All Things Considered. Making Moral Sense of the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza by Nigel Biggar

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All Things Considered. Making Moral Sense of the Wars in Ukraine and Gaza by Nigel Biggar.

Read the paper here: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/all-things-considered-making-moral-sense-of-the-wars-in-ukraine-and-gaza/ 

The pacifist answer to the problem of #war is straightforward. Any use of violent force by anybody in any circumstances is immoral and should cease. War is always worse than its alternatives; peace is always preferable. This is not a view to which I subscribe. We all want peace, but at what cost and to whom? If those who believe in the possibility of morally justified war have to reckon with the dreadful consequences of their position, so do pacifists. Not going to war in 1994 was good for Britons and Australians, but not so good for the Tutsi in Rwanda: our staying at peace left the Hutu at peace to slaughter 800,000 of them. Peace, like war, is morally complicated.

The war in #Ukraine has resulted in the widespread devastation of the country. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons hangs over it, and it seems unlikely that the Ukrainians can triumph over Russia. So, surely it would have been better, if Kyiv had not resisted in the first place. And would it not be best, if it were to stop resisting now?

Meanwhile in #Gaza the civilian casualties of the war between Israel and Hamas continue to mount. South Africa has accused Israel of genocide, and the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has applied for a warrant to arrest the Israeli Prime Minister. And yet, it was Hamas that began the current phase of the conflict with the horrendously deliberate and indiscriminate massacre of #Israeli civilians on October 7 last year. And it is Hamas that planned to make a battlefield out of a dense urban environment, building tunnels for its gunmen but no shelters for non-combatants. And it is Hamas that is constitutionally committed to eradicating #Israel. So how are we to make coherent moral sense of the situation?