Response to Michael Gross: Military Ethics, Insurgency, and the Rise of 'Soft War'

摘要

Michael Gross's latest book (Gross 2015) and his introductory article in this issue of the Journal of Military Ethics are clearly onto something extremely important: if rules and principles can be discerned that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable means of fighting conventional wars between states, then why would we not, in principle, be able likewise to distinguish between both better and worse causes for civil war and insurgency? And just as importantly, why should we not be able to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable means of conducting such warfare within states (rather than, as at present, tending to condemn all such wars, and their methods, without distinction)? Certainly Michael Walzer's brief treatment of guerilla warfare (and his analysis of the tactic of terrorism as a means of pursuing it) had pointed the way, and indicated a need for an extended treatment of the sort Gross now proposes to provide. Walzer's famous example of the Russian insurgent who refrained from tossing a grenade into the carriage of a nobleman (because the nobleman's son was riding alongside) provides a case in point (Walzer 2000: chs. 11, 12; esp. pp. 197-204).