Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [54]
There are circumstances in which it is permissible to engage in violence to protect your nation or others. The traditional account of these circumstances is called “Just War theory.” There must be: just cause—a credible threat; right intention—the reason for fighting is to respond to the threat, with the ultimate aim of a just peace; competent authority—the decision to fight is made by true representatives of the nation or group; last resort—peaceful means have been exhausted; reasonable prospect of success—it is credible that a just peace will result. In addition, a nation or group engaged in warfare must satisfy the conditions of discrimination—only combatants are to be targeted, and proportionality—the force used must be proportionate to the threat faced.
These conditions are not easily satisfied, and all must be satisfied for warfare to be permissible. Only the very best of reasons will do. By analogy, consider Anakin’s wholesale slaughter of the Sand People. He certainly had something like just cause, since they were responsible for the undeserved suffering and death of his mother. But he acted out of anger and a desire for revenge, and so failed to satisfy the condition of right intention. His response was out of proportion to any threat they presented to him. It certainly wasn’t a last resort, and he failed to discriminate by killing the women and children. It is also highly problematic that he acted unilaterally, in vigilante fashion.
To Be All You Can Be, or Not?—That Is the Question
Whatever its success, Just War theory has had very little to say about the recruitment, training, and deployment of one’s own troops. The same is true of international agreements governing warfare, such as the Geneva Convention.
Take recruitment. Plato apparently thought that homosexual men make better soldiers, at least in couples, dubiously claiming each will fight more ardently to prove himself a worthy lover. Historically, financial reward has probably delivered more recruits than the promise of glory: mercenaries like Jango Fett have formed a substantial complement of most armies (an interesting feature of the Iraq campaign is the relatively high—by modern standards—number of mercenaries employed by the United States). Financial rewards can be less direct, too. Free college tuition is a tempting reason to join the military, as is the prospect of gainful employment.
Recruitment practices can be morally problematic in a variety of ways. They might be unfairly exclusionary (for instance, the U.S. military’s attitude to homosexuals is rather different from Plato’s). The institution of a draft might violate autonomy, forcing individuals to fight against their will. Even volunteer armies are constituted to a disproportionately large extent by underprivileged social groups, especially when it comes to fighting, raising concerns of social justice—the poor used as cannon fodder by the wealthy, to put it polemically. Or a volunteer army might attract mostly thugs, who will use membership in the military as a pretext to commit moral violations.
Next, consider training of a specifically military sort: to fight and kill. How do you get people to fight at all? The prevailing strategy is to condition military personnel, so that they will respond appropriately to situations and orders without having to think about them. They need to be physically fit, and the physical training is employed in a disciplinary fashion, to discourage individuality and develop a team mentality. To appropriately react to situations, it’s desirable to have ingrained