Any business for today. As I said, it's a great pleasure to introduce, as your father shall be known to many of you.
She did her doctorate at this university and went to the LSC and from there she took a chair at Edinburgh University until we were very,
very fortunate to lure her back down to Oxford.
She doesn't regret that to me every year and maybe will later work his way very, very widely in philosophical ethics and political theory.
And her books include such rights under the Constitution, government and the decent life you P-12.
Whose body is it anyway? Justice and the integrity of the person of being 26.
And Justice in a changing world. Cambridge Politics Press 2007.
She has also written very broadly on the ethics of war.
She flies the flag for really rigorous, insightful, analytical philosophy, despite the fact that she is, in fact, French and not any more.
Well, well, well. I'll hand it over to CNN.
Her title today and also very, very topical is pulling in another Syrian war.
Thank you, David, for this lovely introduction.
Very topical indeed. I came within a hair's breadth of giving that talk and feel very lucky.
I didn't have to. In fact, on the morning when the French and the British were preparing to the Libya.
So it is it is a very few weeks, you know, from that point. So it is very topical indeed.
Now, there is a broad consensus amongst ethicists that military intervention in the affairs of another country is sometimes justified,
particularly when the country's regime is guilty of previous human rights violations against its own population.
So if you cast your mind back to a few weeks ago, there seemed to be some broad consensus on the views that if we were to intervene in Libya,
the regime itself, Gadhafi's regime itself, could not claim to be wronged by the interveners.
There might have been other reasons as to why we should go in, such as effectiveness.
But the idea that he and his supporters had a claim not to be acted against that idea of how we confront what's really in the realm is of political,
perhaps military circles. I'm not entirely happy with existing arguments in the philosophical literature in favour of humanitarian intervention.
My main source of unhappiness is this that war to say something which is utterly banal, but which, like many balances, tends to be forgotten.
War is about killing.
So when we justify a war or military intervention, we do have to justify the ability of killing so people in their target in a community.
My task this afternoon is to try to provide precisely such a justification for humanitarian intervention and are proceeding two steps.
First, to defend the right to wage such a war and then to tackle some of the issues raised by killing in wars of intervention.
Before I begin, I do need to issue two caveats or preliminary remarks.
When you hand out I have a background definition of the war of intervention,
which I set out yet an agent which henceforth I shall call it for intervention party
can be described as waging a humanitarian war against the political community.
Henceforth TPLF will target party. You and I have a number of conditions.
It uses large scale military force against Turkey over which it has no official jurisdiction and if it uses such force without the
consent of Turkey's regime in order to stop ongoing human rights violations by that regime and its supporters carried out against.
So I think it's a fairly uncontroversial definition of what we mean by a rule or humanitarian intervention.
The much more controversial bit of background, which I need to understand in before proceeding, is what I call the backroom ethics of war.
And you summarise here. Soldiers are not morally honoured.
Paul, I submit once the war has started, on the contrary,
the justness of the war and the value has decisive weight when determining whether they have the right to kill enemy soldiers.
So I need you to do a bit of explaining here. For those of you who are not not familiar with this particular debate in mainstream or just for ethics,
it is entirely appropriate to reach the judgement that even belligerents did not have a just cause for going to war.
So on that view, it is entirely appropriate to reach the judgement that for example.
Germany did not have a just cause for invading Poland on the 1st of September 1939.
Germany's war was unjust on the mainstream view.
However, once the war has started, soldiers on opposing sides of the conflict are morally on the poor,
in the sense that they are equally at liberty to win them over on the mainstream view.
On the 2nd of September, 1939, German soldiers are equally at liberty to kill Polish soldiers and vice versa.
The fact that X5 forces are in Germany does not have a justice for the war.
The fact that Germany's invasion of Poland is rueful does not diminish the right of German soldiers to kill Polish soldiers any more.
The fact that Poland has accepted this idea there just calls for defending itself,
gives its soldiers, British soldiers, a greater right to defend their lives against German soldiers.
That is the mainstream view and it is in fact the views which is enshrined in the international rules of war.
I disagree with that view. A number of philosophers you, David, spoke of in particular have argued that, on the contrary,
whether or not the war is just a debate has decided to wait for deciding whether or not a soldier is not at liberty to kill enemy soldiers.
When the alternative account German soldiers precisely because Germany's invasion of Poland is lawful, I'm not at liberty to kill Polish soldiers.
By contrast, Polish soldiers, precisely because Poland has just is in defending itself with its Germany,
are at liberty to kill German soldiers in defence of their lives.
On that alternative account, it is relevant for the argument for the ethics of killing in war are very closely aligned,
as it were, to the ethics of private defensive killing.
This is the view which I take for granted here at the start of my argument,
and I shall come back to it in a second with this two bits of background on the table, at least as it were.
Let me now turn to section two. When you hand over to defending the right to wage a war of humanitarian intervention.
Because, as I've just noted, the ethics of Wal-Mart account are fairly closely aligned to the ethics of killing in private cases.
I should like, as a preliminary step, step one, to defend the right to kill in self-defence in broad terms.
On what grounds, if any, at all? Do agents have the right to kill other agents in self defence?
Now the most common justifications for the right to killing self-defence are so-called agent neutral justifications.
Unless those views the permission, the right to kill are justified by looking to facts about the attacker.
For example, the fact that he's morally responsible for posing the threat to us,
the fact that he poses such a threat in the first instance, should that an attacker now,
which does seem to with the gun on which you start shooting at me on the stage of neutral justifications for submission for the right to self-defence.
The reason why I have wanted to make you knew, Tucker, is just that he's putting a threat to me or that he's morally responsible.
This is such a statute. It is something about him that justifies the commission to kill him.
Now, I don't find those arguments very convincing, because in my view,
they open up something which the feature of the situation, if you will, which I believe is absolutely crucial,
which is that in this courtroom, as in hypothetical example,
when you have an attacker bursting into the room shooting at me, it is my life which is at stake.
It's not yours, it's mine. And it seems to me absolutely crucial that if you to the fact that I have a stake in my survival,
which you lack those justifications for the permission and the right to kill in self-defence, hostile call agent relative.
They are relative to some agents, but not necessarily to others.
I mean, that particular case now, what it did to me to repeat it is my life, not yours, which is a mistake.
And the reason in turn was the fact that my life is at stake.
You may give me a permission to write strictly to talk to you.
Is this fairly strictly? We have a personal prerogative to shop of charity, to earn interest for me to say something.
It's for you to say to me.
You may not kill your attacker in self-defence would be tantamount to putting you under a duty to sacrifice my life for the sake of preserving his.
But I just think that agents generally,
particularly agents who are not responsible in any way for the conflict between lives under a duty to sacrifice their
interests in general and their interest in civil war in particular for the sake of protecting the life of the attacker.
After all, he is the one bursting into the ring with a gun trying to kill me.
It seems to me, in other words, that this particular value,
the value of greater partiality and permissible partiality towards one's own interests as opposed to the interests of others,
does explain why it is the case that I clearly may kill this attacker in self defence.
It is not just the fact that he is posing a threat in general, it is the fact that he is posing a threat to me.
How? Step two, does that apply if it does apply at all to rescue killings?
Well, some people would argue that it doesn't apply at all.
They would say that a relative victim, if you will, relative justifications for such defensive killing do not, in fact, work for risk.
For killing? Why? Well, if the reason why I make you the attacker in self-defence is that it is my life which is at stake.
It's very hard to see how that could give you the permission to kill anyone because your life is not at stake.
You are a neutral bystander in this particular conflict.
This objection to a relative justification for defensive killings is the
strongest of the many objections which have been levelled against the strategy.
The argument good partiality is over the world but you cannot justify killing in defence of others.
I believe on the other hand that we can defend killing in defence of others, which is what I set out.
So you shoot in step two and you hand out and the argument goes like this.
I argued earlier that I have a special stake in my survival.
I have a special interest in surviving the attack.
I also suggested that the witness to me a love interest promotion is worth crossing a commission.
Indeed, a right to claim on attacker in self-defence.
I'm invoking here a fairly standard account of what it means to have a right.
Well, but you have a right means that we have an interest which is important enough in most of the things imposing some
duties before the people on that fairly standard account of interest to say that I have a right to for example,
freedom of speech is to say that I have an interest in freedom of speech,
which is waking up to impose also parties a duty to let you speak mutatis mutandis, to say that I have a right to kill my attacker in self-defence,
just to say that my interest in surviving this particular attack is sufficiently important to impose on third parties,
including the attacker himself, that you can not interfere with my self-defensive steps.
And it is also important enough to make it morally permissible for me to protect my life in this particular way.
Now, interests are not merely protected by limiting permissions and rights in the other house.
They are also protected by what we call in, and that is to produce, produce for powers.
Well, how is this what an American legal philosopher and lawyer who insisted in the seminal article, beginning of the 20th Century,
that we should separate out powers from liberties claims powers after we interested is the ability to
change a moral and or legal relationship to the people by giving them some of the rights and permissions.
So to illustrate, David asking to use your quick examples at this point.
So here is the reason I'm the illegitimate owner of that, in fact, means that I have a set of claims and permissions with respect to that pen.
I'm permitted to write notes on my handout. I have a right against you that you do not forcibly interfere with my use of that time by, for example,
rubbing my wrist, but my interest in disposing of disposal, which is a support to buy a power to,
for example, give you sort of an inventory of which you would acquire all of a bespoke,
all the rights permissions and so on, which I now have gift selling, promising, unapologetic examples of problems.
Well, it seems to me that on the interest account, a victim is interested in surviving.
An attacker ought to be protected, maybe by the permission to kill the attacker.
Indeed, not really got a right to continue to have some firepower to transfer to potential rescuers that very same foolish.
Right. So if you go back to the other example, if an attacker bursts into the room armed with a gun and starts shooting at me,
my interest in my survival is protected not only by the permission given to me to harm the attacker,
but also by a power to transfer to David my permission and my right.
You can't be my own defence should I become unable to defend my own life?
I summarised the claim on the handout towards the bottom of page one, paragraph two in section two,
the victim's interests in protecting her fundamental interests against culpable attackers,
not always protected by the right to kill the attacker, which imposes on the agents a duty not to intervene on his behalf.
It is also protected by the power to transfer that right to potential rescues so
that they too acquire the right to kill the attacker on behalf of the victim.
And this, I think, is quite a appealing way of understanding the right to wage a war of intervention.
Step three Assume that some members of the political community in are victims of civil rights,
violations of a kind which to use the standard tries to shock the conscience of mankind,
either at the hands of the envisioned law, on the hands of a community within the country against which the regime is powerless and willing to act.
Those individuals have the premier fishing right to kill the attackers in their defence and
the prime of his power to authorise potential interveners to wage war on their behalf.
And that, it seems to me, is how best to understand what it means to have a right to wage a war of intervention.
It is the right the intervening parties have been given by the victims of the regime against which we are intervening in the issue of a power.
You know, I stress that point.
Perhaps you know too much, but I think it is worth stressing them because it poses the problem of consent
in quite a second ways that fall on you when you hand out the justification,
which I have just given over of the account, which I have just given for the right to withdraw.
Intervention does seem to imply that the victims consent to the intervention is required for
the intervention to be just seems there can be in general no authorisation without consent.
Now the proof makes perfect sense in 1 to 1 killings.
If I, without my consent to David's putative risk to me against my cousin David, may not intervene on my behalf.
And indeed, scholars have written a humanitarian intervention quote from insists that the consent of the victims.
So in the case of Libya, the consent of the civilian populations under threat, the hands of Gadhafi.
Then consent is required before the intervention cannot legitimately take place.
Now, the crucial question here, it seems to me,
is whether we should require explicit consent in the case of a war of intervention before you go in, or whether presumptive consent suffices.
And it seems to me that insisting on explicit consent will be far too demanding,
if only because it would deprive of protection individuals who are not in a position to give their consent in the first instance.
And the problem is particularly salient in humanitarian conflicts with victims are often very young children,
individuals who are utterly powerless and not morally able to give or without consent,
or indeed individuals who are subject to such severe hardship that they do not have the means physical,
psychological material to make themselves heard.
It seems natural, therefore, to claim that as long as the intervening party has good reasons to presume that
victims would consult with intervention if they were in a position to do so,
then it may act as if those victims had explicitly or surmised it to put a stop to the rights violations.
The argument that I'm putting forward here, which I will have to return to later on this afternoon, is not in any way which I do at all.
It's so funny because they mirrored all arguments about consent in medical ethics.
It is true that we generally require the explicit consent of patients before the authority to bomb.
But if one of you were to collapse, become unconscious at some point,
and if we were to call the numbers and the evidence were to take you to the hospital,
and if you were not able to regain consciousness before being wheeled to the person table,
doctors would act on this notion that you would actually sign the form consenting to their permission.
You know, if you were in a position to reason to recap briefly before getting to the, as it were, a little bit of killing.
I have argued that victims of human rights violations at the hands of the regime's sometimes have the
rights to kill the attackers in self-defence and the power to transfer that right to intervening parties.
But we cannot conclude that a humanitarian intervention which satisfies these conditions is justified
until we have looked a little bit more deeply at the ethics of killing in humanitarian forms.
Let me introductory the size, as it were.
Let me just say what I think is particularly going in the wrong.
About three years ago, we were all in this subject about whether or not the intervention in Libya was justified.
And, you know, one of the features of that debate, which I thought was fascinating,
was that the squeamishness, to put it philosophically, which greeted the objection,
the suggestion that Colonel Gadhafi might be a legitimate target and that what you hear that some people would say was he's a legitimate target.
He's the head of forces for all that we do. But I people are saying, no, you can't say that Gadhafi is a legitimate target.
It's just wrong to kill those people in that very way.
I didn't detect that squeamishness in the last 24 hours, especially when we had the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
We could talk about that later. But the fact that quite a number of people were reluctant openly to say, oh, my God,
I feel monstrous because this is a legitimate target that some people were reluctant to read.
That verdict suggests to me that there is something quite problematic about the act of killing in a war of intervention, humanitarian intervention.
I do believe, however, section three on the handout,
but a great number of acts of killing are justified in such wars, beginning with killing combatants, section 3.10.
And you forestall your question. And I do believe that under certain conditions, criminal Gadhafi is a legitimate target in that war.
So but I feel my cards on the table, you know, quite clearly here.
But let us first look at killing combatants. Now, there is an easy case, which is this combatants in the target party who take part in atrocities.
So pretty much exactly how you might hear is the case of a huge, huge incident,
which in 1992, not only 1994, but probably 1994, eviscerated the victims with screwdrivers,
you know, kill innocent children with shootings, also whose, you know, there was committed atrocities in the context of the war and and genocide.
I don't think there was any difficulty at all in saying that those wrongdoers clearly are liable to being killed.
You know, in the case in the course of the war or intervention, there is a lot of case turning over to page two on your handout.
And this is a case of, you know, combatants who do not take part in atrocities, but who resist the intervention by force and we kill them.
So you have to imagine a scenario, let's say Rwanda, as a as an example of an intervention which took place but perhaps should have taken place.
And you have to imagine a scenario where you have some who are carrying out, you know, acts of genocide.
Imagine that the U.N. had sent some forces, and those forces, as they were making their way to surrender,
have been met with hostile fire on the part, not to this genocidal militias themselves,
but on the part of regular members of the Rwandan army who, when not defending some people, will argue their genocidal colleagues,
as it were, but who were defending the homeland, the homes, you know, from the intervening forces.
Now, there is a rather prevalent argument in the literature,
which is that the role of humanitarian intervention should really be understood like a police operation,
so that intervening soldiers treating this has greater restraint.
These are those combatants of the target party who are regular combatants who do not take part in the acts
of genocide than it would if that intervening party waging a tradition of self-defence against an aggressor.
So the idea really is this in a war of intervention, we do have to distinguish between those which commit this, who commit atrocities,
which give us a reason for intervening in the first instance and those who simply block the advance of the intervening policy.
Again, you know, the decision that is drawn here is sometimes drawn in the context of the Second World War.
Some people argue that there really was a difference between the Waffen SS, you know, on the one hand those who were actually killing Jews.
You know what?
And on the other hand, you know, regular members of the government who were not committing atrocities and many of whom in fact, most couldn't abide.
You know, the S.S., I find it extremely unconvincing for three reasons.
That is, I find it in convincing to say that there is an important difference between war, humanitarian intervention on the one hand,
and a traditional war of self-defence against aggression on the other hand,
whereby we should exercise greater restraints against regular conduct in some form of place than we normally do.
You know, in the latter case, first of all, there is a requirement of restraint in traditional wars as well in traditional wars as well.
We are permitted to use only such forces is necessary for the achievement of all arms.
There is no reason to distinguish in that respect between wars of humanitarian
intervention on the one hand and wars of national self-defence on the other hand.
Moreover, of ensuring that the target regime is no longer in a position to commit atrocities against its members in the future,
May one require a comprehensive military victory over it, and that, in turn,
could only be secured by killing its soldiers, as we would in a conventional war.
And finally, those combatants,
those regular combatants of the target party who admittedly are not committing
atrocities but nevertheless are opposing thwarting the intervening forces.
Those combatants are unjust combatants anyway.
They contribute to posing a threat to intervening soldiers.
So let me construct an argument by analogy. It's the argument from the torture rape case.
To put it bluntly, imagine that only do it is torturing raping a victim somewhere in locked in a warehouse.
Imagine that he has posted an accomplice at the door of the warehouse.
When the police shows up, weapons from the accomplice toss, who is not himself taking part in the rape and the torture.
They to start shooting for the police in order to prevent the first woman to ring the warehouse.
I find it bizarre. You know, you say that we should exercise greater restraint against the accomplice in that particular case.
He's not he's not raping the victim himself.
He's an accomplice in that particular. Right. And he's, moreover,
subjecting the police officers to a work force with a result shooting at them in order to prevent them from entering the White House.
And it seems to me that the more status, if you will,
of regular members of a target army is similar to them on the status of the accomplice in that particular domestic case.
Those combatants are liable as accomplices to those atrocities and as attackers.
These are just interveners. This is all quite easy, really.
It is quite easy to show. It seems to me why those different kinds of combatants can be killed permissible in a war of intervention.
The serious difficulty arises with the issue of collateral damage.
Section 3.2 When you head out. I said earlier that the intervening party must have good evidence that its war of intervention
will be welcomed by those whom it is meant to benefit the victims of the target regime.
Now, I think that the claim is all the stronger for the fact that although the war will benefit many of those victims,
they were also inevitably home injured, killed, you know, some of them.
And that quote highlights, I think, a very important difference between 1 to 1 cases of risk killing and humanitarian war.
In 1 to 1 cases, a risk of killing we can safely, fairly safe, can assume that the victim will survive the rescuers killing the attacker.
But in a case of humanitarian, Wolf,
many non-combatants on his behalf and where U.S. intervention is carried out will die as collateral damage to the intervening parties,
military missions. And so any account of the right to intervene must attach to the harms which the
intervening party would inevitably impose on the interventions intended beneficiaries.
And this is what I would like to talk about in the remainder of the talk,
and I must first make a point of clarification by distinguishing between the permission to kill versus the right to kill.
Do you say that access the right to kill war is to imply that war is a duty not to retaliate against acts in its own defence?
So go back to the case of the attacker earlier who erupts in group and starts shooting at me,
who said that I have the right to kill this particular attacker in self-defence
is to say not merely that you are under a duty not to interfere with me,
not to prevent me from killing him, but also that he must desist immediately.
The mere fact that I start shooting at him and in so doing threatens a knife, does not give him permission to defend his own life.
That is what we mean in the relevant literature by the right to kill in self-defence.
The permission to kill is very different. When we say that X is morally permitted but lacks the right to kill.
Why? We imply that X is not under a duty not to retaliate.
And so what we mean in this case is this. Suppose you wait.
You say just the fact I may kill the attacker within walking distance of what you do.
It doesn't make do it. We won't imply that he's not under a duty to do this, that he may, in turn defend his own life against my self-defence.
So hold that thought for now, because it would prove important in the couple of minutes.
You remember that when you come to risk for killing, don't you?
The claim that there is a right in there to intervene. Proceeds from the claim that victims of attackers have the right to kill in self-defence.
And your call for outside help. We are here imagining cases where in turning forces in the course of carrying out the intervention with no
intention of even necessarily killing some of the civilians on whose behalf the intervention is pulled.
So to claim that to ask whether interveners have the right to kill some of those victims,
which could be to in the course of the war for the sake of all the victims.
V one is that amount to asking whether the victims of a genocidal tyrant have a right
to kill fellow victims in self-defence and who call on outsiders to help as well.
Suppose that we have the attack of erupting into one Missouri shooting, at least shooting several of us along the route.
Suppose I keep using it as a prop in my story.
Suppose that if it was not himself at the moment of the threat is in a position to neutralise the attacker.
But in so doing, he would kill some of us, inevitably as collateral damage to his rescue mission.
Do you ask whether David has the right? So to us to answer these, in fact,
you ask whether we are under threat or shall have the right to shoot some of us as collateral damage in order to block the attack.
Suppose that I had gone into the room.
The only way in which I can see lie in the life of some of you is a team from such an animal that others of you would die.
Do I have the voice? Can you produce it? That is what we are asking where we ask whether intervening parties have the right to
inflict collateral damage on some of the intended beneficiaries of the intervention.
I don't think, in fact, that there is such a thing as a right to kill innocent civilians, whether deliberately or not.
Would you say that there is a right to kill innocent civilians? Extremely high.
The various innocent civilians themselves welcome the duty not to tell you.
Do you say that I have the right to fire at the attacker in such a way that some of you will die?
Is to say that those of you who would die in the process are under a duty not to protect your life.
In the course of the attack. And what I think is wrong, I pointed out at the very, very beginning of it all,
the fair grounds upon which we are permitted to give greater interest was a waste to our interest and to the interest of others.
And it seems to me that you can be exceptionally demanding, since you ask of people innocent,
that they sacrificed their lives for the sake of other innocent people.
What I do believe, however, is that victims are sometimes justified or permitted to act in such a way that
other innocent people will die in the course of the self-defensive move.
For the same reason that I've just highlighted.
To claim otherwise is to claim that those victims are under a duty to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the victims.
Here is the picture that I have in mind here.
It seems to me that, you know, some people sometimes address the Patriot Act in such a way as to kill forcibly,
though not intentionally over, you know, innocent people at the bar of partiality at the bottom of the sword, if you will.
But sometimes hard to be permitted to come forward to wait for no interest,
particularly interest and survival done on other people's, you know, similar interests.
This issue of issue one said to victims by parish reasoning, it is also the case of another set of victims.
In other words, let's go back to Libya, for example, as an example,
if it is indeed the case that the set of victims of Samir Gadhafi and his regime are permitted
to kill collaterally Oswald and the victims in defence of that one life in the course of.