> 00:20:12,830 So if there's no moral requirement to obey the law, then law has purely pragmatic. 193 00:20:13,730 --> 00:20:18,650 You know, it ought to have only a pragmatic, incentive based effect on our conduct. 194 00:20:18,890 --> 00:20:26,270 But basically, no one thinks apart from the absolutely criminally psychopathic, no one thinks that the law is a purely pragmatic mechanism. 195 00:20:26,780 --> 00:20:32,390 Nearly everyone thinks that the law requires us to obey. It makes a moral claim on our conduct. 196 00:20:34,040 --> 00:20:37,220 And she's position is I mean, this is sort of philosophical. 197 00:20:37,970 --> 00:20:45,020 I'm dealing with philosophical interlocutors here. He's not committed to very much substantial moral theory here. 198 00:20:45,320 --> 00:20:47,570 So he's he's committed only to the claim. 199 00:20:47,780 --> 00:20:55,580 The fundamental moral considerations include more than dessert relations questions of what one person deserves or another person deserves, 200 00:20:56,150 --> 00:21:03,590 which is the case on McMahon's view. The desert does not have something significant, so it doesn't always take primary importance. 201 00:21:03,830 --> 00:21:07,760 And that law derives part of its moral force from such other considerations. 202 00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:15,290 That just seems to seem to me to be truisms and worthy of endorsement. 203 00:21:15,770 --> 00:21:20,990 Okay, so I've got two final planks in the argument and then I'm going to apply this to conventional force. 204 00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:26,060 So I want to extend his position here. 205 00:21:27,830 --> 00:21:32,290 More doesn't have its force because of some kind of x niccolo status. 206 00:21:32,300 --> 00:21:40,430 The law has law has its moral force because of what it makes available, namely coordination of people's actions. 207 00:21:41,690 --> 00:21:46,100 It's not only law that provides this coordinating function. 208 00:21:47,120 --> 00:21:51,240 In particular, conventions provide for some coordination function. 209 00:21:51,290 --> 00:21:56,480 So a really nice, easy example of convention. It's it's whether we drive on the right or the left on the. 210 00:21:57,230 --> 00:22:01,340 So it doesn't matter whether we draw the line for that. 211 00:22:02,030 --> 00:22:08,850 But it does matter for all of us that we come up with a decision, a regularity behaviours, whether it's the Mac or drunken driving. 212 00:22:09,110 --> 00:22:10,820 And given that we drive in the aftermath, 213 00:22:11,210 --> 00:22:18,020 every single one of us has compelling interest in also following the regularity in this case in Britain driving on the left. 214 00:22:19,340 --> 00:22:21,890 And coordination is pure, pure can. 215 00:22:21,940 --> 00:22:31,110 Pensions in that sense structure quite a few of our interactions and it seems as well like you can have mixed conventions where there's, 216 00:22:31,580 --> 00:22:36,850 there's both mutual benefits from having a regulatory behaviour which people follow. 217 00:22:37,210 --> 00:22:45,520 But the mixed nature derives from the fact that there's sometimes strategic advantage to be had from defecting from those conventions. 218 00:22:45,760 --> 00:22:50,770 Nonetheless, all of us would prefer to live in. This is the structure of the free ride for all those who prefer to live in a 219 00:22:50,770 --> 00:22:55,180 world where the regulatory behaviour exists than one in which it's not followed. 220 00:22:56,200 --> 00:22:59,769 Conventions exist in war. So I want to move this slightly more specifically. 221 00:22:59,770 --> 00:23:07,390 So Thomas Schelling has this great observation, which is exactly at the heart of it. 222 00:23:07,400 --> 00:23:11,450 If war to the finish has become inevitable, there's nothing left but pure conflict. 223 00:23:11,980 --> 00:23:19,510 But if there's any possibility of avoiding a mutually damaging war or of conducting warfare in a way that minimises damage or coercing an adversary 224 00:23:19,510 --> 00:23:26,410 by threatening war rather than waiting is the possibility of mutual accommodation is as important and dramatic as the elements of conflict. 225 00:23:26,860 --> 00:23:36,790 Okay, let me give a quite a dramatic example from war. So practices of surrender have been very, very variable through history. 226 00:23:37,660 --> 00:23:42,760 At the moment, the law that's on the books is that if a soldier puts their hands up, 227 00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:47,560 indicates there's not surrender, a soldier is obliged to accept that at any point in time, 228 00:23:49,690 --> 00:23:58,390 not that long ago, that 400 years ago, the practice in European early on, that was very different in particular procedures. 229 00:23:58,810 --> 00:24:03,360 So the practice in sieges, was that a surrender? 230 00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:13,210 There was an obligation on the attacker, the procedure to discuss terms with the defender of a city up until a point at which the walls were breached, 231 00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,890 at the point at which the walls were breached, there is no obligation. They can if they want to. 232 00:24:17,890 --> 00:24:21,880 There's no obligation to accept someone's surrender. So the defender, 233 00:24:22,270 --> 00:24:30,070 in continuing to defend the city beyond the point at which the walls are breached because the liability of no longer having to privilege surrender. 234 00:24:31,190 --> 00:24:32,340 Okay, that's quite dramatic. 235 00:24:32,350 --> 00:24:42,400 So what it means is that at 64 is a notoriously bloody business and you get a lot of city sacks when you look at the source of the people involved, 236 00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:46,990 very keen to defend this practice, not because they desire to kill people afterwards, 237 00:24:47,260 --> 00:24:55,060 but because they saw that the costs involved for sending the attackers up the ramparts was so high on lack of casualties 238 00:24:55,510 --> 00:25:01,300 that there was there was good reason to have an incentive for the defenders to surrender before the cost was involved. 239 00:25:01,780 --> 00:25:04,830 So the convention here was impartial between sides. Everyone could apply. 240 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:11,320 It's completely transparent. Everyone knows that. That's the point at which surrender is ceases to become possible. 241 00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:15,310 And it's excitatory before the interaction happens. 242 00:25:15,310 --> 00:25:21,340 It's in everyone, in everyone's interest that that happens. Because the point is more if you know that if they do attack, 243 00:25:21,340 --> 00:25:25,239 of course you're going to think on about whether or not you surrender in good time and 244 00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:30,100 more surrenders over will occur as a result of that convention being in place now. 245 00:25:32,290 --> 00:25:41,169 So some of us have called this paper psychopathic. I went to one of my colleagues and you'll begin to see where I disagree with the charge. 246 00:25:41,170 --> 00:25:45,820 But you can see when the time comes. Genghis Khan's incentive structure had a similar one, though, 247 00:25:46,510 --> 00:25:54,190 so he also imposed the same conditions on cities of surrender before hostilities had had taken place. 248 00:25:54,580 --> 00:26:02,180 And in fact, slightly more close to home, British paratroopers in the Falklands imposed a very similar sort of practice point of no surrender. 249 00:26:02,180 --> 00:26:03,300 It was 100 yards out. 250 00:26:03,580 --> 00:26:11,230 So beyond that point, the exposure to the tactical system so that you could have light of you lost the privilege of surrender after that point. 251 00:26:11,590 --> 00:26:16,510 And you can see how different conflicts can have different points at which it becomes pertinent. 252 00:26:16,930 --> 00:26:20,890 And there's reason to say surrender doesn't become achievable beyond this point. 253 00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:27,790 Now, my point is where coordination is achieved by convention, 254 00:26:28,180 --> 00:26:35,320 the regularity of behaviour specifies the provisions and permissions that exist in that context. 255 00:26:35,620 --> 00:26:41,200 So where that reckless behaviour exists, you could be prohibited or permitted from carrying out certain actions. 256 00:26:41,650 --> 00:26:48,160 In accordance with that regulation, the social context becomes deeply morally significant. 257 00:26:48,340 --> 00:26:52,899 That's my argument. Okay, here's here's the second plank. 258 00:26:52,900 --> 00:26:56,410 And so it's a big caveat what I call category city. 259 00:26:56,590 --> 00:27:02,110 So it's not conventions all the way down. Some actions, in my view, are categorically prohibited. 260 00:27:02,110 --> 00:27:09,640 So torture so is not an implication of my view that because your enemy is torturing your prisoners, you are entitled to torture of their prisoners. 261 00:27:09,940 --> 00:27:19,630 In response, there are some actions that are just prohibited because of the nature of the intrinsically immoral nature of that action. 262 00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:25,450 And I think this is. Recognised by the distinction between mother in say and mother prohibited. 263 00:27:25,660 --> 00:27:29,950 So something that's wrong in itself and something that's wrong because it's prohibited. 264 00:27:30,190 --> 00:27:33,819 So what I'm trying to get at is unpick the structure of what it is for something to be. 265 00:27:33,820 --> 00:27:37,030 Mother prohibits her to be wrong because it's prohibited. 266 00:27:37,210 --> 00:27:41,530 So it's the prohibition that makes it wrong rather than it being wrong that makes it prohibited. 267 00:27:42,610 --> 00:27:48,100 Okay. So let me just apply this to an unconventional force. 268 00:27:49,640 --> 00:27:59,110 A given exceptionalism about force. Force may be sensitive to social and legal contexts and where regularities of unconventional force exist. 269 00:27:59,470 --> 00:28:05,200 Practitioners should follow those rules. They should follow its prohibitions and its permissions. 270 00:28:05,500 --> 00:28:07,900 And obviously, there's a further column, which I haven't stated. 271 00:28:08,140 --> 00:28:17,470 But if there's an opportunity to set those conventions in a way that's a mutually beneficial, you should also take that opportunity to do so. 272 00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:24,970 Now, category city restricts who is targeted, so I'm afraid I'm going to restrict it. 273 00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:29,430 I'll say I've given us a framework for thinking about things here. I haven't actually given us any specific rules. 274 00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:30,790 Maybe we can talk about that afterwards. 275 00:28:31,990 --> 00:28:39,050 But so I don't know myself what the actual restriction is that derives from this line of thinking on who may be targeted. 276 00:28:39,070 --> 00:28:43,390 That's a big question. We could go into it in discussion. 277 00:28:44,170 --> 00:28:51,430 But I and it's a classic distinguish restrict some kinds of force on on what kinds of force might be. 278 00:28:51,460 --> 00:28:52,420 So I think no torture. 279 00:28:54,210 --> 00:29:02,290 But for instance and the boundaries of property seems to me exactly the kinds of things what property may be destroyed, property may be tempted to. 280 00:29:02,290 --> 00:29:05,560 It is exactly the kind of thing that's affected by these regulations. 281 00:29:05,590 --> 00:29:12,640 PAVIA Where no conventions exist. It seems to me that unconventional force, the ethics of it, is just as per the state of nature. 282 00:29:12,910 --> 00:29:17,530 And I'm just putting it as a placeholder that I don't pretend to say exactly what those requirements are. 283 00:29:19,180 --> 00:29:24,040 But there is the one thing that I would bring out there is quite an interesting and significant 284 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:32,169 policy implication that comes out from this argument so recurring over the last years. 285 00:29:32,170 --> 00:29:37,569 And the Snowden revelations shows very dramatically whenever there's a revelation 286 00:29:37,570 --> 00:29:43,090 about a particular practice which various intelligence agencies have been involved in, 287 00:29:44,260 --> 00:29:46,510 which people dislike, things shouldn't be taking place. 288 00:29:46,540 --> 00:29:54,010 The usual response to this is to say, we need to have judges overseeing these intelligence agencies. 289 00:29:54,220 --> 00:29:57,430 We can't trust the politicians to do so. 290 00:29:57,670 --> 00:30:03,880 So the accountability needs to be shifted from political accountability to juridical accountability. 291 00:30:04,780 --> 00:30:12,010 And I'm opposed to this, I think. I mean, there's a number of counterarguments for it, but I think one that emerges from this is that. 292 00:30:14,140 --> 00:30:19,120 Conventions exist when when they're common knowledge people need to know about. 293 00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:22,719 So the Commonwealth has been public knowledge just means that everyone involved 294 00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:28,150 in the practice needs to know what it is and it doesn't look at all plausible. 295 00:30:28,330 --> 00:30:29,950 That's the judiciary. 296 00:30:30,010 --> 00:30:38,560 The judiciary will have any sensitivity whatsoever to the informal rules and rules that govern the practice of unconventional force. 297 00:30:39,220 --> 00:30:46,390 And it's by those standards that the practitioners of conventional force should be held accountable, not by standards, for instance. 298 00:30:48,630 --> 00:30:54,420 Not by standards, which are insensitive to the particularities of the use of unconventional force. 299 00:30:54,690 --> 00:31:02,670 Judges don't know what those rules should. Consistent practitioners, therefore, I argue, should be judged by what happens before these rules. 300 00:31:03,300 --> 00:31:06,630 Thank you very much. And certainly to your comments and questions.