Stephen Goss: When is bombing justified?
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.
According to the Just War Theory, the use of force must be for a morally defensible cause – typically self-defence or the protection of innocent life. It must be fought by legitimate authorities. It must be a last resort. Its expected benefits must outweigh the harm it causes. Combatants must distinguish between military targets and civilians, and the harm caused must be proportionate to the military objective being pursued.
Modern international law largely mirrors these principles. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require armed forces to distinguish between non-combatants and combatants, to minimise civilian harm, and to avoid disproportionate attacks.
While the weight of benefits against harm caused is subjective, the ethical and legal standards for hostilities are not. A last resort; declared by legitimate authorities; proportionate; and directed at military targets – not civilians.
Last week we learnt that bombing is justified when Sinn Féin think it is. In an interview, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy TD insisted that ‘there isn’t an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation’. This is blatantly not true. NATO’s intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s involved air strikes which halted ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo and contributed to establishing peace. The situation was complex, but the idea that military force can never produce a better outcome is simply not borne out by history.
Carthy’s comment might have passed unnoticed as a banal soundbite was it not for the fact that he represents a party whose political history is intertwined with one of the most sustained bombing campaigns ever conducted in Western Europe.
For the three decades of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA made bombing a central instrument of its strategy. Bombs were detonated across Northern Ireland and Great Britain in an attempt to exert pressure on the British state and advance the republican cause. The human cost was immense. Town centres were devastated. Civilians were killed and injured. On Bloody Friday in July 1972 the IRA detonated 22 bombs in bus and train stations, hotels, and shopping areas killing nine and seriously injuring 130 innocent people. On Remembrance Sunday in 1987 an IRA bomb at the War Memorial in Enniskillen killed 11 and injured 63. These are but two of many possible examples.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has complained that her party should not have to answer for the IRA as its violence is now in the past. Yet Sinn Féin has repeatedly refused to condemn the IRA’s campaign in unequivocal terms. Three current Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.
According to the Just War Theory, the use of force must be for a morally defensible cause – typically self-defence or the protection of innocent life. It must be fought by legitimate authorities. It must be a last resort. Its expected benefits must outweigh the harm it causes. Combatants must distinguish between military targets and civilians, and the harm caused must be proportionate to the military objective being pursued.
Modern international law largely mirrors these principles. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require armed forces to distinguish between non-combatants and combatants, to minimise civilian harm, and to avoid disproportionate attacks.
While the weight of benefits against harm caused is subjective, the ethical and legal standards for hostilities are not. A last resort; declared by legitimate authorities; proportionate; and directed at military targets – not civilians.
Last week we learnt that bombing is justified when Sinn Féin think it is. In an interview, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy TD insisted that ‘there isn’t an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation’. This is blatantly not true. NATO’s intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s involved air strikes which halted ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo and contributed to establishing peace. The situation was complex, but the idea that military force can never produce a better outcome is simply not borne out by history.
Carthy’s comment might have passed unnoticed as a banal soundbite was it not for the fact that he represents a party whose political history is intertwined with one of the most sustained bombing campaigns ever conducted in Western Europe.
For the three decades of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA made bombing a central instrument of its strategy. Bombs were detonated across Northern Ireland and Great Britain in an attempt to exert pressure on the British state and advance the republican cause. The human cost was immense. Town centres were devastated. Civilians were killed and injured. On Bloody Friday in July 1972 the IRA detonated 22 bombs in bus and train stations, hotels, and shopping areas killing nine and seriously injuring 130 innocent people. On Remembrance Sunday in 1987 an IRA bomb at the War Memorial in Enniskillen killed 11 and injured 63. These are but two of many possible examples.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has complained that her party should not have to answer for the IRA as its violence is now in the past. Yet Sinn Féin has repeatedly refused to condemn the IRA’s campaign in unequivocal terms. Three current Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland …
Stephen Goss: When is bombing justified?
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.
According to the Just War Theory, the use of force must be for a morally defensible cause – typically self-defence or the protection of innocent life. It must be fought by legitimate authorities. It must be a last resort. Its expected benefits must outweigh the harm it causes. Combatants must distinguish between military targets and civilians, and the harm caused must be proportionate to the military objective being pursued.
Modern international law largely mirrors these principles. The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols require armed forces to distinguish between non-combatants and combatants, to minimise civilian harm, and to avoid disproportionate attacks.
While the weight of benefits against harm caused is subjective, the ethical and legal standards for hostilities are not. A last resort; declared by legitimate authorities; proportionate; and directed at military targets – not civilians.
Last week we learnt that bombing is justified when Sinn Féin think it is. In an interview, Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy TD insisted that ‘there isn’t an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation’. This is blatantly not true. NATO’s intervention in the Balkans during the 1990s involved air strikes which halted ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo and contributed to establishing peace. The situation was complex, but the idea that military force can never produce a better outcome is simply not borne out by history.
Carthy’s comment might have passed unnoticed as a banal soundbite was it not for the fact that he represents a party whose political history is intertwined with one of the most sustained bombing campaigns ever conducted in Western Europe.
For the three decades of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA made bombing a central instrument of its strategy. Bombs were detonated across Northern Ireland and Great Britain in an attempt to exert pressure on the British state and advance the republican cause. The human cost was immense. Town centres were devastated. Civilians were killed and injured. On Bloody Friday in July 1972 the IRA detonated 22 bombs in bus and train stations, hotels, and shopping areas killing nine and seriously injuring 130 innocent people. On Remembrance Sunday in 1987 an IRA bomb at the War Memorial in Enniskillen killed 11 and injured 63. These are but two of many possible examples.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has complained that her party should not have to answer for the IRA as its violence is now in the past. Yet Sinn Féin has repeatedly refused to condemn the IRA’s campaign in unequivocal terms. Three current Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland …
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