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1. Some critics claim that new wars, new weapons, and new types of enemy have rendered the just war tradition obsolete. Are just war principles of restraint still relevant and applicable? (You might want to think specifically about the principle of ‘non-combatant immunity’, or ‘discrimination’, according to which only combatants are legitimate intentional targets of attack, and contemporary realities such as ‘humanitarian wars’, lethal autonomous weapons systems, violent non-state actors (such as so-called ‘Islamic State’), child soldiers, and ‘suicide bombers’.
On face value, this question is asking you to return to the just war tradition with its distinction between jus ad bellum (governing the justice of resorting to war) and jus in bello (pertaining to just conduct in war). Yet with its invocation of new modes of warfare, the second element that this question is asking you to consider is the question of moral agency in relation to the various actors which you see to be at play (p. 19-20). As the question suggests, an analysis through a particular case study will help you here.
2. Should soldiers on the ground be held morally responsible for fighting in an unjust war? Should all citizens in a democracy be blamed for the unjust conduct of a war in which their state engages? In each case, if so, why? If not, why not?
This question is asking you to return to the discussion of moral responsibility and moral agency. To offer a holistic response to this question, however, you may have to move beyond the question of who is responsible, and engage deeper questions of agency and the possibility of action in relation (or contradistinction) to questions of socio-political structures.
3. To what extent should soldiers risk their lives to protect civilians? Does it affect your answer whether the civilians in question are the soldiers’ compatriots or on the ‘enemy’ side? What ethical framework are you invoking in reaching your answer?
This question is asking you to reflect on the different conceptions of moral standing. One way in which you might do so is to assess such conceptions through the lens of cosmopolitans and/or communitarians (p. 9-12). As you will remember from reading chapter 14, the former rejects the notion that political borders can demarcate ‘outsiders’ and sees our moral duties to extend to everyone globally. Communitarians, by contrast, highlight commitments to morality, moral responsibility, as well as moral standing based on identity and communal bonds.