Posts Tagged ‘Michael Walzer’

A tyrannical state is always in the killing business, so perhaps a state that is out of the killing business cannot be tyrannical. If that is right, then the execution of a tyrant should be the last execution.

So Michael Walzer 2007. Musste an Walzers Worte denken, als ich die Bildunterschrift bei diesem Artikel las. Und an Mahmoud Ahmadinejad und Ali Khamenei.

Force-short-of-war – especially when it involves trade sanctions or a weapon embargo – requires the cooperation of many nations if it is to be effective. I’ve said this already, but it bears repeating: The avoidance of war and massacre requires a committed collective, ready to use force. It is sadly true that Europe today does not display that commitment; nor do Europe and the United States together. And the United States alone has seemed more ready, these past several years, to go to war than to use force in restrained and politic ways.

Aus dem 2006′er Vorwort zur vierten Ausgabe von Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations.

Deutlich fundierter als Glucksmann und Dershowitz beleuchtet Michael Walzer die Verwendung und den völkerrechtlichen Hintergrund der Verhältnismäßigkeit:

Let’s talk about proportionality–or, more important, about its negative form. “Disproportionate” is the favorite critical term in current discussions of the morality of war. But most of the people who use it don’t know what it means in international law or in just war theory. Curiously, they don’t realize that it has been used far more often to justify than to criticize what we might think of as excessive violence. It is a dangerous idea.

Michael Walzer: On Proportionality.