1. Both Michael Walzer and
John Rawls divide the theory of just war into two parts: justice in the causes
of going to war and justice in the conduct of war. Both thinkers sharply distinguish
between the status of combatant and noncombatant. And they argue for the equal
protection of noncombatants on both sides; the war convention is largely
concerned with protecting the noncombatants’ human rights to life and liberty.
But the lives of combatants are not similarly protected by the conventions of
war. Walzer says that the soldier (the combatant) forfeits his or her human
rights to life and liberty and takes on, in their place, certain "war
rights." Rawls uses, not a forfeit argument, but a self-defense argument.
(Here soldiers on each side are protecting themselves, in combat, from attacks
by soldiers on the other side, and each side may use lethal force in
self-defense.) I criticize both these arguments. 2. One of the important
new dimensions of just war theory is the notion of interventions by country A to
protect human rights from violation in
country B. Here I want to consider
three main points in the theories under review: (a) Various kinds of humanitarian
intervention and the level of human rights violation required to trigger
forcible military interventions. (b) The justification of such interventions.
(c) The appropriate agent(s) who might legitimately undertake a forcible
military intervention.