Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations

by Michael Walzer

“A classic in the field” (New York Times), this is a penetrating investigation into moral and ethical questions raised by war, drawing on examples from antiquity to the present.Just and Unjust Wars has forever changed how we think about the ethics of conflict. In this modern classic, political philosopher Michael Walzer examines the moral issues that arise before, during, and after the wars we fight. Reaching from the Athenian attack on Melos, to the Mai Lai massacre, to the war in Afghanistan and beyond, Walzer mines historical and contemporary accounts and the testimony of participants, decision makers, and victims to explain when war is justified and what ethical limitations apply to those who wage it. 

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Politics, War, Military Fiction, International Relations

418 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Michael Walzer is a Jewish American political philosopher and public intellectual. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he is editor of the political-intellectual quarterly Dissent. He has written books and essays on a wide range of topics, including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, social criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation and is a contributing editor to The New Republic. To date, he has written 27 books and published over 300 articles, essays, and book reviews in Dissent, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many scholarly journals

Reviews

[Topher Marsh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this as required reading during my second year of studies at West Point. We read this along with Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.

Although its subtitle is "A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations" it does not present a coherent argument. The logic is circular and the argument falls in on itself.

In the end, perhaps Thucydides was right: "The strong do as they can, while the weak do as they must"

[Aaron Crofut · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, considered a must read in the field of just war theory, left me unimpressed. Everything is based on a system of morality that is never really explained save for an unexplained theory of rights that people supposedly have under various circumstances. Where do these rights come from?

The short of it is, I'm never going to buy the argument that people attacked have to put their own in harm's way for the sake of the attackers. The agent problem is worth deep consideration (can we hold a people accountable for their government's actions?) but Walzer does not even come close to answering it in an acceptable way.

Sherman was right; war is hell. Walzer never really answers the big question: what benefit do we gain by fighting in accordance his "moral" ideas of war? Without an answer, this is all just so much fluffery.

That all said, Walzer does write very well and raises many, many questions that need to be examined. This is a very complex subject. Walzer will make you think, especially if you disagree with him.

[Dorin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this after watching Oppenheimer, with its numerous moral dilemmas in the latter part of the movie, and after re-reading Walzer’s essay about the Allied strategic bombing campaign in WWII (World War II: Why Was This War Different?). But only started reading after Sinclair McKay’s The Fire and the Darkness: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945 left me unsatisfied. I needed more in-depth analysis of all the moral considerations in a case like this. Unfortunately, this book barely touches on this particular subject and does not expand much the point in his essay (point being that Nazism was an existential threat, so strategic bombing was justifiable, especially considering that it was the only way the British could fight back; it was wrong though to continue it and to change its objectives to indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets).

Waltzer takes war and all its gruesome aspects and puts them through a theoretical grinder. All the reasons we have for waging war and all the rules we have in war – jus ad bellum/jus in bello – are analysed by Waltzer. He takes examples as starting points and as ways to illustrate his arguments. This approach makes it easier to understand particular cases but weakens the argument. You can’t make general conclusions based on one example. In war, every situation is different, even if you strip it down to the very basics.

Waltzer essentially tells us that in every situation of war you have to see if your decision is morally justifiable. Every decision must check some criteria. As much as I agree with him in the ways that he sees war and the rules states/combatants must adhere to, I still think that it is hard, and next to impossible, to consider all the necessary things when you are being shot at, when you have to follow orders, when events swallow you whole or when you are in a state of constant stress/fear/exhaustion/adrenaline etc. He takes these particularities and argues against/for them separately, but in war these never come alone.

In retrospect, we can examine every decision as much as we want. We do have rules for waging war and we can easily see – most of the times – when a war is just. We can see what was morally acceptable or morally wrong. We have the luxury of time and comfort. But in war, those who fight will argue that they do not have the same luxuries and we should be more lenient in passing judgment.

This was a challenging, time-consuming read. Waltzer’s writing, although it seems friendly enough, is actually difficult to follow. It is worth it though, if not in its entirety, at least the chapters/aspects of war one is more interested in.

[Relstuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the initial portion of the book asks some good questions and contains some thought provoking analysis.

However, towards the latter part of the book I found myself disagreeing with the author about the WWII strategic bombing campaign and the use of nuclear devices in Japan. Two general things I did not feel he took into account are the differences in total war vs limited engagement (World war with entire nations using all elements of society to support the war effort vs a fraction of society committed to the war effort). The second issue is the judgment of the past by the standards of the present.

I wanted more info on the WWII bombing campaign from the position of the people who defended it. He mentions those people but I don't feel he gave me good info on why they felt the strategic bombing campaign was appropriate. He gives his opinion early in the discussion by calling the allied bombing campaign "terror bombing" over and over.

A specific issue I didn't agree with the author was his dismissiveness of the evil of the WWII era Japanese empire. He feels there is no comparison between the Japanese and the Germans from a moral standpoint and considers the Germans infinitely worse. My great-grandparents fled Indonesia to go back to Holland because they felt the Germans in general were not as evil as the Japanese. A review of the atrocities by the Japanese reveal a terrifying record of genocide and death that earns them a ranking among the worst in the WWII axis of evil.

I recommend Paul Tibbets book on his life and dropping the bomb titled (The Return of the Enola Gay) for a defense of dropping the bomb from someone who was part of the situation.

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for the international philosophy Olympiad

Admittedly, I didn't read the entire book. Still, I read until page 250-ish and a few other chapters. I'm not going to continue more because I'm done with philosophy. I am kind of the 39th best high school philosopher in the world so I think I've done enough.

This book is so very interesting. Do I agree? That's a different and longer story. I still think this book is essential to understand war. I feel that this book manages to take a controversial subject and, using real life examples, even the ground out. I loved that it was aimed at civilians instead of army folks.

I guess my problem is that it wasn't practical enough. If someone needs to write the rules of war, it should be him. That said, it felt unrealistic. Not Kant unrealistic (I swear, sometimes I wonder if he lived on this earth) but definitely unrealistic. It's unprepared for people breaking the rules. It doesn't provide a solution for the problem that the philosophy can be sound and still be wrong.

Also, I'm slowly becoming kind of a hardcore pacifist. If it includes the deaths of people, it's an unjust act because we are given life. This is ours and I find it difficult to accept that a few old men in suits sit in an air conditioned office and decide about the lives of young people. Worse, they don't even see them as people. Oh no, they're soldiers, they're part of a well oiled machine, they're pawns in a bigger game. I don't see how a war solves anything when the real solutions always happen once everyone remembers wars suck and want to stop.

I'm not sure I agree with myself and I realize sometimes, I guess, war is necessary. I also understand that no one wants war and that it's better to have limits to the war than the alternative.

So, I need to return to studying. Peace and love, folks.

What I'm taking with me
• A feeling of pride when in one of the lectures in the Olympiad, Walzer was discussed and no one else but me and the other girl from Israel knew who he was.
• The differences between a just war because of the fighting and a just war because of the reason. I probably will never remember the Latin terms for this though.
• War is hell.

[Meeghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is from meeghan's "read-for-school-political-science-degree" era, specifically the era in which she took most all of the classes that dr. michael allen taught because, in all sincerity, she loved the topics he taught and researched on. she also sometimes talks about herself in the third person, which is asinine.

anyways. im writing a review and rating this book because i think about this book ALL. THE. TIME. i don't know if its because i read it cover to cover three times in one semester bc dr. allen told us he wasn't gonna give us a study guide and we just had to *know* the contents of the book or because i really, really, REALLY enjoyed dissecting the theory of just war, but regardless, it happened.

i'd be curious to reread this book again to see if the years, life, experience, and current events have jaded me, so stay tuned for a potential re-read update.

[Martina Galea · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is military necessary and the principle of humanity can co-exist, although I do wish Walzer spoke more of how this can be done, rather done just leaving you with the thought.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read only one book on the morality of war, this should be the one. Walzer is the preeminent modern Just War Theorist, and this is still the definitive text on the subject - even if you don't agree with its entirety. I certainly don't.

If you are an "absolute pacifist," you have to answer why it would be morally justifiable to stand and watch the unmitigated horrors of genocide that have gone on throughout history without end other than force of war, and Walzer gives many examples here. Walzer, respectfully, challenges Ghandi stating that an army would not be repelled by its own sense of horror in mowing over millions of innocents, if that sense is absent or has been removed by the collective reprogramming of the state. Unfortunately, the Holocaust, was neither the first, nor the last such case in point, and Walzer uses Cambodia as a more recent example. If you realize this and say you are a "contingent pacifist," like Einstein and Russell, who would admit that "some circumstances call for war," well, then, you may as well claim to be a Just War Theorist. That way you can call upon a long, evolutionary history of what defines just and unjust causes for war and its prosecution. Walzer details that history and its rationality brilliantly.

If you are a so-called "realist," who makes a point of saying there is no such thing as an "unjust" cause for war, as long as you reasonably decide that it is in your own best interest, you are entitled to your opinion. However, you have to admit that anyone else could claim the same, no matter how ridiculous it may sound - and therein lies the rub: most people actually do call some reasons "ridiculous." We live in a world that actually behaves as if it has a desire for being moral, not one that lives as if it doesn't! Modern Just War Theory, including Walzer, admits that there may not be easy answers to what determines "normative" behavior on an international scale, but we do have to start somewhere, and do so through the spirit of cooperation and consensus that has been built up over centuries. If we don't, we all may as well go back to living in caves and cry "it's every man for himself."

[FiveBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Mary Kaldor of LSE has chosen to discuss Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations , on FiveBooks as one of the top five on her subject - War , saying that:

“… This is another classic. He is a philosopher and he wrote it after the Vietnam war asking the question – is war ever just?... The just cause nowadays, according to Walzer, is self-defence against aggression…. There is the distinction between the non-combatant and the combatant. Non-combatants, such as prisoners of war, old men, women and children, are to be protected and there are all kinds of rules about what we now call “collateral damage” which means that the collateral damage has to be proportionate – the cause has to be worthwhile enough that it doesn’t matter if you kill a few people. What Walzer does is to outline a set of principles that have been developed over centuries. …”

The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/mary-kaldor

[AK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book on the morality within war. Walzer applies a moral argument to many case studies showing how difficult it truly is to have a war that is both just in its cause and in the actions throughout conflict. It is highly informative, but a bit tedious at some points.

[Foreign Grid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

A very popular book on Just War theory although the writing can be less persuasive in later chapters. Still quite educational however. The first chapter made it well worth it.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walzer examines the ethics of fighting war for countries and for individuals. First published in 1977 he was far kinder to drafted soldiers than their political leaders. With specific historical examples, Walzer leads the reader thru the moral questions of starting, fighting and finishing a war.

Why I started this book: I'm tackling my pile of professional reading and this one was in audio!

Why I finished it: I haven't read many philosophy books and so it took me a while to get use to the language and jargon. However it was the sections that I didn't agree with that sparked the most thought on my part. Walzer is clear in his arguments and I was forced to straighten out my own thoughts and opinions in response. I completely agree that Just and Unjust Wars are a topic that need to be debated, that we need to have this conversation as part of national politics. That as citizens there is a collective responsibility to hold ourselves and our leaders accountable for unethical actions and conflicts. So here is my part of the conversation:

Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Walzer believes that dropping the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima was a moral mistake and unethical because it targeted civilians. He thinks that the forced prolongation of the war in demanding Japan's unconditional surrender violated international laws of sovereignty. And that the slaughter of civilians in the air raids over other Japanese cities was just as bad. (In his defense he also argues against these raids in Europe too.) And that saying the Atomic bombs stopped the fire bombing isn't a moral justification.

Moral assumptions:
1. Japan was losing and all America had to do was wait them out. They didn't need to continue inflicting massive damage on the country.
2. All air bombing is morally wrong
3. Japanese civilians suffered unproportionally.
4. Japanese military targets could be hit without targeting civilians working and living next door.


Rebuttal: Hindsight covers all historical arguments and I will try to be explicit about mine. I was born just as the Cold War was ending. I never had to nuclear drills at school... we did active shooter but that's another story. So I was never scared that another country would do to us, what we did to Japan. Additional sources including Japanese have been uncovered and analyzed since 1977.

Historical setting:
1. Japan at the time of the atomic bombing still had over one million men in uniform continually fighting to conquer China. This force was expected to return to Japan to fight in the country's last stand.
a. In both public broadcasts to the Japanese civilians and in the intercepted coded messages that the Americans were reading, the Japanese government was urging it's citizens to fight to the end; to commit to taking an invading American soldier to the grave with them. American services members had be unable to prevent massive civilian suicides in Okinawa. It was hard on morale and planners feared that it would be worse on the main Japanese islands.
b. The Japanese attempt at negotiated peace thru Russia with the Allies rested on the assumption that they could retain all conquered parts of China and Korea. Would it be ethical for the U.S. to abandon it's war time ally Chiang Kai-shek for a separate peace, leaving Japan with Chinese territory?
c. The Japanese had opened negotiations with the U.S. right before bombing Pearl Harbor. In fact, their ambassador was delayed in delivering the declaration of war when these negotiations fell thru which was part of the outrage of the attack on Hawaii. We had been attacked without a declaration of war. American leaders had no way of knowing if the Japanese desire for peace and negotiations with the Russians was sincere or if it was just another political tactic.
d. Finally is a person morally responsible for stopping a fight, in order to protect his opponent from further damage when the opponent is declaring openly and secretly his determination to continue? Must a country or an individual use non-lethal force against a determined attacker? At what point can a person or country force is the only way?
2. While all air bombing might be morally wrong; each country bombed others. Hitler hit London with V2 rockets, Britain retaliated with bombing runs to German cities. The Americans bombed everyone and the Japanese bombed their opponents too. And I'm not just talking about Pearl Harbor. Implicit in the argument was that Japanese civilians were specifically targeted while the Japanese limited themselves to military targets. Not so, and it was technical and supply issues more than moral standards that limited the Japanese. During the 1930s the Japanese bombed Chinese cities. And they also launch "Fire Balloons" basically hot balloons tied to bombs relying on the Pacific Jet stream to blow them to cities and forests in Canada and America. And they are still out in the woods, 70 years later.
a. The Americans had 3 ways to continue the war. The Navy argued against invasion of the home islands. They wanted to blockade Japan and starve them into surrender. The Army Air was determined to bomb them into submission and the Marines and the Army was preparing for full invasion. Walzer talked about the ethics of sieges in an earlier chapter. He argued the immorality of blockades too. To him, the ethical question is then is it better to starve 71,998,104 Japanese or to kill 146,000 in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki is mute. It is better and morally justifiable to send soldiers into harms way because only boots on the ground can prevent civilian causalities. Once again the issue of Okinawa and the mass suicides because the American troops were there.
3. China.
a. The Japanese were very lucky that rise of communism in China made the Americans less likely to emphasize their suffering at the hands of the Japanese government. And instead emphasized the importance of the new alliance with Japan and South Korea.
4. Americans warned Japanese civilians to flee the cities and the military targets that they contained. The Japanese government encouraged middle school youth to volunteer at factories to help the war effort. Many Japanese children died immediately in Hiroshima because they were outside clearing firebreaks on the morning the bomb fell.

My opinion was that the bomb was necessary. It has been formed over the course of reading many books on the subject and I will change my mind if presented with new information. I recommend reading Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, and Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon to start. Leave me a recommendation if you know of other books.

The hard thing about history is that you can't rewind time and play it the other way, with a different decision to see which option ended with less suffering. Walzer's entire book presented the reader with the question is more ethical to end the war immediately with horrible no holds barred fighting or is it better to fight on limits to preserve as much as you can? Each of us will draw the line at a different point... which is why we must wrestle with the ethics of war before a conflict is started, while we fight and long after as we care for the survivors.

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

A ridiculous book by a chronic contrarian. Walzer judges Nazi Germany to be a supreme evil as a "matter of arithmetic" (the Six Million), but proceeds to handwring over German civilian deaths from Allied bombings that were double those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of which Walzer is unequivocal in his condemnation. He then dismisses Japanese war crimes as "not a serious threat to peace" despite their Chinese victims totaling three to five times the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Elsewhere, he says Czechoslovakia was wrong to allow a Nazi takeover but Finland should have accepted annexation by the USSR, on the basis that Nazis were generally genocidal but Stalin would most likely have killed fewer Finns in an occupation than the actual invasion. I'm not really sure how any of this is supposed to be "moral."

Walzer's public opinions since the 90s have moved on from the main arguments in this book, although the incoherence remains. Recently, for example, he has argued that the Israeli bombing of civilians in Gaza is just, but Israel's pager-explosion attacks on Hezbollah were war crimes as were its assassinations of Hamas leaders! My other favorite story about Walzer is that he refused to protest the Iraq Invasion, which he opposed, but protested the Iraq Occupation, which he supported. Leave it to him to find the most useless position in the middle-ground.

[Sarah Hymans]

look did I read this whole thing? no! but I had to read some chapters for philosophy and I think I got the gist so I'm going to count it and you can't stop me

[Sarah (Gutierrez) Myers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discussions of the justice of war generally make a distinction between jus ad bellum (just war) and jus in bello (justice in the war). In this book, Michael Walzer does not make any great attempt to deal with jus ad bellum; he takes the principle that resistance to aggression is the basis for a just war as his starting point, and the majority of the book is devoted to the rules of war, that is, how to fight justly in war. If you, like me, have doubts about the justice of war, period, or were looking for a critique of or response to pacifism, that's a different book. I am trying not to blame the author for not writing that other book (or maybe he did, and I haven't found it). In this book, Walzer's more central contention is that war is an activity which can be restrained by just boundaries, as opposed to the notion that war is simply a horrific monster, which once unleashed cannot consistently be contained by any moral code.

There was still a lot here to appreciate. Walzer has clearly done his research and every chapter is peppered with historical and literary examples. (In one place he even references a rather obscure Shakespeare play, King John, to illustrate the subject's duty to make some protest to an unjust command.) Walzer also brought up some examples from earlier periods to illustrate that not everything we might have taken to be a feature of modern wars is necessarily a new thing under the sun; siege warfare, for example, has much in common with total war in modern times.

On the other hand, Walzer seems to be relying on an undefined theory of rights (possibly identifiable with western liberalism), which is never presented clearly and argued for. He generally rejects utilitarianism in war, in favor of respecting the war convention and the rights it gives to noncombatants, but at the end he is willing to grant that extremely desperate circumstances justify the utilitarian argument against all civilian rights. (So for him, the a-bombs were an injustice because they killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in a situation which was not immediately dangerous enough to require such an action.) He wants to say that in most cases soldiers simply have to accept the increased difficulties and dangers that come with trying to keep civilians safe, but if the situation becomes grave enough, all's not fair exactly, but you have to do it even if it not's fair--though the people who do it are not praiseworthy.

All in all, a book that raised more interesting questions than I was expecting, but ultimately gave unsatisfying answers to those questions.

[Andrewh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has long been the uber-text of Just War theory, despite being written in 1977, long before the end of the bipolar Cold War and the 21st-century complications of international terrorism and the 'responsibility to protect'. As such, it does read very much like a book form a past era for much of the time, and the publishers have not made a huge effort to update the 4th edition - it has a (short) new preface in which Walzer comes out against regime change of the Iraq sort. The book is superbly erudite and well written, effortlessly covering the complex arguments thrown up by centuries of war, and making finely grained pronouncements on the ethics of conflict. Unfortunately, much of it seems very outdated now and I think he might have been encouraged to write at least one full chapters on the War on Terror and the issues of the post-cold war world, which are more difficult to judge than those of, say, World War II, the most oft-cited example of a just war (though not fought justly at the end, as Walzer points out - the H-Bomb 'exploded the theory of just war', just as the threat of international nuclear terrorism may also, others may argue).

[ART · Rating 1 out of 5]

More journalism than philosophy, alternating between mushy and dangerous. Rather than a curb on the conduct of war, it provides rhetorical cover for empire and an extremely useful apology for power. [Notice for instance, G.W. Bush's justification for the invasion of Iraq, drawing on language from Walzer.] It makes no contribution to an understanding of the ethics of war, because it only rehashes the current regime of international law of war. An example of its flimsiness, note how W's reference to Deutronomy on the "use" of captured women attempts to make the text do what it cannot possibly do, show a "universal respect for non-combatants" that was certainly not true in 750 BCE. In short the book is ahistorical, silent on the workings of power, especially asymmetric warfare, and, most importantly privileges military testimony. Since civilian casualties are irrelevant so long as they were not directly targeted and the strike "necessary," the word of those doing the killing are taken as the final word of whether they were necessary.

[Rianne Heartfilia · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I read this because I wrote an essay about one of his articles. The thing is that he writes a very interesting concept and I would consider writing another essay about it because there are still a lot of questions.

I do have to say what was very annoying were the little stars, in which Walzer keeps explaining something, later on, I always missed them so at the end of the page I was like: oh shit. Also the fact that he kept referring to things in the future: "I would say this later on in this and this chapter." Nice but I am reading the discussion now. I do understand you do that from time to time considering you can't say everything all at once but it was not once or twice, it was a lot of times. Which was disappointing.

At least this book makes me more interested in reading a bit more but I have to get my hands on stories/books like this that are interesting. It is a tiring subject from time to time and some distinctions aren't clear to me still.

[Douglas Graney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite the provocative title which spurred my interest. Unfortunately the approach the author takes is high-brow scholarly (which is to say dull) instead of interesting writing. There are some useful passages regarding the Vietnam War, The 6-Day War, elements of the Civil War but those passages are few a far between. Ended up flipping through it and landing on too rare attention-holding segments.

[Dimitra Prekka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it and know I will come back to it many times - I think everyone should read this

[William Bahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than just a Just War book!

I found this book after reading the following in another book, “The West Point Way of Leadership”:
“Independence of mind is taught at West Point in several venues, including a particularly challenging course in moral philosophy. One of the texts used for this course is “Just and Unjust Wars” by Michael Walzer. In addition to his academic and authorial credentials, Walzer was a Vietnam-era peace activist. The book grew out of his desire to resolve the troubling issues of that war which affected him ard many others of his generation—including West Pointers. This book is a groundbreaker in the study of war; no modern moral theorist has so cogently articulated just-war theory with specific his¬torical lessons for those who may make war in the future. Year by year, West Point is probably the most substantial buyer of Walzer’s book.
“In the study of this book, the Academy draws the cadets into critically examining the moral issues raised by U.S. mili¬tary history and policy. This kind of scrutiny forces cadets at times to call into question the mission, and even the sense of themselves, that brought them to the Academy in the first place. The equivalent would be business schools offering courses to question the value of capitalism, or to debate whether routine business practices can be justified.
“Why does the Academy think it a good idea to elevate the cadets’ sensitivity to moral issues of going to war and fighting wars? Why should leaders think about the basic morality of their situations? It’s crucial because leadership entails having a mind broad enough to sense when the organization is wrong and a heart courageous enough to do something to fix it.”

I’ll add to the above by saying “Just and Unjust Wars” is exceptionally well researched and written, even elegant at times. In reading it, I’m reminded at times of the movie “Paper Chase” with Professor Kingsfield’s Socratic-method questions and answers, followed by more questions and answers, spinning the tumblers of one’s mind, turning one’s skull full of mush into a mind thinking like a lawyer...about right and wrong. I cannot add much more than Henry J’s excellent review other than to say that, for me, the author gave interesting insights and background on various wars I have not seen anywhere else. I was especially intrigued with his section on the Vietnam War, the source of much Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among veterans, with a lot of it caused by the inability to sort out what was the “right” thing to have done, resulting in much misery as one self-assaults one’s own character for having acted one way or the other in a cauldron of moral dilemmas. While the book doesn’t deal with PTSD as such—in fact the term doesn’t even show up in the book—for some such-afflicted readers it may help by putting into perspective the difficulty mankind has confronted over the millennia as it has searched for what in warring is just and unjust.

For anyone who’s involved in war, as a soldier, a spectator, a person wondering about martial history, or someone just curious about his/her own character when placed in extremely challenging, life and death, existential situations, I highly recommend this book!

Of possible interest: Strategy Pure and Simple: Essential Moves for Winning in Competition and Cooperation and George Washington's Liberty Key: Mount Vernon's Bastille Key - the Mystery and Magic of Its Body, Mind, and Soul, a best-seller at Mount Vernon. “Character is Key for Liberty!”

[Jackson Herndon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really thought provoking and will always be applicable. Takes you through the paces of wartime scenarios and gives good examples of just, unjust, and murky conflicts. While I found the historical application interesting, the concept of morality in war is extremely simple and, on a case by case basis, a kind person could come up with the correct moral argument given the full context of any of the discussed situations. The only thing that complicates the morality of war is lack of information during the conflict. Otherwise there are evil or good actions, but most of the time, paranoia, fear, and ignorance are larger factors.

What is depressing is that while we can define what is just or unjust in war, it’s very difficult for moral people to have any power in making wars more just. I think this is adequately evidenced by US citizens electing one of the most intentionally immoral people alive today to be commander in chief of the world’s largest military.

Obviously we are in a lot of unjust conflicts right now. Supporting a genocide, attempting to aid an aggressive conqueror in Europe, attacking sovereign nations’ civilians in international waters under false pretenses. And knowing that people study just war and our war leaders don’t give a shit about it is extremely concerning.

This book acknowledges complex military topics like sieges, jus in bello, the moral responsibility of soldiers, etc. But I think overall what this has illustrated for me is that war is unable to be regulated because there is no requirement for military leaders to follow the war convention as long as they are in war or their military is never defeated/dissolved. Just look at Vietnam or literally any conflict after the second world war. None of it is justified unless in self defense or opposition to aggressive fascism, which seems like the path we are headed towards…

Overall, the philosophical takes in this book are extremely mellow and should really serve as a litmus test for war leaders. The author makes a concerted effort not to try and answer any of the more difficult moral dilemmas (mostly about assigning blame in smaller conflicts), but in the grand scheme, if you need this book to tell you what’s good or bad about war you have bigger issues with your morality.

[Alexander L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for a class, and it was one of the most formative things I have ever read. I highly recommend it for its profound historical spread and its daring to ask questions and demand ethical reactions to those questions. However, I must temper my review by saying much of its scope seems to be wasted on quietly structuring the actions of the US and its allies in conflicts, most commonly WWII, as being justified. This attempt to sway the historical narrative should be no secret to a careful reader. I also note the often limited scope of the locales and the times Walzer selects in his analysis. Many of the actions are European in location and his historical perspective is European. As an example, his description of the revolution in Algeria. For all the careful thought put into this book, and there is a lot and that is commendable, it was not enough to overcome the subconscious bias that exists in the mind of the author and likely many of the readers, at least those educated by an American history curriculum.

[maïwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

lu dans le cadre de ma licence
Vraiment incroyable, j’ai accroché de fou. L’auteur essaye de rester le plus objectif possible, après il est américain donc quand il dérive ça se sent facilement et on peut passer outre, mais son argumentation est super fluide.
C’est mon deuxième livre de ce genre là, et j’ai vraiment été aspirée par la réflexion que propose ce livre. Je devais le fermer toutes les deux pages pour me demander ce que moi je pensais à la problématique qu’il venait de soulever. C’était extrêmement stimulant. Le fait d’argumenter chacun de ses propos avec des exemples historiques était particulièrement intéressant. Vraiment coup de cœur.

[Daniel Moss · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts off fine, however, somewhere around page 50 Walzer make the classic mistake of building entire arguments off of a particular abstract starting point - namely, that there is such thing as a social contract entered into between society and state which gives legitimacy and sovereignty to the state. It's a foolish proposition and leads to all kinds of weird bastardized points of view as things get increasingly confused the more you build on the false starting point.

[James Tarantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that Walzer’s arguments over the morality of a conflict were interesting and supplied me a different perspective on conflict. While I disagree with a multitude of his assertions, I appreciate the attempt made to objectively define when a conflict is moral.

[Adelaide · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had more trauma than a little life

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that makes you think and question and ponder....

I don't necessarily agree with everything Walzer says, but it is inarguably a seminal text in its field by a leading expert that has spawned retorts and further ruminations along a number of axes.

[Emma]

I lowk hate my life rn

[Largo Vanderkelen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just wars... Feels like a contradiction. Especially in these times.