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Counterfactuals and the Proportionality Criterion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

David Mellow
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Abstract

It is widely held that, in order for a resort to war or military force to be morally justified, it must, in addition to having a cause that is just, be proportionate. In this essay I argue for the need to use a counterfactual baseline when making the proportionality evaluation. Specifically, I argue that the relevant counterfactual baseline must contain a moral qualifier. In defending my proposal, I also contend that the relevant goods and harms that are weighed in the proportionality evaluation are not as open-ended as is sometimes presumed.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 2006 , pp. 439 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2006

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References

1 See Editorial, Globe and Mail, July 20, 2006, p. A12.

2 See Jeff McMahan and Robert McKim, “The Just War and the Gulf War,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 4 (1993), p. 507. In requiring that the relevant goods be proportional to the relevant harms, this leaves open the question of whether the proportionality criterion simply requires that the relevant goods on balance outweigh the relevant harms, or, instead, makes some other proportionate demand. For example, perhaps the relevant goods have to outweigh the relevant harms to a large extent, or, alternatively, perhaps the proportionality requirement could be satisfied even if the relevant goods are slightly outweighed by the relevant harms. Just war theorists are not in agreement on this issue, and it can be bracketed for the sake of the present discussion.

3 In making a similar point, Thomas Hurka observes, “In the Afghan case the relevant U.S. number is not that of civilians killed on September 11; their lives were already lost” (“Proportionality in the Morality of War,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 33 [2005], p. 59).

4 See Aryeh Neier, “Inconvenient Facts,” Dissent 47, no. 2 (2000), pp. 109–12. Neier argues for the same basis of comparison as suggested in the main text in his telling criticism of Noam Chomsky's argument against NATO's actions in Kosovo.

5 Gregory Kavka, “Was the Gulf War a Just War?” Journal of Social Philosophy 22, no. 1 (1991), p. 24.

6 Ibid.

7 An anonymous reviewer raised this concern in response to an earlier draft of this essay.

8 See Hurka, “Proportionality in the Morality of War,” pp. 37–38, for a concise and clear discussion of the connection between the proportionality criterion and last resort criterion.

9 McMahan and McKim, “The Just War and the Gulf War,” p. 509.

10 An anonymous reviewer offered this example in response to an earlier draft of the essay.

11 The best discussions of type and range issues with respect to relevant effects are found in Jeff McMahan and Robert McKim, “The Just War and the Gulf War”; Jeff McMahan, “Just Cause for War,” Ethics and International Affairs 19, no. 3 (2005); and Thomas Hurka, “Proportionality in the Morality of War.”

12 McMahan, “Just Cause for War,” p. 5.

13 A point I develop in David Mellow, “A Critique of Just War Theory” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Calgary, 2003).

14 Thus, the proportionality condition is not a simple utilitarian calculation undertaken to determine whether the resort to war has the best overall consequences.

15 For more on this see Hurka, “Proportionality in the Morality of War.”

16 Compare the extensive debate over John Rawls's “maximin” solution to the problem of social justice.