catholicworldreport.com
2026-03-31
The main point of just war doctrine is to guide public authorities in determining whether a military action they are considering is morally defensible. In a democratic society, it also assists citizens in carrying out their own duties as voters, opinion makers, and so on.
But what of the servicemen who have to fight in the wars their governments decide to wage? Do they have an obligation to make a moral judgment about these wars in light of just war criteria? Must they refuse to fight in an unjust war?
Naturally, the just war tradition has addressed these questions. What follows is an explanation of the basic principles. The first thing to say is that the tradition draws a distinction between two main sets of questions: jus ad bellum questions, which have to do with the conditions under which a war may justly be entered into; and jus in bello questions, which have to do with how a war is to be conducted once it has started.
Where the first set of questions is concerned, the tradition holds that public authorities are to be held to a stricter standard of certainty about the justice of a war than soldiers are. They are, after all, the ones with the authority to go to war, and thus the ones with the primary responsibility to come to a sound judgment about the matter.
The prevailing view in the tradition is that public authorities have to be morally certain of the justice of a war before initiating it. This is a degree of certainty lower than metaphysical certainty but higher than mere probability.
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