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5 - Shedding Certain Blood for Uncertain Reasons

from Part II - Can International Law’s Posture towards Soldiers Be Defended?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2018

Tom Dannenbaum
Affiliation:
Tufts University, Massachusetts
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Summary

This chapter explores several domestic implications of the normative account offered in the previous chapters. In particular, that account demands that states bolster their soldiers’ reasons to defer to their own state over others (so as to lessen the burden when they are forced to fight) and that states alleviate the coercion that drives soldiers to fight in illegal wars. Two institutional steps would combine to enhance the soldier’s reasons for deference: the creation of a domestic jus ad bellum devil’s advocate and the permanent institutionalization of a post-war commission of inquiry. On the issue of coercion, domestic law should provide a limited right for soldiers to refuse to fight in illegal wars whenever such protection is compatible with preserving military functioning in lawful wars. The formal classification of wars into low- and high-risk categories is not an implausible ambition. If that were implemented, providing disobedience rights in low-risk wars would be viable without undermining institutional functioning. More ambitiously, a system in which the soldier’s right to disobey would be vindicated only after the war (pursuant to the assessment of the aforementioned commission) could balance the need for institutional preservation and the importance of protecting righteous disobedience.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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