What Counts as a War of Self-Defence? Iran & Beyond w. Prof David Rodin

What actually counts as self-defence when waging war? The 21st century has seen a pivot towards ‘preventive wars’: wars fought in anticipation of a possible future attack. The war in Iran is the latest example. What can philosophy tell us about these wars?

My conversation with Prof David Rodin, a world-leading ethicist of war, covers these questions and other topics, including the Israel-Palestine conflict; the "conspiracy paradox"; nuclear threats; the moral duty to spy; the psychology of those waging unjust wars; and non-military ways of warding off an invasion.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

War is chaos. But is it at least possible to grip the question of what determines whether a war is just or unjust? Self-defense seems key here, but what actually is self-defense? And are politicians stretching this notion beyond recognition? Since 9-11, governments have sought to justify preventive wars. Wars fought not because of an imminent threat, but to address some vague possibility of a future attack. Is this merely realistic or morally wrong? Did recent conflicts in the Middle East begin with a just cause? And can spying and social cohesion help support a more purely defensive approach to security of the realm? Hello and a huge welcome to Surprising Ethics, the podcast that promises an intriguing and surprising idea drawn from philosophy in every single episode. I'm your host, William Gilday, a researcher in philosophy at McGill University and the Centre for Research and Ethics. And thanks to the Center for Research and Ethics for their support of this podcast. Although it's probably worth saying that none of my episodes speak for or necessarily reflect any of the views of any university or institution. Today we'll talk about a war. From the start of the 21st century, governments have aimed to stretch the crucial idea of self-defense to justify what's known as preventive war. Let's imagine two scenarios. In the first, your country is under attack. The aggressor is assembling its troops and the attack is unfolding. It seems fine for you to go to war to defend yourself. But what about a second scenario in which you're not actually under attack? You do have a state that hates your country, and that state might attack you in some stage and in some way in the future. In this second scenario, can you go to war and get the first strike in to get the upper hand? Governments have been drifting towards a yes to this question, trying to expand the grounds for just war. And in the 21st century, the world has been dragged towards preventive war. War started not because of an attack that's already begun to unfold, but because of a vague sense of future threat. And such wars are presented as necessary and merely hard-headed. But amid the emotions stirred by the sense of danger and the unknown, it seems vital to examine the moral principles underlying just wars and to grip the issue more rationally. So, as always on surprising ethics, we start with a status quo view before looking at surprising arguments and alternatives. So, what is the status quo about preventive war? I'm not actually sure there is a single dominant view here. Traditionally, scholars have been against preventive war, but since 9-11, there's something of a status quo view that's emerged in some quarters in countries like the US. And according to this now popular view, which is assumed by many political parties and policy arenas in the West, preventive war is often justified. Here's Donald Trump in March 2026, talking about why he started a war with Iran. Here's George Bush speaking in 2003 as he launched a war in Iraq.

SPEAKER_04 4:15

On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Bush is here defending a war not waged in response to an attack from Iraq, but to remove Iraq's ability to wage war. He goes on.

SPEAKER_04 4:34

The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now with our army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of firefighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

And if you the probably the best example of preventive war before 9-11, or a powerful example, is Pearl Harbor.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

This is Anne-Marie Slaughter, former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department and former professor at Harvard Law School.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Japan attacks us because they know they think sooner or later we're going they're going to be at war with us and they want to strike first to weaken us. Now that strikes me as not something that you want to encourage. And I think before before now, it was not a good idea to allow preventive war, to allow for the possibility of preventive war, because what you were effectively doing was licensing states to attack other states. Now we face a world in which individuals can create the kind of damage that only states could create before. And in that kind of a world, you can't wait for an imminent attack because they're not going to use marks.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

So what do we make of all this? Well, one of the very best people to turn to here is Professor David Roden. David Roden is a world-leading scholar of the ethics of war. He's a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, and his publications include the book War and Self-Defense, which was given a prize by the American Philosophical Association. Roden is a founding member of the Oxford Leverhume programme on the changing character of war and is a regular lecturer at the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College, where he provides ethics training for senior officers up to the rank of two-star general. My chat with David covers timeless ethical questions to make sure it will be useful to listeners tuning in many, many years from now. But we also get into specific conflicts that are pressing right now, especially towards the end. We talk about the principles of just war theory, preventive war and criticisms of it, self-defense and its limits, the so-called conspiracy paradox, facing defenses of a preventive war, the US-led war on Iran, nuclear threats, the moral case for spying, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the psychology of those waging unjust wars, and social, non-military, and purely defensive ways of stopping hostile invasions. So please do hit that follow button to help give philosophy a greater role in our thinking about politics and ethics. But without further ado, here is David Roden. Thanks so much, David, for talking to me. First question: what are preventive wars?

SPEAKER_03 7:27

So the distinction is often drawn between a preventive war and a pre-emptive war. So if you think about war as being an example of self-defense, then you might think, well, by definition, if you're defending against some kind of a wrongful attack, it has to happen before the attack has been completed. That's kind of almost by definition. But we want to draw a distinction between an act which is kind of intercepting a blow which is just about to fall, right? That's preemption. So, you know, maybe an enemy has tried to strike you and uh the, you know, the blow hasn't yet fallen on you, but the fist has been raised and it's just about to come down, and you intercede it through an action, right? That would be an example of preemption. Prevention essentially expands that timescale much, much further. So it thinks about um a situation where you think that somebody, and maybe you have very good reason to believe that somebody or some state is about to attack you at some point in the future. Um, but they haven't commenced that process of attack as yet. That would be an example of a preventive action.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Right. And my understanding is there has been a bit of a drift towards preventive war in the last couple of decades with the US uh national security strategy and so on. Is that is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Well, that's right. So um many states have attempted to uh push the boundaries from a context of preemption. And the and there was actually in the laws of war a very, very significant debate, even about whether preemptive wars uh were permissible. So the example that people often give for a preemptive war would be um uh the Six-Day War in Israel, where the Arab states, um, there was very good intelligence suggesting that Israel's Arab neighbors were about to attack, they hadn't yet attacked, and Israel got the strike in first. And that's considered to be, in a way, the kind of purest example of a preemptive war. And a lot of legal scholars even thought that was very, very questionable because um the attack hadn't started as yet, but most people thought it was about to. Um, but uh many legal scholars thought that that was that was permissible. Um, but starting from the um the wars uh that the US fought in um particularly in Iraq, and uh it was really formalized in the national security strategy in 2002 was this idea that you could push that that that uh that window much, much further, and that it could be permissible to strike uh a state um like Iraq that that hadn't uh hadn't um uh attacked uh the United States, but where they believed that um there was this idea that Iraq had or was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, and if they continued on that pathway, they they would attack the US at some point, and it was therefore permissible to attack them beforehand. So that was uh that was very much a doctrine, if you like, a declared doctrine of um of preventive war. And uh and you know, when we look at the way that Trump talks about the uh the current war against Iran, it's also talked about very much in that sense.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah. And what's your criticism of preventive wars? Uh obviously a lot of people think they're justified because they're kind of a form of self-defense, and that self-defense is is kind of the key way of justifying war. But what's your view here?

SPEAKER_03 11:03

Yeah, so there are different ways that we can think about justifications for war. So, you know, one way that's that many people think about it is what a philosopher would call a consequentialist um uh account. So, consequentialist or utilitarian view uh essentially says, well, um, is it, you know, is is it a good rule to allow states to engage in preventive wars in the sense that it creates better overall consequences to allow states to do that than otherwise. And one very obvious objection to that is to say, well, look, if we allowed states to engage in what they believe to be preventive wars against an adversary, another state that hadn't attacked them, but they thought might attack them at some point in the future, you create a very, very unstable international system. Because, you know, what we find is that these kinds of conflicts will often arise uh among states who have a very long uh history of animosity together, you know. So Iran and the United States have been adversaries very suspicious of each other for a very long time. Uh, you need to think about India, Pakistan, you think about um Israel and Palestine. These are all communities where each side has, you know, a pretty well-founded suspicion and fear of the other. So if you create a rule that says, you know, any state can attack preventively if they think they're good they're likely to be attacked in the future, that just feels like a very radically destabilizing rule, right? Because it looks like it's gonna end up justifying, maybe even encouraging each side and those two polarities to be uh to be attacking each other preventively to their own way of thinking. And that and that feels like that's not gonna be a rule that will generate good overall overall consequences. So that's a kind of consequentialist way of thinking about the ethics of war. I tend to be a little bit less persuaded about those kinds of arguments, just because I think it's actually very hard to make those kinds of judgments, those kind of very long-term assessments that you would need to have to make to be able to say, is this a good rule or is this not a good rule? You know, we don't have a lot of very good empirical evidence around whether whether this is the case or not. We can kind of armchair theorize about it. And yeah, it does intuitively sound right that a rule that allowed preventive war would be pretty destabilizing, but we don't have a lot of really good evidence for that. And you can also construct arguments that also feel like they might be persuasive on the other side. So that consequentialist way of thinking, even though I think it's very attractive, I think it probably tells us less than we think it it should in various ways. So the way that I tend to uh think about the ethics of war, and um, many contemporary scholars of the ethics of war, who are often called uh the the school is often called revisionist just war theory. So for kind of we revisionists, we we tend to think about the ethics of war starting from the idea of rights. So the starting point is to say, well, we think of human beings as having certain human rights. And amongst the most important of those is the right not to be killed or to be attacked. And so if we are going to give some kind of an account or explanation of how war is possible at all, then we're gonna need to give some kind of explanation for why it can be okay to kill and harm other people that ordinarily have rights not to be killed or harmed. That's the kind of basic problematics. So now we have to think, okay, what could justify us in um in using lethal force against other human beings? And the the kind of mechanism that looks like it's going to do that job uh is this idea of self-defense. Um and that's a very um uh old intuitive uh idea, which says that um it can sometimes be permissible to harm other people, even to kill other people, when that is necessary to defend either yourself or some other innocent party. So the way that we revisionist just war theorists tend to think about the justification of war is to say um, would a particular instance of war, would it be permissible under this idea of self-defense? And then we need to think about what what what are the conditions for rightful self-defense and do they apply uh in a case, uh in a particular case of war? And in particular, would they apply in a preventive war? Now, I think there are pretty good reasons for thinking that this idea of self-defense doesn't really work in the context of um of a preventive war. Um and you know, we can talk a little bit more about kind of how and and why that is, but but yeah, my my sense is that we're better off thinking about these kind of questions of rights and when when a person is is kind of you know liable to be to be harmed defensively rather than thinking about these questions of consequences and whether the rules lead to better overall consequences or not.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, that makes sense. And so why isn't a preventive war a case of legitimate self-defense on your on your view? Why can't we case before we're before we've been attacked, before the attack is in preparation, while there are kind of rumblings of maybe preparations for for attacks?

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Yeah. So if we just start thinking about a really simple case, like a kind of two-person case, right? Um uh and you think about what are the conditions uh in which um, you know, you, William, might have the right to defend yourself against me, David. So it feels like there are there are a couple of things that need to be the case. So the first thing is that um there needs to be some kind of threat that I am imposing on you that is itself a wrongful threat, right? I need to be um uh uh uh harming or threatening to harm you in a way that is actually contrary to your rights. So uh you can't defend yourself against me if I'm threatening to harm you in a way that is entirely lawful or appropriate or justified. So, you know, let's say, for example, I'm a security guard or a policeman and I'm interdicting you from committing a crime. You can't act defensively against me, right? Um, because the harm I'm um threatening you with is itself justified, right? So it has to be an unjust uh form of harm. Um, you know, maybe we're walking, you know, down a dark alleyway and I pull out a knife and I thread a mummy, right? That would be an example of a of a of an unjust harm. Um, but that's not sufficient. Um, there have to be other conditions as well. And philosophers talk particularly about the condition of necessity and proportionality. So necessity means um you get to uh harm me if I'm threatening you in an unjust way, but only if that harm is actually necessary to preventing um the unjust attack. So, you know, if you're a super fast runner and I'm like really, really slow and you could just run away from me, then you ought to run away rather than killing me in defense, right? So that's the kind of necessity idea. And the proportionality idea says, you know, look, even if, you know, even if David is threatening a completely wrongful harm against you, um, the defensive harm has to be proportionate to that harm that you're being offered. So, you know, let's say I, you know, I came out and I just, you know, I was about to slap you, right? Um, completely unjustifiably, you know, you have a right not to be slapped. That's a pretty awful thing to do. But you can't just shoot me to stop me slapping you, right? That would be disproportionate. And even if that was the only way that you that you could prevent me from slapping you, right? So necessity would be, you know, you can imagine, you know, there's some weird case where you've got a gun and you can't, there's no less harmful way that you've got of of of preventing me from slapping you. You can't do it because the defensive harm just feels so disproportionate to the aggressive harm that I'm offering. So you kind of just kind of got to suck it up in cases, in cases like that. So so that that's the kind of the overall picture that we um that we think about self-defense. There's got to be a wrongful threat. Um, the defensive harm has to be necessary in the sense there's there's no less harmful way of averting it, and it has to be proportionate. Now, if you look historically in the um in the literature of self-defense, uh a lot of the early theorists will will also add um an imminent condition. They'll say, you know, not only there has to be wrongful threat, it has to be proportionality, has to be necessity, they'll say also the attack has to be, has to be um imminent, has to be just about to be, you know, to be to fall to fall on you. Um now um one thing that a lot of uh contemporary theorists are kind of tempted to say is to say, well, um that immanence requirement, you know, maybe that's important to give evidence that there is a wrongful uh attack just about to occur. But you can kind of you can think of cases where you might want to relax that imminence case, right? So you might want to say, um, well, look, uh let's say um the attacker had um started to set in motion a wrongful attack. So, you know, he he has a kind of you know, a killing machine that you you kind of pull the lever and it starts operating, but it won't actually end up killing you for a year's time. Um now, you know, you might say, well, look, the fact that there's that kind of that year-long period between when the, you know, when the threat was set in motion and when it will actually land on you, that's not relevant. If, you know, if if the defensive action would be proportionate to stopping that, and you and there was no other opportunity to interrupt that that threat in that year period, then you can do it a year before, right? Um so and and I think I think in a kind of from a theoretical perspective, I think that's that's probably right. If those other conditions are met, then the fence would be appropriate in in those contexts. But we can think about other cases of um of kind of preventive action where that doesn't seem to be right, where you know, knowledge that a wrongful attack will occur at some point in the future doesn't seem to be sufficient. So a lot of people will remember this movie. It's pretty old now. I think it was from the 90s, um, minority report with Tom Cruise. And the basic premise there was it's set in a kind of science fiction future. And Tom Cruise is a policeman, and there are these kind of clairvoyant beings. For some reason, they kind of look a little bit like fish ladies who swim in a pond, but they can they can infallibly see into the future and they can tell whether, you know, whether William is about to commit a crime at some point in the future. And when they could see that he's gonna do that, they tell Tom Cruise, and Tom Cruise going. Out and either, you know, shoots the in the future to be criminal or arrests them and puts them in jail. And of course, the conceit there is that a lot of times these people who get arrested or interdicted, they haven't even started to form the intention to do a bad thing. And we're kind of imagining a case where we infallibly can tell that they will form that intention in the future and they will do that bad thing, but they haven't set in motion that that set of intentions and actions. And that feels really problematic to us. And I think this is the case also with self-defense. I think in cases like that, where we imagine somebody who we believe with a very high degree of certainty will form a bad intention and will in fact act aggressively in the future until they've actually taken some step along that path. If we have to explain why it's permissible to use force, deadly force against an aggressor, um, there has to be some kind of moral responsibility or moral connection between that person we're using defensive force against and this wrongful attack. Um, you know, we can't we can't just use it against an innocent um third party or bystander, right? That wouldn't be okay. And it also feels like it wouldn't be okay to use it against someone who hasn't taken that step of, you know, responsibly initiating an attack. And that's what's different about the machine that will harm you in one year's time. So that's a weird case because it's preemptive in the sense that, you know, a year is a long time before you'll actually get harmed. So it looks like it's not, it's not preemption. But in fact, when you think about it in that broader sense of has the person done something, have they started to initiate in that sense, it it isn't actually preventive in that moral sense. So I I think that's a very strong reason for thinking that um, you know, e even a very, very strong belief that someone will attack you in the future is not sufficient to justify defensive force.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

So it maybe in other words, until someone's actually begun to attack you, they have their rights intact. You know, you can't attack someone and kill them when they've done nothing yet to actually attack you. Um they might be building up a military, they might be preparing themselves with stock stockpiles of guns and and and missiles, but unless they've actually begun to attack you, they have their rights intact. Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

There has to be some kind of trigger mechanism that will enable us to say they have done something to disrupt this, you know, this the the the kind of the normal state affairs is that we're in a symmetry of equal rights, right? Um, you know, I uh you you have the right that I not kill and attack you, and I have asymmetrical rights that you not kill and attack me. And defense only works when one of us has taken some kind of positive step to upset that symmetry, right? But you know, to kind of to to to to to go through that that process of of commencing a violation of rights. And that's what that's what creates this asymmetry that allows, you know, you the defender to use force against me, the attacker.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

You have this, I think, quite helpful example in your in your writing um about the jealous partner. Maybe you could give give that example to kind of yeah, pump this intuition that actually started to attack. It's it seems wrong to kill.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Exactly. So it's a little bit like the minority report case, but yes, it's designed to kind of make make this intuition a bit more vivid. So, you know, I imagine that, you know, I've been um you know, I've been surreptitiously having an affair with uh with your wife. I know that you are an extremely jealous individual and prone to bouts of violence. And I can see that you are, you know, you're you're in your, you know, you're in your wife's den and you're looking through some papers, and I know that amongst those papers is a letter showing that I've been carrying on this affair with your wife. And I I can see that you're just about to discover this. And I and I know on very good evidence that when you do discover this, uh, it's very likely that you will become murderously enraged and and uh and and attempt to attack me. And all of that maybe, you know, and we can we can even suppose for the purpose of the example that we we know this with near absolute certainty. But nonetheless, um nothing's actually happened. You know, you have you you've you know, you you you may have these dispositions, but you haven't done anything that looks like it could trigger this asymmetry in our rights and justify a right of self-defense for me. So yeah, it's an example that's that's intended to bring that intuition to life.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah. So it would be wrong for you to kill me when I'm merely walking around the house looking at some books, looking at some papers. Uh and you just come and kill me. Uh yeah, even correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, it looks like it's much more justified, completely radically different, morally speaking, for you to wait until I see the letter, I turn to you with rage in my eyes, and then and then you and then you can kill me in self-defense. But yeah, okay. Yeah. So similarly, uh a country like the US can only actually start a war when it has seen that another country is is attacking it rather than just this idea that, well, they're uh they distrust us, they they can become murderous, uh, and so on and so forth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

Um, that that's right. So that so there has to be some kind of material triggering action to which that that that that other party um is sufficiently responsible. And that and that triggering action itself has to be wrongful, right? So it can't just be something that you that you're entirely entitled to be doing. Um, you know, in the case of the the jealous lover, there isn't anything. I mean, you know, he's just rifling through the papers. There isn't anything that he's doing. Now, now there is, you know, one one thought that that says, well, you know, look, there, there are cases where um we might want to talk about a preventive war. And I and I think I think some people who are sympathetic to the Trump administration and the current war in Iran, I think this is the way that they think about Iran, is you might say, well, look, Iran hasn't attacked the US at the moment. But um we see that they, you know, they talk about the US as the great Satan, and they talk about, you know, wanting to destroy us all the time. It's this very fiery rhetoric coming out. So it looks like there's a kind of intention there to do something bad to us. And and also we know that there've been um uh very active attempts to enrich uranium, which looks like it's preparation to create a nuclear weapon. So you might say, well, look, you know, what you've got there is you've got a kind of a declared intention to do something bad in the future, and you've got active preparation to uh what looks like develop a weapon that could be very harmful towards us. And that you kind of might call that a conspiracy. So, you know, they've they there is something that they've started to do, which is they've they've started to um conspire an attack um in in the future. And you might say, well, look, that that's enough. Like that that's sufficient to say there is some kind of material triggering uh um wrongful uh act that they've that they've actually engaged on. It's not just something that we think that they will or might do in the future, there's something they've actually done. They've you know they've declared an intention and they've and they've sought to obtain the means to carry it out. No, I think the problem with that um is, and I've argued before that that creates what I call um the conspiracy paradox. And and the idea here is to say, okay, well, if if that picture that I've just given is right, then it suggests that those two things, you know, having an attention to attack in the future and then actively preparing for it, if those two things are themselves wrongful, right, which they would have to be if they were going to trigger a right of self-defense, then it looks like um a kind of declared uh principle or doctrine of preventive war, like the US published in 2002 with their national security strategy, and like, you know, people who who who kind of want to defend the Trump administration at the moment say, then um it looks like that is itself wrongful, right? Because that's what a that's what a declared doctrine of preventive war is. You know, it says, you know, look, we will attack in the future and we will prepare in various ways, um, uh, because these are institutional uh documents, right? So they they come with a whole set of um operational planning and procedure that kind of cascades out of that. So it looks like a kind of paradoxical situation where if this kind of conspiracy is a justification for preventive war, then we would have to view those two things, that kind of conspiracy as being wrongful. But if they're wrongful, then it's wrongful to declare that you think prevention is an appropriate action for a state. So it looks like you're in a a little bit of an analog to the liar's paradox, where you know, if it if if it's true, then that proves that it's false, right? If the if if the conspiracy to attack is is wrongful, then the declaration of a doctrine of prevention is wrongful.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Um Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is this actually preempts, yeah, my my next question, which is about this paradox. So is the could you also put it this way? Like if the US wants to attack um Country B on the grounds that country B is preparing uh an attack on the US, and they say, well, we're gonna do a preventive war because we can see that down the road attack will be attacked. While the US is preparing its preventive war, country B, like Iran, for example, then has a right to attack the US, a moral right to attack the US because the US is also preparing to attack uh Iran.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

So in other words, correct, and which which would which would which would which would then make their future um attack itself justified, which would then undermine the justification of of uh of state B. So it it it it it does look like a paradoxical situation where if it's just yeah, if the if the preventive war is uh unjustified, then the preparation to interdict it uh itself looks unjustified, which then would would justify the the uh so it it goes it goes round in a in a paradoxical circle.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so that so that that would undermine the kind of say the US line that we can attack Iran because they're preparing for war, but they can't attack us, um, when in fact they can attack us because we're also preparing for war. Um so that that gives Iran a right to attack them. Okay, so I I could imagine someone responding to that paradox by saying, but but the but we, the US or UK or European states, we're the goodies and and Iran or Russia or whatever, they're the baddies. So it's at disanalogous because our threat is justified and theirs isn't, but also they started it and they're the ones who kind of set in motion this this this need to engage in in preventive war. So is that is that a good response? Does that dissolve the paradox or nor not really?

SPEAKER_03 33:15

I don't think it really does. And um and I think one of the reasons for that is um the idea of self-defense works in a way only if we have some kind of backdrop um of uh kind of symmetrical um neutral recognition. You know, so I said at the outset, you know, the kind of starting point that we have, the starting point should we have is that we kind of we are we are each symmetrically um positioned with respect to each other. We each have the right not to be harmed or killed by the other. And defense works as a kind of moral idea when there is a clear trigger point where one of them upsets that asymmetry by doing something that destabilizes that relationship. And that's why, you know, observable actions like, you know, I pulled out the knife and tried to stab you in the dark alley, right? That's that's clearly an observable trigger point. If you think about that kind of situation where you have two antagonists, both of which are suspicious of each other that they will be attacked in the future, both of which are then thinking about actions that they can take to interdict that, you know, through initially through deterrence or or other kinds of uh um signaling action, and then ultimately perhaps thinking about preventive action. It's very hard to identify where that kind of destabilizing trigger trigger point actually occurs because each of them seems to be moving um kind of up that escalation ladder almost almost symmetrically, right? So it's the it's the fear of the future action of the other that grounds the action that is itself feeding the fear of the other. And it's very difficult to say, you know, we are the good guys and they are the bad guys, um, because that interpretation can, you know, I think plausibly in many of these cases be mirrored by by the other side. So I think it's just very, very difficult to give an account like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

Maybe one of the strongest objections to to your view about a preventive war, which which might concern like nuclear weapons or this idea that's laid out by the US in that 2002 document that says like the world has changed, we can't be reactive anymore. I guess the idea is it's no longer the case that we kind of see the cavalry coming over the hill and then we can attack only when they've crossed the border. But in the modern world, you have terrorism, you have nuclear weapons, and therefore we the US or the West have to attack preemptively because once the nuclear weapons have been developed, it's it's too late. So so they might say it um we we have to attack now because the situation is going to get more and more and more dangerous. And once if we wait until the nuclear weapon is in the sky, it's it's too late. Is that a good argument?

SPEAKER_03 36:23

Yeah, so I mean, you know, and again, if we think about that distinction between preemption and prevention, um, you wouldn't have to wait until the the weapon is in the sky. Um, so you know, most of the accounts will will allow, so they they they they won't require you to wait until a um an absolutely lethal blow has been initiated. And and particularly in the case of weapons like nuclear weapons, um that uh you know that that that couldn't that couldn't be the requirement. So so you know, most reasonable accounts I think will will allow they will allow um striking before before that point. What the where they will want to draw the line is between is at action that that that wants to push that boundary significantly further back. So to a case where you know it's not simply that we we observe that the preparation for an attack is is uh is occurring, the the kind of the you know the the the the the the the the set of institutional uh actions that would that would lead towards a launch has been set in place. But it's it's much, much further back than that. It's it's one where we think that the um the balance of power will shift in a way that would make it like you know more likely for them to attack in the future. Um they'll get capabilities where they might be attempted to attack in the future. Those are the kinds of cases where you know my view would say, no, you you you're not permitted, you're not permitted to do that.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

So it's maybe a bit of an impossible question, but if you were kind of the the US president or the key general, what would your advice be about uh what is the trigger point that the US would have to wait for to launch a just war uh or to have a just cause for a war, and there are other conditions for just wars, um, against Iran? Like what would be the what would be the relevant trigger point where we go, this is now legitimate self-defense to start bombing Iran?

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Uh well, you know, so the classical answer would be um that they have initiated an unjust attack uh against either the US or uh or another state. Um and the conditions again, they would be necessity and uh and proportionality. So um, you know, Iran has sponsored uh attacks against uh against Israel uh and and on occasion against uh US troops in the um in the region. And uh, you know, most just war theorists would say those attacks would justify um necessary and proportionate action to interdict that. What we're seeing at the moment is something very, very different. It's it's a it's a strike that is, well, I mean, one problem is that it's actually very, very difficult to discern what the actual objectives of the of the conflict uh is. Um sometimes it's described as as regime change, sometimes it's described as um is stopping Iran's ability to get nuclear weapons. Um uh it's probably some combination of of those two. Uh, but um, you know, the the the justifications for for those kinds of actions, I think, would be, you know, evidence that Iran was, you know, you know, had those weapons or was very, very close to achieving them, and evidence that they were very likely to to attempt to use them uh against the US or other states. And and that evidence just doesn't exist. I mean, I I think all all all reasonable um observers in that region say that we were very, very long way away from that.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Does that kind of create like a moral, almost a moral requirement to spy on other countries? Because you need to have this fine-grained information about do the military commanders are they preparing to launch a nuclear weapon, or do they merely want to have this as a deterrent and to be a kind of strong man nation where they have respect and so on? Do do you do you is it really important to have that kind of fine-grained information to avoid a war that's unjustified, like the war in Iraq, where you wrongly suspect uh that that an attack is being prepared when it's not?

SPEAKER_03 40:44

Yeah, I and I I think um intelligence can be really, really important. And maybe put it the other way, the absence of good intelligence can be incredibly dangerous. So, you know, many, well, many of your older listeners will remember uh Colin Powell standing up in the Security Council and uh declaring that the US had intelligence that um Iraq was very close to uh achieving a nuclear bomb, that intelligence turned out to be catastrophically mistaken. So it can be very, very dangerous to think that you have better intelligence than you do. But I think just not having intelligence can be very dangerous as well, because if you feel you don't know, you feel very, very vulnerable. So, no, I think I think having good intelligence. And you know, that's also why the architecture of a lot of um institutions uh and legal institutions around this um specify the requirement to disclose, right? And and and create and have um inspections regimes built within them. And I think this is another really important part of it, actually, which is you know, you asked me what I would do if I was a president or a or a general. And I think, you know, a big part of the answer to that is that you look for structures that enable both sides to build mutual trust. And the terrible irony of this is that, you know, we we had this with the Obama um deal that was negotiated with Iran, that was not a perfect deal, but you know, it actually created a lot of the things that that Trump says that he wants and that it, you know, it create it it set limits on Iran's ability to enrich uranium. It created a you know a quite unintrusive inspections regime, which to your point enable both sides to actually get an understanding of what and what wasn't what wasn't happening. And so if you think back to that kind of first point about how we think about what self-defense is and how it works, and we talked about that necessity condition.

unknown 42:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

So necessity means war is only ever permissible if there is no other less costly way of achieving what you want to achieve. And preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is, you know, that that is a legitimate objective. But it doesn't look like it's necessary to go to war because you know there there was an alternative, which was we could have we could have stayed with the deal that we had during the Obama regime. So for all of those reasons, it it looks like this war is very, very dubious from from a moral and a legal perspective.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

And then maybe uh if I can ask about what your view is on uh the Israeli attack attacks on on Palestine after October the 7th, 2023. So is that a was that a preventive war? Or what if not, what kind of war was it?

SPEAKER_03 43:27

No, I don't think it was a preventive war. In many ways, it feels like a war of retribution, right? So I mean that's the other crucial thing to to understand about self-defense is it's um and defensive wars, is that they're they're always forward looking, right? So um Israel had suffered this uh awful, horrific, um, wrongful, and and I think actually genocidal attack on the 7th of October um by Hamas. And uh it's absolutely right that they would have the right. To engage in military actions, to prevent any reasonable expectations that an attack or something like that could happen in the future. But that is forward-looking at that point, right? So the justification for using force that Israel enjoyed, it was, it should not even be viewed as a kind of punitive or retribution. But it should really be looking at saying, okay, we now have very strong evidence that there is capability and intention sitting within the territory of uh of Gaza within Hamas to hurt us. And clearly there was a there was a there was a justification to use military force uh in order to prevent that um any capability that um that arose and any future threat. But the actual actions that they took did not seem in any way proportionate or or commensurate to that. Um and you know, you saw that in the just in the the scale of force that was used and the in the kinds of tactics, including blockades of of food that that really just looked like an attempt to starve out the population. Um so it really looks much more like a um a war of um uh of of ethnic cleansing. I I think scholars who assess this as genocidal and intent and in nature, I think, are absolutely right. Uh so I I think it's very uh the the action, I mean, there absolutely was a justification for some defensive action after the um October 7th attacks, but the the war that Israel waged was was was so far in excess of that that it it it really can't be seen as a defensive action at all, I think.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

So okay, so the view is um that the the military actions that would have been justified would be those that were strictly necessary to kind of defuse a future attack. So they have intelligence say that that this pocket of uh Hamas is planning an attack, uh I was taking steps to initiate the attack, and then they can go in and and and uh use lethal force to against those particular uh combatants.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

Um against those combatants, um with with the potential, there is always in war a potential that there will be collateral harm. So, you know, collateral is is the term for uh harm inflicted, side effect harm inflicted on people who are not liable to be attacked, but where that is necessary and proportionate to the attack on the on the combatant. So, yes, so they they would have the right to um undertake attacks against Hamas competence and where it was unavoidable to to regretfully harm civilians if that was necessary and proportionate, but but nothing more than that. Certainly not stopping food and medical supplies coming in, uh, certainly not attacking civilian infrastructure, uh, certainly not the kind of grossly disproportionate attacks um that they that they continue to uh to inflict right throughout that that that campaign.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Okay, so when you speak about um it it's it can be okay to uh launch an attack that will have side effects in terms of killing civilians, but it has to be proportionate. I guess what you what you mean is that the the death toll or the harm the harm to civilians has to be in line with the important, the moral importance of the military objective of killing one, say, one um Hamas commander who is set within a civilian environment.

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Yeah, correct. So so philosophers will sometimes talk about wide proportionality and narrow proportionality. So when we talked um earlier about the self-defense example, and I said, well, if um if I were about to slap you, and the only way you could defend yourself was by shooting me, that wouldn't be okay because it will be disproportionate. That's what philosophers call narrow proportionality. So it's it's thinking about is the force I use against the culpable attacker is that proportionate to the harm that they're offering me? And shooting is clearly not proportionate to slapping, right? Um, why proportionality is a little bit different. Why proportionality is when you think about, okay, I um I'm I'm I'm being wrongfully attacked, and I can defend myself by using force against the attacker, but the attack will itself have create side effect harms for those nearby. So this happens all the time in warfare. You know, you know, classic example would be, you know, a um uh uh an airstrike against a military target where you know civilians are living nearby, and you there is there's no way of of uh of of achieving successfully that strike against a military target without harming some of those civilians. And so there the judgment we have to make, exactly as you say, is to say, is is that harm against civilians, is it, is it proportionate? Is it is it is is the is is the is the the value of that military target sufficiently high to to justify and make it worth it to inflict that foreseeable harm against civilians? And that's the why proportionality judgment that um that soldiers are required to to make when they attack a target.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

Right, yeah. Yeah, and then f maybe a final question uh is uh if if if you're right that basically I guess your view is that preventive war is almost never justified. Is that the view?

SPEAKER_03 49:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Yeah. So if preventive war is almost never justified, but you have a lot of people, citizens, um military commanders, uh politicians in the Western world who have a very different view. They think uh preventive war is is you know is normally justified or or is justified if if they launch it as a kind of democracy against against non-democracies or whatever. What do you think is underlying the kind of psychology of those people if if their view lacks kind of intellectual or moral foundations? And also, furthermore, I I I've you know you know you notice that a lot of politicians aren't concerned about other threat threats of security in any way in anywhere near the same way. So, for example, we know that uh pandemics, fresh pandemics could start and could wipe out um uh populations in in the Western world, uh kill a lot of people. Uh, we know that there's there's links to factory farming and so on uh in terms of pandemic risk. And yet we don't see the same kind of hawkishness with with respect to diffusing those type those those those threats or or diffusing um steps towards antimicrobial resistance that could kind of undo a lot of medicine. So, what what do you think is going on? Is there a kind of what what's going on psychologically or emotionally that drive that makes those views attractive even here?

SPEAKER_03 50:40

Yeah, I I it's a great question. So I think there are two things going on. I think one thing is that we psychologically are much more worried about what we see as wrong, is kind of wrongs rather than harms, right? So um, you know, the the the harms from an attack from a neighbor may be the same in terms of numbers of deaths as from a pandemic. But um the attack is is in a sense, it's it's a wrong, right? It's it's a it's it's a it's an intentional violation of our rights that wrongs us in a way that a pandemic doesn't, right? The pandemic harms us, but it doesn't wrong us, right? The microbes don't violate our rights. So I think there is just psychologically that feels very, very different to us. I think on in terms of the preventive, you know, why do why are people inclined to think that prevention is um is okay? I think it's partly because of, again, another point you raised earlier. We tend to see ourselves as the good guys, and we tend to um view our own motivations as being essentially benign and defensive, right? So we say, look, you know, we're, you know, we're building nuclear weapons because we want to defend ourselves. We're investing in war plans and tanks because that's a defensive posture against and a potential aggressor. But what we fail to realize is that a lot of these systems feel very, very different if you're on the other side of the fence. And I think part of the problem of that is actually just um that many weapon systems uh you know have these kind of dual uses. You know, yes, they can be used defensively, but they can also be used very, very offensively to project power. And that's why, um, and I think that's what creates this kind of destabilization. We tend to, you know, we have all of these weapons that look very, very scary to people, you know, living next door, um, but we don't see them this way. We we just we just view them as being defensive. But our neighbors um, you know, quite reasonably view them as very scary and very offensive. And our neighbors are positioned exactly in a symmetrical way. And that's one of the reasons why I tend to be very sympathetic to ideas of theorists like Gene Sharp. Gene Sharp is a very interesting political scientist who theorized ideas of um of passive resistance and nonviolent resistance. So these are the ideas of you might think about Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi. And Gene Sha really extends these ideas by thinking, okay, are there ways that we could make it very kind of truly defensive technologies, like social technologies or or infrastructure technologies that would that are truly defensive, that would make it very difficult for an aggressor to to invade and capture our state, but wouldn't wouldn't be scary to the um to to to uh to our neighbors. So he thinks about things like you know civil resistance, like strikes, like um things that would just make it very, very hard for an aggressor to invade our state. So they're kind of deterrent, but they don't create that fear in in others. So and I and I think that's a very, very profound insight to you know to recognize that that we, you know, it's it's just natural that we we view ourselves as having benign intentions and we view others as having malign intentions. But the others see us see us in exactly that way. So anything that we can do to um you know create a sense of security in others is is gonna be is gonna be very, very helpful for that.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

Yeah. So just to pick up on the practical idea that so the idea is that we could defend our populations by by doing what exactly?

SPEAKER_03 54:10

By So there's a whole range of different things. And actually, interestingly, there is a lot of empirical evidence that these strategies are highly effective and actually, in many cases, much more effective and much less costly than uh than military action. So these would be things like um uh organized action, uh so strikes, um, refusal to pay taxes. It could include uh on the kind of more kinetic side, uh disruption of infrastructure, so you know, destroying railway lines, or um it can be, you know, it could involve go go slows, so so things that just make it very, very difficult for a uh a putative invader to actually govern and uh and and control your your territory.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

Right. And and showing that that prior to any invasion, showing that these capabilities, these community ideas or or or or mechanisms are there, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 55:03

That you that you have the kind of you've invested in the social cohesion and the infrastructure to do that. So a lot of the Baltic states, um uh uh Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, um, they have got very, very interested in in these ideas and they do a lot to you know create very robust, decentralized cells of of citizens who are you know kind of prepared to to um to resist a potential invader. And and those are you know, those are things that you know, this is not like having a carrier group, right? They that kind of lets you project power. You know, you know, you can't you can't dominate, innovate another state through through these techniques. So they are they are literally purely defensive.

SPEAKER_02 55:40

Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, thanks, thanks so much for for this conversation, David. It's been been really interesting.

SPEAKER_03 55:47

Fantastic. Um good. I'm about to get thrown out of this cafe because they're closing.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

Well, that's it. Thanks so much to David, and thanks so much to you. Thank you for coming on this journey with me of trying to make philosophy and clear thinking a greater part of collective decisions and our individual lives. Please do hit follow so we can go further together and get the podcast out to more people. If you want to, you can fill in the survey in the show notes or drop me an email with any episode ideas. And I'll see you on the first of next month for more surprising ethics.