Moderately pacifist war

I’ve been wondering whether it is possible for a country to count as pacifist and yet wage a defensive war. I think the answer is positive, as long as one has a moderate pacifism that is opposed to lethal violence but not to all violence. I think that a prohibition of all violence is untenable. It seems obvious that if you see someone about to shoot an innocent person, and you can give the shooter a shove to make them miss, you presumptively should.

Here’s what could be done by a moderately pacifist country.

First, we have “officially” non-lethal weapons: tasers, gas, etc. Some of these might violate current international law, but it seems that a pacifist country could modify its commitment to some accords.

Second, “lethal” weapons can be used less than lethally. For instance, with modern medicine, abdominal gunshot wounds are only 10% fatal, yet they are no doubt very effective at stopping an attacker. While it may seem weird to imagine a pacifist shooting someone in the stomach, when the chance of survival is 90%, it does not seem unreasonable to say that the pacifist could be aiming to stop the attacker non-lethally. After all, tasers sometimes kill, too. They do so less than 0.25% of the time, but that’s a difference of degree rather than of principle.

Third, we might subdivide moderate pacifists based on whether they prohibit all violence that foreseeably leads to death or just violence that intentionally leads to death. If it is only intentionally lethal violence that is forbidden, then quite a bit of modern warfare can stand. If the enemy is attacking with tanks or planes, one can intentionally destroy the tank or plane as a weapon, while only foreseeing, without intending, the death of the crew. (I don’t know how far one can take this line without sophistry. Can one drop a bomb on an infantry unit intending to smash up their rifles without intending to kill the soldiers?) Similarly, one can bomb enemy weapons factories.

Whether such a limited way of waging war could be successful probably depends on the case. If one combined the non-lethal (or not intentionally lethal) means with technological and numerical superiority, it wouldn’t be surprising to me if one could win.

Against a moderate pacifism

Imagine a moderate pacifist who rejects lethal self-defense, but allows non-lethal self-defense when appropriate, say by use of tasers.

Now, imagine that one person is attacking you and nine other innocents, with the intent of killing the ten of you, and you can stop them with a taser. Surely you should, and surely the moderate pacifist will say that this is an appropriate use case for the taser.

Very well. Now consider this on a national level. Suppose there are a million enemy soldiers ordered to commit genocide against ten million, and you have two ways to stop them:

1. Tase the million soldiers.

2. Kill the general.

If you can tase one person to stop the murder of ten, then (1) should be permissible if it’s the only option. But tasers occasionally kill people. We don’t know how often. Apparently it’s less than 1 in 400 uses. Suppose it’s 1 in 4000. Then option (1) results in 250 enemy deaths.

So maybe our choice is between tasing a million, thereby non-intentionally killing 250 soldiers, and intentionally killing one general. It seems to me that (2) is morally preferable, even though our moderate pacifist has to allow (1) and forbid (2).

Note that a version of this argument goes through even if the moderate pacifist backs up and says that tasers are too lethal. For suppose instead of tasers we have drones that destroy the dominant hand of an enemy soldier while guaranteeing survival (with science fictional medical technology). It’s clearly right to release such a drone on a soldier who is about to kill ten innocents. But now compare:

3. Destroy the dominant hand of a million soldiers.

4. Kill the general.

I think (4) is still morally preferable to causing the kind of disruption to the lives of a million people that plan (3) would involve.

These may seem to be consequentialist arguments. I don't think so. I don't have the same intuitions if we replace the general by the general's innocent child in (2) and (4), even if killing the child were to stop the war (e.g., by making the general afraid that their other children would be murdered).

The law enforcement model of war

When an army invades a country, the invaders break a massive number of that country’s laws. They kill, commit assault and battery with deadly weapons, recklessly endanger lives, and destroy property, and do all this as part of a concerted conspiracy. And they break all sorts of more minor laws, by carrying unlicensed weapons, trespassing on government property, littering, and presumably violating traffic laws all the time (I assume one can’t slow down the progress of a column of tanks by putting up a stop sign).

This means that there is an intermediate position between just war theory and complete non-violence. This intermediate position holds that law enforcement can appropriately make use of violent means, including lethal violence when this is proportionate, and that when one’s country suffers an unjust invasion, one may (and maybe often should) legitimately engage in appropriately violent law enforcement activities against the enemy. Call this the law enforcement model of war.

I do not advocate the law enforcement model, but it is interesting to think just how it would differ from the two more standard options.

The difference from complete non-violence is clear: on the law enforcement model, violent action in defense of the country’s laws is permitted whenever proportionate. Thus, it would be permissible to destroy a tank because it is a part of a conspiracy to commit murder and destruction of property, but not because it is simply refusing to stop at a stop sign. (And discretion being the better part of valor, issuing traffic tickets in the latter case is probably not a good idea.)

The differences from just war theory are also significant, though more nuanced. While in most cases where traditional just war theory permits a defensive war, the law enforcement model would also permit defensive violence, there would be significant limitations on offensive wars, due to the fact that law enforcement is bound by significant limitations of jurisdiction. While on traditional just war theory, the fact that Elbonia is violently persecuting a Kneebonian ethnic minority on Elbonian soil might be a sufficient just cause for a war, on the law enforcement model, execrable as such persection is, it is likely to be outside of the proper jurisdiction of Kneebonian state law enforcement. Indeed, there may have to be significant limits to extraterritorial defensive operations, though some version of the doctrine of “hot pursuit” may be helpful here.

Interestingly, the law enforcement model in one respect seems to point to greater violence. The presumption in law enforcement is that criminals are not only stopped but also punished. This suggests that on a law enforcement model, we would have a presumption in favor of putting all captured invading soldiers on trial. However, even in ordinary law enforcement, punishment is only a presumption, and it can be waived for the sake of significant public goods. In the special case of defending against invaders, having a general waiver, with exceptions tailored to mitigate the worst of evils (say, attacks on defenseless populations), in order to encourage the enemy to surrender would be prudent.

In regard to the waiver of criminal penalties, it is interesting to note one difference between how we feel about war and about ordinary crime. In the case of ordinary private crime, we do not feel that it is qualitatively worse when the criminal murders a civilian rather than a police officer—indeed, we tend to feel that there is something particularly bad about murdering a police officer. In the case of war, however, we do feel that it is much worse to kill civilians. On the law enforcement model, this difference in attitudes does not seem right. But the difference can still be defended within the law enforcement model. In typical cases, soldiers fighting an unjust war are subject to incessant propaganda that they are fighting for justice. There is thus a significant probability that they are not culpable for killing enemy soldiers, because they are rationally convinced that justice requires enemy soldiers to be stopped with lethal force. But it is much harder to come to a rational conviction that justice requires enemy civilians to be stopped with lethal force. Therefore, even if in an unjust war the intrinsic wrong of killing soldiers is just as great as that of killing civilians, there is a significant difference in likely culpability.

As I said, I do not endorse the law enforcement model. But I think it is an interesting model. And I think it presents a significant challenge to those pacifists who think that law enforcement violence is sometimes justified but that violence in war never is.

The probability of success condition for a just war

Traditional just war theory holds that a necessary condition for a just war is not just the proportionality condition that the expected benefits exceed the expected harms, but that success is likely.

In typical cases, where the success condition fails, the proportionality condition fails as well. However, there are some hightly hypothetical cases where the success condition fails but the proportionality condition is satisfied. And in those cases I think war is justified. Thus, we should drop the success condition, and simply insist on proportionality, while being clear that proportionality includes a probabilistic assessment.

Case one. Kneebonia has exactly one missile and no weapons other than that missile. They declare war and shoot that missile at a gorgeous cathedral in the Elbonian capital that took centuries to build. They offer the Elbonia the following terms of surrender: Elbonia will become a province of Kneebonia and all books in the Elbonian language will be burned and permanently banned. Elbonia has one soldier. They parachute her onto the roof of the Kneebonian missile control building, and task her with penetrating to the computer room in order to redirect the missile into the sea. However, they know that the chance of success in this mission is 1%, because she is likely to be captured. At the same time, because the Kneebonian soldiers have no weapon other than the missile, one can be pretty confident that even if the mission fails, the Elbonian soldier will survive.

The Elbonians reciprocate the declaration of war and send their one soldier in. Proportionality may well be met: the danger of one soldier being non-lethally captured is proportionate to a 1% chance of saving a precious cultural artifact that took centuries to build. But the chance of success in this war is 1%. But if there is no success, there will be likely very little harm (one soldier captured alive).

Granted, this is a defensive case. But there are offensive cases that can be imagined as well.

Case two. A regional branch of the Elbonian army is perpetrating genocide on local Kneebonian minorities. Kneebonia has only one missile, and it can shoot it at the headquarters of that branch. Intelligence data shows that if the missile strike is successful, Elbonia will surrender and agree to end the genocide. However, the missile is wonky. There is a 99% chance that instead of hitting the headquarters, it will veer off-course and explode unseen in Elbonian coastal waters, and there is a 1% chance of success. Intelligence data shows that in case of a miss Elbonia can simply withdraw its declaration of war and the war will end, with the Kneebonians slightly puzzled as to why no hostile action apparently occurred.

Again, the probability of success is 1%. Yet it seems that war is justified. Again, if there is no success, there will be no harm.

All that said, the probability of success condition is a useful heuristic. For in typical wars, where there is insufficient probability of success, the expected harms will outweigh the expected benefits.

Subjective guilt and war

One of the well-known challenges in accounting for killing in a just war is the thought that even soldiers fighting on a side without justice think they have justice on their side, hence are subjectively innocent, and thus it seems wrong to kill them.

But I wonder if there isn’t an opposite problem. As is well-known, human beings have a very strong visceral opposition to killing. Even those who kill with justice on their side are apt to feel guilty, and it wouldn’t be surprising if often they not only feel guilty but judge themselves to have done wrong. Thus, it could well be that soldiers who kill on both sides of a war have a tendency to be subjectively guilty, even if one of the sides is waging a just war.

Or perhaps things work out this way: Soldiers who kill tend to be subjectively guilty unless they are waging a clearly just war. If so, then those who are on a side without justice are indeed apt to be subjectively guilty, since rarely does a side without justice appear manifestly just. And those who are on a side with justice are may very well also be subjectively guilty, unless the war is one of those where justice is manifest (as was the case for the Allies in World War II).

I doubt that things work out all that neatly.

In any case, the above considerations do show that a side with justice has very strong moral reason to make that justice as manifest as possible to the soldiers. And when that is not possible, those in charge should be persons of such evident integrity that it is easy to trust their judgment.

The pastoral problem of double effect reasoning

As part of a just war, Alice drops a bomb on the enemy military headquarters. Next door to the enemy headquarters are the world headquarters of a corporation that Alice knows has been responsible for enormous environmental degradation, and the bomb will level the whole block. Alice finds it very difficult not to jump in glee at the death of the immoral CEO.

It would be murder, however, for Alice to drop the bomb in order to kill the CEO. It would still be murder even if she dropped the bomb in part in order to do so. But it’s hard for Alice not to be motivated by the death of the CEO, and hence Alice—who is deeply morally sensitive—finds it difficult not to feel guilty of murder.

There are two interrelated pastoral problems here. First, how can Alice avoid being a murderer—how can she avoid intending to kill the hated CEO? Second, if she succeeds in avoiding being a murderer, how can she avoid feeling like a murderer?

Reflecting on counterfactuals may help Alice.

1. Would I still drop the bomb here if the military leaders were elsewhere and I could get away with it?

2. Would I still drop the bomb here if the CEO were elsewhere but the military leaders were here?

If the answer to (1) is “yes” or the answer to (2) is “no”, she very likely is intending to kill the CEO. But even if the answer to (1) is “no” and that to (2) is “yes”, that does not prove that the CEO’s presence isn’t contributing to her intention. Perhaps the CEO’s presence isn’t enough to motivate her by itself, but it nonetheless contributes to her motivations. One could try to tease this apart through further counterfactuals.

3. Is there a personal cost such that (a) if the CEO were elsewhere but the military leaders were here, I would not drop the bomb on account of the cost, but (b) if the CEO were here along with the military leaders, I would drop the bomb notwithstanding the cost?

A positive answer suggests that she is intending to kill the CEO. But the counterfactual (3) is hard to evaluate, and it is not clear that it is epistemically accessible to Alice.

Perhaps these counterfactuals would be more helpful:

4. If I could aim the bomb in such a way that I would kill the military leaders but not the CEO, would I?

5. If after dropping the bomb, I could call for an ambulance to save the CEO, would I?

Answers to these two questions seem imaginatively accessible. I think a positive answer to both questions is strong evidence that the CEO’s death is not intended. And it seems to me that (4) and (5), unlike (3), are pretty accessible to Alice, they could help with the problem of not feeling like a murderer.

Interestingly, positive answers to (4) and (5) are not logically necessary for Alice not to be a murderer. Suppose Alice were callous and did not care either way about the CEO’s death. Then she wouldn’t be intending the CEO’s death—any more than she would be intending to make cracks in the sidewalk—but she wouldn’t go to any trouble to prevent his death.

Positive answers to (4) and (5) would indicate that Alice has on balance a negative attitude to the CEO’s death, despite uncontrollable feelings of glee. And it seems that to deal with the pastoral problem of double effect, what one needs is to have not just a neutral but a negative attitude to the evil. Of course, guilt at the CEO’s death may survive reflection on (4) and (5). But (4) and (5) could be a helpful step.

One writer on double effect said that for a double effect justification to apply one needs to do something to prevent or lessen the unintended evil. That kind of action could indeed help with the pastoral problem. But sometimes no action is possible—in that case, reflection on counterfactual action may help.

Still, I think even positive answers to (4) and (5) can leave a residual worry, especially in a scrupulous person. Alice might worry that she really does want the CEO dead, and while she would aim differently or call for an ambulance if she could, that would be out of duty rather than out of desire, and hence she still is intending the CEO to be dead. I think this is a mistaken worry. If she is thus moved by duty, then it seems that duty is structuring Alice’s intentions in a way that makes her not intend to kill the CEO—even if she uncontrollably rejoices at the immoral CEO’s death.

National self-defense

I think many of us have the intuition that it is permissible, indeed often morally required, for a decent country to defend itself against invaders when there is a reasonable hope of victory. The “decent” condition needs to be there: it was not permissible for Nazi Germany to defend itself against the Allies—they had the duty of surrendering. The “reasonable hope” condition needs to be there as well: if the consequence of fighting is nuclear attacks on all one’s cities, one should probably surrender.

If the Ruritanians invade Elbonia, a decent country, with the goal of killing all Elbonians, then at least if there is a reasonable chance of repelling the invaders, it is permissible for the Elbonians to defend themselves with lethal force. Only slightly less clearly, if the Ruritanians intend to cause no physical harm to Elbonians if the Elbonians surrender, but will wipe out Elbonian culture—they will forbid the use of the Elbonian language, ban the national pastime of painting intricate landscapes on pigeon feathers, and so on—then lethal self-defense is still likely to be permissible.

But what if the Ruritanians invade Elbonia simply in order to take away Elbonia’s sovereignty, so that if the Elbonians surrender, they lose sovereignty but nothing else? The Ruritanians won’t kill anyone, won’t disposs any individuals or corporations of their property, won’t interfere with any aspects of Elbonian culture, won’t conscript Elbonians into their military (the Ruritanians have an all-vounteer army), will not harm the Elbonian economical, educational and healthcare systems, etc. But they will take over national sovereignty. Moreover, the Elbonians are confident of this because the Ruritanians have a centuries-long record of expanding their empire on such terms, and many neighboring countries have lost their sovereignty but had no other losses. Furthermore, it is the Elbonians alone that are at issue. For geographic reasons, the Ruritanians are unable to expand any further, and so Elbonians in defending themselves cannot say that they doing so to protect other countries. And there are no other countries in the world capable of imperialism.

It is only permissible to wage war for the sake of a good that is proportionate to the great evils of war, after all. The question here is this: Is maintenance of national sovereignty worth the deaths—both Elbonian and Ruritanian—and manifold other harms of war?

I don’t know. A state is a valuable form of human community. The destruction of a state is prima facie a bad thing. But if the goods of culture and ordinary life are maintained, it does not seem to be a great bad. Suppose that there was no invasion, but the Elbonians voluntarily voted to join the Ruritanian Empire. Then while there would be some bad in the loss of the Elbonian state, it need not be a tragedy, and on balance it could even be for the good. It is, of course, gravely wrong for the Ruritanians to bludgeon the Elbonians into joining their Empire. But the good of sovereignty just might not be great enough for the Ruritanians to have a moral justification to resist to the death.

If this is right, then sometimes the mere fact that a war is one of just national self-defense is not enough to justify fighting. Do such perfectly clean cases occur? I doubt it: imperialist countries aren’t likely to be as nice as my hypothetical Ruritanians. However, one might have cases that are slightly less clean, where the expected damage to local culture is likely to be small relative to the expected harms of a protracted war, even if that war can be won by the defenders. Moreover, in real-life cases one needs to consider the value of policies that discourage future such attacks by this and other imperialist countries. If all small countries surrendered as soon as there was a Ruritanian-style invasion, then we could expect Ruritanians and others to mount a lot more invasions, which could indeed be harmful.

So our initial intuition about the permissibility of national self-defense is, I think, roughly right, though only roughly.

Inculpably acting through culpable ignorance

It is widely held that:

1. Doing the wrong thing while inculpably ignorant that it's wrong is itself inculpable.
2. Doing the wrong thing while culpably ignorant that it's is culpable, assuming the other conditions for culpability are met (freedom, etc.).

I think (1) is true but (2) is false. I think that not only does inculpable ignorance excuse, but so does culpable ignorance. (Assuming, of course, that it's real ignorance: one can lie to oneself that one is ignorant when in fact one knows.)

Start with this case. Sally was inculpably ignorant of the wrongness of targeting civilians in just wars. Like many Americans, she was raised to think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally permissible, since the bombings saved many lives by ending the war early. One morning, while an undergraduate, she culpably spent an extra five minutes on Facebook before going to her ethics class. As a result, she culpably showed up five minutes late (being late to class isn't always morally wrong, but being late without sufficiently good reason disturbs others' learning and is morally wrong, and I assume this is a case like that). Consequently, she missed the discussion of double effect and the distinction between strategic and terror bombing. Had she heard the discussion, she would have known that it's wrong to target civilians. Since she is culpable for lateness to her ethics class, her ignorance of the wrongness of the kind of terror bombing that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were subjected to is wrong. Years later, incurring no further culpability, she is still ignorant. But then one day there is a just war, and she is a drone pilot asked to target civilians in a situation relevantly similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She does so, believing that it's her duty to do so.

Had Sally refused to follow orders, she would have been culpable for violating her conscience--and indeed, very seriously culpable since her bombing saved many lives by ending the war early (I am assuming that this was the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But in fact, Sally acted wrongly: she committed mass murder. She did so in ignorance, but her ignorance was culpable, since she was culpable for being late to the class that would have cured her of her ignorance.

Given (1), had double effect not been discussed in class that morning when she spent too much time on Facebook, she would have been entirely inculpable for mass murder. It seems implausible that whether Sally is culpable for mass murder depends on what in fact went on in a class that she missed. Furthermore, culpability shouldn't depend on arcane counterfactuals. But it could be quite an arcane counterfactual whether Sally would have learned that it's wrong to target civilians in a just war. It might have depended on fine details of just how persuasive the professor was, what effect Sally's presence in the class would have had on the mode of presentation, etc.

Moreover, it seems implausible that Sally is culpable for mass murder because of her culpability for the peccadillo of being five minutes late to class. The intuition behind (1) is that you don't get culpability out of inculpability. You likewise shouldn't get mass-murder-level culpability out of a peccadillo. But this last argument is a little fast. For while "Sally is culpable for mass-murder" misleadingly suggests that Sally has great culpability. If we accept (1), we should accept a parallel principle that the degree to which one is culpable for a wrong act done in ignorance is no greater than one's degree of culpability for the ignorance. As a result, we might say that Sally is culpable for mass-murder, but the degree of guilt is at a level corresponding to being five minutes late to class (without, I assume, any reasonable expectation that those five minutes would result in ignorance about mass murder).

Very well. Let's suppose that five milliturps are the level of guilt corresponding to the lateness to class. Maybe the level of guilt for the mass murder would have been a gigaturp per victim, if Sally had known that such bombing is wrong. So the suggestion we are now exploring for saving (2) is that Sally's level of guilt for an ignorant bombing run is capped at five milliturps, no matter how many victims there are. (There is something odd about having slight guilt for something so big, but I don't think we should worry about the oddity.) Very well. Consider now two scenarios. In the first one, Sally goes on a single bombing run that she knows will claim 10,000 civilian victims. In the second, she goes on two bombing runs, which will claim 5,000 civilian victims each. On the capping suggestion, in the first scenario, Sally acquires five milliturps of guilt for her bombing run. In the second scenario, she acquires five milliturps of guilt for the first bombing run, too. That's already a little strange: we would expect less culpability with fewer victims. But it gets worse. In the second bombing run, the capping view will also assign five milliturps. As a result, in the second scenario, Sally incurs a total of ten milliturps of guilt. And that seems just wrong: it shouldn't matter that much how the victims are divided up. Furthermore, the intuition being the principle that culpability for an ignorant act can't exceed the culpability for the ignorance is, I think, violated when a multiplicity of ignorant acts exceeds in total culpability the culpability for the ignorance.

We might try a modified capping principle: The culpability for all acts coming from culpable ignorance is capped in total. This has the odd result, however, that in the second scenario, Sally is five-milliturps-guilty for the first run, but not at all guilty for the second, having already reached her culpability cap. At this point it seems much more reasonable simply to suppose that all of Sally's guilt is the initial five milliturps for being late to class. She doesn't acquire a second five milliturps for her bombing runs.

It may seem to be an insult to the memory of the victims that Sally manages to murder them without incurring any guilt. But, for what it's worth, it seems to me to be less of an insult to suppose that she is innocent of the murder than to suppose that she is pecadillo-level guilty for it, as on the capping views.

Murder and injustice

Not every kind of killing is a murder. Only an intentional killing is a murder. And not every intentional killing is a murder--just killing in a just war isn't murder. Only a wrongful intentional killing is a murder.

But not every kind of wrongful intentional killing is a murder. Jim takes a vow of non-violence, is drafted into the military notwithstanding the vow and intentionally kills in a just war in a way that is wrong due to violation of the vow (in some cases it might be that the needs of defending the innocent could override the vow, but stipulate that this isn't one of those cases). This intentional killing is a vow-breaking rather than a murder. Samantha is a police officer who shoots down a terrorist shooter who is on a rampage. However (and Samantha knew this), this terrorist is a crazy scientist who has just discovered a cure for a medical condition that kills millions, a cure that he was going to share after murdering ten people. Killing the scientist is wrong, but it's not a murder. Frederick is an executioner executing a duly convicted person who clearly deserves death, but this is a case the death penalty is impermissible for reasons other than justice (say, because there is a less violent way to protect society, which according to Evangelium Vitae implies that the death penalty is wrong). Martha intentionally kills an unjust aggressor in a war where her side meets some but not all the conditions of a just war: there is just cause, but the condition of reasonable expectation of success is not met.

In the above cases, the intentional killing is wrong but for reasons other than justice to the person killed. Indeed, in at least the cases of Jim and Samantha, the person being killed isn't being wronged at all.

I hypothesize that an intentional killing is a murder only if it is wrong as an injustice to the person killed. But this condition is still not sufficient. Suppose Jim instead of taking a vow of non-violence promised Patricia that he would never do anything to physically harm her, unless it was his moral duty to do so. And now Jim faces Patricia in a just war, under circumstances such that apart from the promise it would be permissible but not obligatory for him to kill her, and with the promise it is impermissible for him to kill her. Killing Patricia would be unjust to her, but the injustice is that of breaking a promise to her, rather than that of murder.

It's looking to me that murder is an intentional killing that is wrong due to a particular kind of injustice to the person being killed. It is difficult to specify the particular kind of injustice in a non-circular way, though.

Corollary: If suicide is a form of murder, then it is possible to be unjust to oneself.

Foam covered wooden swords

I made these for my big kids to spar with, as a birthday present to my son. Here are instructions on how to make them.

Pacifism

The pacifist believes that one ought not engage in problematic violence in war even if all the standard jus ad bellum conditions are satisfied. "Problematic violence" here means the level of violence that is prohibited. Probably few pacifists would think it would be wrong to push violent foreign soldiers away without hurting them. So, presumably, pushing someone painlessly away doesn't rise to the level of "problematic violence." Where the pacifist draws the line may differ from pacifist to pacifist, but I take it that lethal violence, i.e., violence that, if successful, has a high probability of resulting in the opponent's death, counts as problematic, even when the death is not intended. Thus, I take it that the pacifist will be opposed to shooting at an enemy soldier's heart even when one is using double effect and intending the disablement rather than the death of the enemy soldier. This is all stipulative of what I mean by "pacifist".

Question: Can the pacifist consistently permit problematic violence in law enforcement situations?

If not, then pacifism is seriously problematic, since it seems pretty clear that it is practically impossible to have a decent, self-sufficient community enduring over time without lethal violence to contain violent criminals.

But I think the answer to the question is in fact negative. For how could one draw a line between war and law enforcement? When the invading army marches in, burning crops and murdering citizens, they are breaking the victim country's laws. If problematic violence is permitted to enforce the laws of one's territory, it should be permissible to use problematic violence to stop them. But this seems to be a case of war. Hence, some lethal violence is permitted in some wars, contrary to what I stipulated as the view of the pacifist.

Perhaps, though, the pacifist could claim that it is only permissible to enforce a country's laws with problematic violence on the country's subjects, and an invading army does not consist of subjects. But this is deeply implausible. If it is permissible to use problematic violence to stop a citizen wife from murdering her citizen husband, it should also be permissible to use problematic violence to stop a non-citizen woman who sneaked into one's country to murder her citizen husband. Moreover, this should be permissible even if the woman was commissioned by another state to kill her husband. But if we allow that it is permissible to use problematic violence against criminals acting on behalf of foreign states, then there seems to be no way to deny that it is permissible to use problematic violence to stop invaders.

There is, though, a consistent position the someone could hold here: Problematic violence by agents of a state must be confined to that state's territory. This is not a pacifist position by my stipulation of what a "pacifist" is. But it may be thought to be a pacifist position in a broader sense. But I am not so sure. It seems that this is not so much a position against violence, as a position about jurisdiction.

Who is a combatant?

Jus in bello prohibits deliberate killing of non-combatants. But who is combatant? Plainly, a uniform a combatant does not make. If a dictator decreed that all toddlers are to wear military uniforms, that would not make them into combatants. Nor would they be combatants if he issued them with guns which they never fired. (The question of what should be done if they did shoot is a more involved one.)

I find particularly challenging the case of people pressed into military service who have the intention to refrain from violent acts. Under compulsion, they wear a uniform and carry a gun, but are no more combative than an unarmed toddler. In World War II, only 15-20% of American soldiers themselves along the line of fire would fire at the enemy in any given battle, even if the engagement lasted two or three days (I got this from Grossman's book on killing; Grossman doesn't say if the same 80-85% of soldiers were refraining from shooting in different engagements).

Suppose, then, that you are fighting a just war, and know (e.g., from intelligence reports) that 80% of enemy servicemen have a personal commitment either never to shoot or to shoot only in the air, and are wearing the uniform and carrying weapons under compulsion. You have an armed enemy serviceman in your gunsights. You do not have time to observe him long enough to figure out if he is one a uniformed pacifist or a soldier. Is it licit to shoot him?

If not, then justly waging wars against enemies whose soldiers are likely to be like that seems nigh impossible. On the other hand, how can it be licit to shoot someone who is more likely than not as innocent of bellicose activity as any conscientious objector? If you are a police sniper who sees in the distance five people, one of whom you know is a terrorist about to trigger a bomb via remote control and the other four are innocent bystanders, surely you are not permitted to pick off all five when you can't tell which one is the terrorist.

I see five solutions to this problem:

1. Drop the moral prohibition against killing innocent people who aren't any danger to anybody. This seems clearly wrong.
2. Prohibit lethal engagement in such situations. This makes much of what most people would consider the just conduct of war impossible. But perhaps double effect would still allow use of weapons not targeted at particular individuals, with the intention of killing the guilty.
3. Argue that by wearing uniform and carrying a gun on the side of injustice in a war, one has made oneself a part of an unjust war effort, and that in and of itself makes one a combatant. After all, even if one is not shooting oneself, one is boosting the war effort by providing a certain amount of cover for those who are shooting, etc. And anybody who is boosting the war effort on the side of injustice may be fairly shot. This seems mistaken. If our own POWs were forced to wear enemy uniform, and at gunpoint mixed with enemy troops, we would not consider them combatants on the enemy side--i.e., traitors--as long as they refrained from shooting at us. And the nationality of compelled uniformed people should make little moral difference here.
4. Follow Germain Grisez in saying that even in wartime, it is always wrong to intentionally kill anybody, guilty or innocent. But one can use guns and bombs and the like to intentionally make enemy soldiers incapable of harming us, and we can do this by the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) without intending that the enemy soldiers die. Their death is not a means to our goal of self-protection. All we need for self-protection is that they be out of commission for the course of the war. If this is correct, then it does not matter if 4/5 of the enemy is uniformed and pacifists, since their deaths are "collateral damage", just like the deaths of civilians standing near the enemy HQ when the HQ is bombed. But is this plausible? While some weapons can be thought of as disabling the enemy, with the enemy's death an unintended side-effect (e.g., if I hit an attacker over the head with a club, then it is plausible to suppose that I do not intend to kill him, but merely put him out of commission; if he dies, that's an unfortunate side-effect). But it feels like a stretch to use this kind of justification for all weapons. Suppose a sniper shoots an enemy soldier in the head. Let us say, with Grisez, that this is to disable the enemy soldier. But how is the sniper disabling the soldier? By destroying the brain. And how does destroying the brain disable the soldier? By killing him, it seems. And so the killing is intended, as a means, contrary to Grisez. Now maybe one can argue that one is merely trying to destroy the parts of the brain involved in fighting, and the fact that one destroys the whole brain is a mere unintended side-effect. This feels sophistical. And, anyway, if it is wrong to kill the innocent, it seems to be also wrong to intentionally destroy healthy portions of their brains.
5. Use another Double Effect line of justification. One aims at the enemy serviceman's heart and fires, say. But one isn't intending that the enemy serviceman be dead, or even that his heart be unable to oxygenate his body sufficiently for fighting (as per the previous suggestion). Rather, one is intending a conditional effect: One is intending that this serviceman be dead, or at least that this heart be unable to oxygenate his body sufficiently for fighting, if he is genuinely a combatant. One doesn't know that he is a uniformed pacifist (if one knew that, shooting him would be plainly wrong), and one's intended goal can be conditional. This solution strikes me as the least unsatisfactory of the five, but is not that satisfactory. It would allow the police sniper to shoot the five people one of whom is a terrorist. On the other hand, this solution coheres with the following intuition: It makes relatively little moral difference whether you throw a grenade at five people, killing them at once, or shoot each one individually. (Though the latter may be much more traumatic.) But it could be licit to throw a grenade at five people, four of whom were innocent and one of whom was a terrorist about to kill many people.

Here is an interesting and, I think, important conclusion. When deciding whether the proportionality condition in jus ad bellum holds--whether the war would eliminate more evils than it would cause--one needs to count among the evils the many non-bellicose enemy soldiers who would die as a result of the war. This can have real consequences. Suppose that one estimates that if an invading force is unopposed, they will murder 500,000 of one's people, some soldiers and some non-soldiers, but will cause no other evils. Suppose, further, that by opposing them, one will be able to reduce the death-toll on one's own side to 100,000, but one will need to kill a million enemy soldiers to do so. In killing a million enemy soldiers, one might be killing 800,000 completely innocent and non-bellicose people. Here, the proportionality condition would not seem to be met--one kills 800,000 innocent people to save 400,000. One should instead surrender. Unless, of course, one can argue that the enemy will not stop at killing the 500,000, which in practice is likely. But in any case, one must take into account the innocent death toll among enemy soldiers into account when figuring out if a war is licit.