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On Time in Just War Theory: From Chronos to Kairos

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Abstract

This article examines the role of time in Just War theory. It maintains that contemporary Just War theory’s legalist focus on rules and principles, rather than judgment and interpretation, makes a serious engagement with timing appear quite irrelevant. To deal with this shortcoming, the article clarifies the dual nature of political time as both chronos and kairos, and argues that a cogent account of the justice of warfare needs to incorporate the two faces of political time. In addition, the article contends that a casuistic re-orientation of Just War theory would have the beneficial effect of putting critique back on the agenda. The moral core of the argument is that judgment and interpretation ought to be guided by the spirit of “pragmatic fallibilism,” which combines the willingness to assertively uphold one’s values with a disposition to revise one’s commitments through reflection and deliberation.

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Notes

  1. Isabel Kershner, “Israeli Foreign Ministry Calls for More Sanctions on Iran,” The New York Times, September 27, 2012, sec. World/Middle East, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/world/middleeast/israeli-foreign-ministry-calls-for-more-sanctions-on-iran.html, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  2. On the discussion around prevention and preemption see: Michael W. Doyle, Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict, ed. Stephen Macedo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); David Luban, “Preventive War,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32 (2004): 207–48; Henry Shue and David Rodin, eds., Preemption: Military Action and Moral Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  3. Joshua Gleis, “How the Presidential Election Could Lead to an Israeli Strike on Iran,” Huffington Post, June 3, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-gleis/obama-israel-iran_b_1322934.html, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  4. According to my understanding, “case-based reasoning” is synonymous with casuistry—a philosophical method in ethics that will be discussed later in the article. I therefore invite the reader to interpret “casuistic” throughout this paper in a non-polemical way. Or, to put it more precisely, in line with Jonsen and Toulmin’s main idea, I seek to rescue casuistry from its disrepute, by demonstrating that it “redresses the excessive emphasis placed on universal rules and invariant principles by moral philosophers and political preachers alike.” See Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 13.

  5. For some of the most important recent contributions see: Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006); Cécile Fabre, Cosmopolitan War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Jeff McMahan, Killing in War, Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009); David Rodin and Henry Shue, eds., Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  6. For a good overview of these critical positions, see the articles in Ethics and International Affairs 27 (2013). An important resource for those who wish to revise contemporary Just War theory’s focus on abstract rules and principles is the Journal of Military Ethics, whose authors regularly engage in the kind of exercise I am advocating. See also: Andrew G. Fiala, Practical Pacifism (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004); Andrew G. Fiala, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

  7. For a representative selection of recent publications see: Suzanna De Boef and Luke Keele, “Taking Time Seriously,” American Journal of Political Science 52 (2008): 184–200; Juan J. Linz, “Democracy’s Time Constraints,” International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique 19 (1998): 19–37, doi:10.2307/1601292; Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).

  8. Kimberly Hutchings, “What Is Orientation in Thinking? On the Question of Time and Timeliness in Cosmopolitical Thought,” Constellations 18 (2011): 190–204, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2011.00633.x.

  9. Paul W. Kahn, “Political Time: Sovereignty and the Transtemporal Community,” Cardozo Law Review 28 (2006): 259–76.

  10. Sheldon S. Wolin, “What Time Is It?,” Theory & Event 1 (1997), doi:10.1353/tae.1991.0003.

  11. Robert E. Goodin, “Keeping Political Time: The Rhythms of Democracy,” International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique 19 (1998): 39–54.

  12. Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology (New York: Columbia University, 1986).

  13. James der Derian, “The (S)pace of International Relations: Simulation, Surveillance, and Speed,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (1990): 295–310, doi:10.2307/2600571.

  14. Several of Der Derian’s essays grapple with the topic of speed. See in particular the following edition of selected papers: James Der Derian, Critical Practices in International Theory: Selected Essays (London/New York: Routledge, 2009). For a book-length treatment see the earlier book: James Der Derian, Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992).

  15. Herfried Münkler, “Temporal Rhythms and Military Force: Acceleration, Deceleration, and War,” in High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity, ed. Hartmut Rosa and William Scheuerman (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 243–59. If we look at the broader picture, scholars working in the tradition of Critical Theory have over the past 15 years started to dissect the topic of speed in illuminating ways. See for example: William E. Connolly, “Speed, Concentric Cultures, and Cosmopolitanism,” Political Theory 28 (2000): 596–618, doi:10.2307/192290; Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, New Directions for Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

  16. Herfried Münkler, “The Wars of the 21st Century,” International Review of the Red Cross 85, 849 (2003): 7–22, doi:10.1017/S0035336100103508.

  17. Two books that provide a thorough overview of this topic are Cian O’Driscoll, The Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Charles Reed and David Ryall, eds., The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

  18. Space constraints prevent me from doing justice to the rich history of Just War theory. As a consequence, I restrain myself to recounting a story that sticks closely to Rengger’s narrative. After I had finished this essay, it came to my attention that Rengger has recently published a book-length treatment of the Just War tradition, which I unfortunately could not include in this paper. See: Nicholas Rengger, Just War and International Order: The Uncivil Condition in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  19. Nicholas Rengger, “On the Just War Tradition in the Twenty-First Century,” International Affairs 78 (2002): 360, doi:10.1111/1468-2346.00255.

  20. For the most comprehensive historical account of casuistry see: Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry.

  21. In this context, Augustine’s thinking proved fertile. For example, medieval European conflicts, like the Hundred Year’s War, were subject to Augustinian lines of moral reasoning. See: Frederick H. Russell, “Love and Hate in Medieval Warfare: The Contribution of Saint Augustine,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 31 (1987): 108–24, doi:10.1484/J.NMS.3.146. On Just War reasoning in the Middle Ages more generally see: Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

  22. Charles T. Mathewes, Understanding Religious Ethics (Chichester/Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 187–88; George Weigel, “The Development of Just War Thinking in the Post-Cold War World: An American Perspective,” in The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Charles Reed and David Ryall (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 24, 28.

  23. For a comprehensive summary of the genesis of natural rights theories see: Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). On Grotius’s place in the history of international law and politics, see: Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts, eds., Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Renée Jeffery, Hugo Grotius in International Thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

  24. Judith N. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 1.

  25. George Lucas, “Defense or Offense? The Two Streams of Just War Theory,” in War and Border Crossings: Ethics When Cultures Clash, ed. Peter A. French and Jason A. Short (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 50.

  26. Rengger, “On the Just War Tradition in the Twenty-First Century,” 360.

  27. Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 393, 1186. On the transition to early modern Just War theory see: Mark Evans, “Moral Theory and the Idea of a Just War,” in Just War Theory: A Reappraisal, ed. Mark Evans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–21.

  28. Bellamy, Just Wars, 8, 71–75.

  29. See, representatively, Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD/Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); James Turner Johnson, Morality & Contemporary Warfare (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Why Augustine? Why Now?,” Catholic University Law Review 52 (2003): 283; James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

  30. Possibly the most prominent author in the contemporary debate who has tried to show, through a multi-volume project on the crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg, that both Just War theory and international law in fact rest on the same Grotian foundations is Larry May. See his books: Crimes Against Humanity: A Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); War Crimes and Just War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Aggression and Crimes Against Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Genocide: A Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  31. Jeff McMahan, “Rethinking the ‘Just War,’ Part 1,” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com, Opinionator, November 11, 2012, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/rethinking-the-just-war-part-1/, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  32. I don’t believe it is necessary to provide extensive evidence to underscore this observation. I would invite a skeptic to look into McMahan’s writings for an illustration: McMahan, Killing in War; Jeff McMahan, “The Just Distribution of Harm Between Combatants and Noncombatants,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 38 (2010): 342–79, doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2010.01196.x. Cécile Fabre’s approach is a notable exception to this general tendency, as she seems more convinced of the importance of historical examples for normative theorizing. See Fabre, Cosmopolitan War, 15.

  33. For a systematic critique of the use of imaginary cases in ethics, see Michael Davis, “Imaginary Cases in Ethics: A Critique,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (2012): 1–17, doi:10.5840/ijap20122611.

  34. F. M. Kamm, “Terrorism and Intending Evil,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 36 (2008): 164, doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2008.00131.x.

  35. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 75–78.

  36. Michael Otsuka, “Killing the Innocent in Self-Defense,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23 (1994): 74–94.

  37. Anne Norton, On the Muslim Question (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 94–117.

  38. The “trolley problem,” which by now has seen several formulations, seeks to examine the moral stringency of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. One of its best-known designs can be summarized in the following manner: “You’re standing by the side of a track when you see a runaway train hurtling toward you: clearly the brakes have failed. Ahead are five people, tied to the track. If you do nothing, the five will be run over and killed. Luckily you are next to a signal switch: turning this switch will send the out-of-control train down a side track, a spur, just ahead of you. Alas, there’s a snag: on the spur you spot one person tied to the track: changing direction will inevitably result in this person being killed. What should you do?” (David Edmonds, Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us About Right and Wrong, 2014, 183.) The original thought experiment can be found in Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect,” in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 19–32; Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem,” The Monist 59 (1976): 204–17.

  39. David Edmonds, “Lessons in Morality at West Point,” BBC, September 18, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/9006784.stm, accessed on August 1, 2014; David Edmonds, “Matters of Life and Death,” Prospect Magazine, October 7, 2010, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ethics-trolley-problem/#.Uh35zmSDSUY, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  40. C. A. J. Coady, Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics, Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  41. To render it somewhat more starkly: the “moral slide-rule” will be of comfort to those who cannot bear subscribing to a tragic vision of politics. On the relationship between tragedy and politics, see: Toni Erskine and Richard Ned Lebow, eds., Tragedy and International Relations (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Michael Neu, “The Tragedy of Justified War,” International Relations 27 (2013): 461–80, doi:10.1177/0047117813483434.

  42. In an excellent analysis of Just War theory’s usefulness for understanding counterterrorism measures, Neta Crawford makes exactly the same point. She writes: “Ethical traditions are not checklists or simple codes of conduct—they are tools for evaluating options and assessing behavior. As such, the questions that an ethical tradition raises may not have clear and simple answers. ” See Neta C. Crawford, “Just War Theory and the U.S. Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 21.

  43. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, “International Practices,” International Theory 3, 1 (2011): 1–36, doi:10.1017/S175297191000031X; Chris Brown, “The ‘Practice Turn’, Phronesis and Classical Realism: Towards a Phronetic International Political Theory?” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 40, 3 (2012): 439–56, doi:10.1177/0305829812441893; Vincent Pouliot, “‘Sobjectivism’:Toward a Constructivist Methodology,” International Studies Quarterly 51 (2007): 359–84, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00455.x.

  44. James Turner Johnson nicely captures his vision of Just War theory when he writes: “Implicit in all that I have been saying thus far is a rejection of yet another conception: that just war tradition has only to do with ideas and thus is abstractly remote from real-world circumstances, which require not ideas but actions. This is far from the truth. Just war tradition represents above all a fund of practical moral wisdom, based not in abstract speculation or theorization, but in reflection on actual problems encountered in war as these have presented themselves in different historical circumstances.” See James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 15. On Jean Bethke Elshtain’s move away from legalism, see O’Driscoll, The Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First Century, 102.

  45. Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry, 151.

  46. Michael Carter, “Stasis and Kairos: Principles of Social Construction in Classical Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Review 7 (1988): 97–112, doi:10.2307/465537; Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baumlin, eds., Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); John R. Wilson, “Kairos as ‘Due Measure,’” Glotta 58 (1980): 177–204, doi:10.2307/40266516. The edited volume by Sipiora and Baumlin also includes an extensive bibliography of the research on kairos. For an informative philological study see Manfred Kerkhoff, “Zum antiken Begriff des Kairos,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 27 (1973): 256–74, doi:10.2307/40279616. On kairos in Aristotle’s rhetorical and ethical works see James L. Kinneavy and Catherine R. Eskin, “Kairos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” Written Communication 11 (1994): 131–42, doi:10.1177/0741088394011001006.

  47. John E. Smith, “Time, Times, and the ‘Right Time’; Chronos and Kairos,” The Monist 53 (1969): 9.

  48. Tillich published several books on this topic and conceives of kairos in an eschatological vein. On his reading of the New Testament, kairos is closely linked to Christ’s coming to the world. See: Andrew O’Neill, Tillich: A Guide for the Perplexed (London/New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 15–19, 24, 69, 75–9. For an analyis of Tillich’s notion of kairos against the backdrop of his systematic theology see: Oswald Bayer, “Tillich as a Systematic Theologian,” in The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, ed. Russell Re Manning (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 18–19, 32.

  49. Space constraints prevent me from further exploring this illuminating link. On the intricate connections between twentieth-century political theology and IR theory, see Nicolas Guilhot, “American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory,” Constellations 17 (2010): 224–53, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2010.00586.x; Jodok Troy, ed., Religion and the Realist Tradition: From Political Theology to International Relations Theory and Back (London: Routledge, 2013), 2014; Vassilios Paipais, “Necessary Fiction: Realism’s Tragic Theology,” International Politics 50 (2013): 846–62, doi:10.1057/ip.2013.38. On the relationship between Tillich and Niebuhr see Ronald Stone, “Tillich and Niebuhr as Allied Public Theologians,” Political Theology 9 (2008): 503–11. On Niebuhr’s peculiar version of Christian Realism see Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge/NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1995); John Marsden, “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Ethics of Christian Realism,” International Journal of Public Theology 4 (2010): 483–501, doi:10.1163/156973210 × 526445. On Niebuhr’s wider impact, see Daniel F. Rice, Reinhold Niebuhr and His Circle of Influence (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  50. At this point a clarification might seem necessary. Although I turn to ancient philosophy and culture to recuperate this complex notion of time, I shall not advocate an analogous turn to ancient Just War theory. The reason for my reluctance is simple: while it might be possible to trace the deeper origins of Just War theory back to thinkers such as Thucydides and Cicero, the lessons we may draw from these thinkers strike me as altogether too thin to be of substantive value for the contemporary debate. See Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby, eds., The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 1–90.

  51. Smith, “Time, Times, and the ‘Right Time’; Chronos and Kairos,” 1–2.

  52. John E. Smith, “Time and Qualitative Time,” The Review of Metaphysics 40 (1986): 10–11, doi:10.2307/20128415.

  53. Amélie Frost Benedikt, “On Doing the Right Thing at the Right Time: Toward an Ethics of Kairos,” in Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis, ed. Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baumlin (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 226–35.

  54. It would be a caricature to present contemporary defenders of deliberative democracy as being unaware of the constraints of temporality. In fact, some of the most relevant innovations in deliberative democracy—such as the use of polling—have their origin in the recognition that citizens experience time as scarce and thus might not be able or willing to devote much energy to deliberations. See James Bohman, “Survey Article: The Coming of Age of Deliberative Democracy,” Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998): 400–425, doi:10.1111/1467-9760.00061; James S. Fishkin, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  55. Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 31–32.

  56. For two excellent reflections on the relation between timeliness and critique see Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Samuel Allen Chambers, Untimely Politics, Taking on the Political (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003).

  57. Kimberly Hutchings, Time and World Politics: Thinking the Present (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 20.

  58. Ibid., 158.

  59. Proponents of postcolonial studies have in fact created the notion of “heterotemporality” so as to come to terms with the histories of subaltern peoples. See: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 2nd edn. (Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008).

  60. Hutchings, Time and World Politics, 175.

  61. Ibid., 174.

  62. Michael J. Butler, Selling a “Just” War: Framing, Legitimacy, and US Military Intervention (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 11. For similar critiques see Anthony Burke, “Just War or Ethical Peace? Moral Discourses of Strategic Violence After 9/11,” International Affairs 80 (2004): 329–53, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2346.2004.00386.x; Jon Western, “The War over Iraq: Selling War to the American Public,” Security Studies 14 (2005): 106–39, doi:10.1080/09636410591002518.

  63. On the nexus between judgment and critique see Nicholas Rengger, “The Judgment of War: On the Idea of Legitimate Force in World Politics,” Review of International Studies 31, Supplement S1 (2005): 160, doi:10.1017/S0260210505006832.

  64. John W. Lango, “The Just War Principle of Last Resort,” *asteriskos: Revista de Estudos Internacionais e da Paz/Journal of International and Peace Studies 1 (2006): 7–23.

  65. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 84, 212–213, 218.

  66. Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 88–89.

  67. Ibid., 155.

  68. This account leaves the question open whether economic sanctions are altogether a morally acceptable alternative to waging war. For a skeptical take on the ethics of sanctions see Joy Gordon, “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy: The Ethics of Economic Sanctions,” Ethics & International Affairs 13 (1999): 123–42, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.1999.tb00330.x; Albert C. Pierce, “Just War Principles and Economic Sanctions,” Ethics & International Affairs 10 (1996): 99–113, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.1996.tb00005.x.

  69. Walzer, Arguing About War, 160.

  70. James T. Johnson, “The Meaning of Non-Combatant Immunity in the Just War/Limited War Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971): 151–70; James T. Johnson, “Maintaining the Protection of Non-Combatants,” Journal of Peace Research 37 (2000): 421–48.

  71. C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 132–53; Warren S. Quinn, “Actions, Intentions, and Consequences: The Doctrine of Double Effect,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 334–51, doi:10.2307/2265475.

  72. On the provisions in international law surrounding this issue see Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 125–26.

  73. “IDF Phones Gaza Residents to Warn Them of Imminent Strikes,” Haaretz, January 2, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-phones-gaza-residents-to-warn-them-of-imminent-strikes-1.267350; Steven Erlanger, “A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery,” The New York Times, January 11, 2009, sec. International / Middle East, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.html.

  74. Asa Kasher, “A Moral Look at Operation Cast Lead and the Gaza War,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 9, 18 (2010), http://jcpa.org/article/a-moral-evaluation-of-the-gaza-war-%e2%80%93-operation-cast-lead/, accessed on August 1, 2014. Kasher is also the co-author of another paper, which seeks to outline the perspective of the Israeli army on fighting terror. See Asa Kasher and Amos Yadlin, “Military Ethics of Fighting Terror: An Israeli Perspective,” Journal of Military Ethics 4 (2005): 3–32, doi:10.1080/15027570510014642.

  75. Alexander Marquardt and Mark Mooney, “Gaza: A Warning Call, Then Missiles,” ABC News, November 19, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-palestinian-conflict-phone-call-tells-gazans-missiles/story?id=17762083, accessed on August 1, 2014; “Israel Intensifies Gaza Bombing,” BBC, November 16, 2012, sec. Middle East, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20351553, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  76. Eyal Weizman, “Lawfare in Gaza: Legislative Attack,” openDemocracy, March 1, 2009, http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/legislative-attack, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  77. Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer, “Israel: Civilians & Combatants,” The New York Review of Books, May 14, 2009. For a similar critique of Kasher and Yadlin’s position see David J. Luban, Risk Taking and Force Protection, SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester: Social Science Research Network, May 29, 2011), http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1855263, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  78. Asha Kasher, Yadlin Amos, Avishai Margalit, and Michael Walzer, “‘Israel & the Rules of War’: An Exchange,” The New York Review of Books, June 11, 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jun/11/israel-the-rules-of-war-an-exchange/, accessed on August 1, 2014.

  79. To make things even more complicated, there are good reasons to believe that the assessment of proportionality in war will differ according to the perspective from which it is undertaken. Bohrer and Osiel argue convinclingly that proportionality requirements will look different at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. See Ziv Bohrer and Mark Osiel, “Proportionality in Military Force at War’s Multiple Levels: Averting Civilian Casualties vs. Safeguarding Soldiers,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 46 (2013): 747–822.

  80. “Warrant Issued for Sudan’s Leader,” BBC, March 4, 2009, sec. Africa, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7923102.stm, accessed on August 1, 2014; Marlise Simons and Neil Macfarquhar, “Court Issues Arrest Warrant for Sudan’s Leader,” The New York Times, March 5, 2009, sec. International / Africa, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/world/africa/05court.html, accessed on August 1, 2014; Marlise Simons, “International Court Adds Genocide to Charges Against Sudan Leader,” The New York Times, July 12, 2010, sec. World/Africa, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/world/africa/13hague.html. Accessed on August 1, 2014.

  81. Alex de Waal and Gregory H. Stanton, “Should President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan Be Charged and Arrested by the International Criminal Court?” Genocide Studies and Prevention 4, 3 (2009): 329–53, doi:10.3138/gsp.4.3.329; Robert Cryer, “The Definitions of International Crimes in the Al Bashir Arrest Warrant Decision,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 7 (2009): 283–96, doi:10.1093/jicj/mqp029; Andrew T. Cayley, “The Prosecutor’s Strategy in Seeking the Arrest of Sudanese President Al Bashir on Charges of Genocide,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 6 (2008): 829–40, doi:10.1093/jicj/mqn071.

  82. Leslie Vinjamuri, “Deterrence, Democracy, and the Pursuit of International Justice,” Ethics & International Affairs 24 (2010): 191–211, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7093.2010.00256.x.

  83. The dilemma between peace and justice has been a bone of contention for more than a decade. In recent years, authors have attempted to show that the dilemma is in fact a false one. They highlight instead the mutual implication of peace and justice. Among the most influential contributions to the debate are Jon Elster, Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena, eds., Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth Versus Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Ruti G. Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  84. Mahmood Mamdani, “Beware of Human Rights Fundamentalism,” Pambazuka News, March 26, 2009, http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/55143, accessed on August 1, 2014.

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  96. Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil, 57–58.

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    Mathias Thaler

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I am very grateful to the four anonymous referees and to the editor of this journal for providing me with sharp and generous feedback. I normally take care to acknowledge the valuable input from reviewers and editors at various points in the manuscript—in this case, however, the procedure would have required me to add dozens of new footnotes. I owe a debt of gratitude to Polity’s editor, Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, who not only guided the manuscript through the review process, but also edited the accepted version with masterful attention. Particular thanks are furthermore due to Mihaela Mihai, Vassilis Paipais, André Barrinha and Anders Berg-Sørensen, for carefully reading and commenting on the manuscript. I have presented drafts of this paper at the ECPR General Conference in Bordeaux (2013), at the Political Theory Research Group meeting in Edinburgh (2013) and at the Morrell Seminar Series, University of York (2013). The audiences of these workshops offered constructive suggestions on how to improve the paper, for which I am grateful. The usual disclaimers apply. The research for this project has benefitted from a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (JUDGEPOL) from the European Union.

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Thaler, M. On Time in Just War Theory: From Chronos to Kairos. Polity 46, 520–546 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.20

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