Things aren't always obvious

For Aristotle it was a given that part of being a citizen involved going to war and possibly dying in the process. Socrates makes the connection quite clear between being a good citizen and risking one's life for the state in war.Footnote ¹⁴ Interestingly, what Aristotle does say is that it is glorious to die in battle, since to die in war is to become a hero, and heroes are remembered and it is better to be remembered than forgotten.Footnote ¹⁵ This warrior ethos, recognising the glory of death in battle, characteristic in Homer's Iliad, was the explanation behind why anybody would even consider dying in war. They died as citizens, but in dying they became heroes. Dying in war was an obvious possibility for the citizen, but Aristotle still felt some need to explain why anybody would want to die in war even though he does not seem to find it necessary to explain how the obligation is justifiable. The obligation simply exists by definition of being a citizen: a theory of obligation is not necessary.Footnote ¹⁶

However, for St. Augustine, one of the founders of what became known as the just war tradition, the obligation was not so obvious. In fact, Augustine, and then Thomas Aquinas among other Christian just war thinkers, was greatly concerned with this problem, since it had to be explained how the sovereign could without prejudice to his soul send subjects to their possible death in war, and how those sent could risk their lives knowing that in doing so and in being sent to kill others at the same time, they would not be risking their souls either. The problem of being sent to risk one's life in war was, for Aristotle a problem relevant primarily to the politics of heroism, but for Augustine it was a serious problem of political obligation. Indeed, many of the classical just war theorists and numerous political philosophers took this obligation quite seriously, and did so in part by elaborating on the concept of proper authority, although in significantly different ways.

Augustine's account of the proper authority in relation to war is rooted in his overarching concern about individual salvation. He recognises war to be a horrifying event, even if the waging of war brings about peace.Footnote ¹⁷ Augustine argues that our lives must be lived in order to achieve salvation, and that obedience is important in this regard, even when war is concerned, and this is how he argues that anyone ordered into war by the proper authority must go. Augustine writes:

In this passage Augustine does many things. He implies that it is necessary to have the proper authority (that is, ‘the power’, which I take in this context to mean the same as authority) in order to wage war, because otherwise the war and the killing it involves would be wrong if not criminal. In addition, he states that nobody can go to war as an individual. This argument is traditionally assumed to mean that only states can fight a war, but in an Augustinian context, it also means that individuals do not have the moral ability to decide when one should fight. Augustine also emphasises that following the orders of the proper authority is an imperative. To disobey orders is just as much of a crime as if the soldier were to kill without orders. Consequently, Augustine makes no allowance for political disobedience. Rebellion or civil war is not allowed for at least three reasons, which further contextualise why the proper authorities are to be obeyed. First, because individuals have no individual rights, there can be no individual right to rebel against any established order. Second, all humans are guilty (of sin) so it makes sense to follow those in authority and not try to replace them with others who are at best equally guilty. Just as there is no individual right to disobey or rebel there is no collective right. Third, life in the city of man is made possible by the plans of God, albeit plans concocted after the fall from grace (and the establishment of human guilt).Footnote ¹⁹ Consequently, individual subjects are to obey, or rather, are obliged to obey their proper authorities and thus to act according to the order established by God and to contribute to the possibility of achieving individual salvation by having a pure soul. Augustine is claiming that the death of the body is not as great of a concern as is the maintenance of one's soul.

Augustine's account of the proper authority is also about clarifying the roles of the religious authorities and secular ones while maintaining that even in the secular realm of material concerns it is the overarching belief in the soul and of eternal salvation that guides the normative conditions of life on earth. St. Augustine's political-theology was so influential that when centuries later St. Thomas Aquinas argued against Augustine's deeply negative account of human politics, Aquinas nevertheless and somewhat paradoxically claimed to be in general agreement with this master. One of the more important differences between the two is with their respective understanding of the conditions in what Augustine calls the ‘City of Man’. Unlike Augustine, who perceives the need for human socio-political organisation to be a product of sin, Aquinas sees the city as a positive element corresponding to the laws of nature. He writes,

In its simplest form, Aquinas claims that the state exists because people need to live in a state in order to survive. He adopts, in another difference from Augustine's Platonism, Aristotle's teleological understanding of the human condition arguing that, ‘Man is by nature a social and political animal, who lives in a community.’Footnote ²¹

Consequently, as this reference to nature attests to, Aquinas argues that obligations to obey the proper authorities are natural, and in a slight twist on Augustine's account, writes that, ‘Therefore as man must obey God in all things, so too must he obey his superiors.’Footnote ²² With such a direct link between obeying God and obeying one's superiors, Aquinas' account is also clearly related to religious salvation. In this regard, A. P. D'Entrèves says that, ‘It is enough to remember the main principle which St. Thomas develops, that, as the duty of obedience to authority is grounded both upon divine and natural order, its limits are necessarily fixed by the correspondence of human authority with divine and natural law, that is, with justice.’Footnote ²³ The purpose of human laws may be to ‘lead men to virtue’,Footnote ²⁴ but not all virtues can be led to by human law, and in any case, the reason for living a life of virtue is to live a life according to the will of God. This is why Aquinas can argue that a good king can take the sons of his subjects and send them to their possible death in war.Footnote ²⁵

What both Augustine and Aquinas demonstrate is, as D'Entrèves points out in relation to Aquinas but is true of Augustine as well,Footnote ²⁶ that the problem of being obliged to obey human authority was a great concern in medieval political thought, a concern that remained constant throughout the history of political thought. The debates have changed, with individual rights and consent eventually supplanting the role of salvation and ‘natural’ obedience, but while their concern with the issue of being obliged into war played a significant part in their just war thinking, this focus has been somewhat lost. I say somewhat because while contemporary just war texts do not address this problem, related arguments over the problem of being obliged into war can be found in many notable philosophical works outside of the just war tradition. Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hobbes and Hegel all mention this obligation in various ways and recognise the challenges that it poses to the normative conditions of life in the state. Consequently, how has it been that this obligation has become taken for granted?

One possible answer has to do with the false disciplinary boundaries that have existed between Political Theory and International Relations since the problem of being sent by the state to risk one's life is technically an issue of political obligation. Famously pointed out by Martin Wight, political theorists have by and large not been interested in questions of international relations.Footnote ²⁷ Wight was wrong, but the argument is certainly consistent with the way that academia tends to distinguish between political theorists and international relations scholars, although this divide is becoming increasingly challenged. A more plausible answer could be with the way that the modern state has come to be identified.

In just war terminology, both Augustine and Aquinas frame the problem of the obligation to risk one's life in war as one of proper authority. The obligation is justified when it comes from the proper or legitimate authority. Consequently, one reason why this issue is no longer addressed may be with how the understanding of ‘proper authority’ in the ethics of war literature has changed. In this regard, one major change in our thinking has been the acceptance of Weber's argument that the state owns the monopoly on the legitimate use of force.Footnote ²⁸ Subsequently, it has become a conventional wisdom that the state is the only legitimate actor who may resort to international armed force. While classical just war theorists often found it necessary to address the complexity of proper authority, this tenet has become almost shorthand for the state. It is not an error to presume that just war theory supports this claim that only states have the legitimacy to resort to armed force, but it is a simplification with consequences, one of which is that we no longer ask such ‘questions of state’ that illuminate the conditions and questions that characterise modern international political life. Consequently, it has become acceptable to provide little explanation of the obligation to go into war, since war is a fundamental aspect of the modern state and as such is a definitional component of state sovereignty over the citizenry. If the state has the legitimate authority to use force then it must also be able to justifiably obligate those into using force and as a consequence, when sent into war, of risking their lives.

Another possible answer, and which follows from this way of reading the proper authority tenet, is with the way that war has become increasingly treated in international law, and in particular with the project of trying to outlaw war. The international lawyer Yoram Dinstein notes that contemporary international legal literature does not engage with ius ad bellum. Ius ad bellum, along with its philosophical and theological referents, are not the kinds of issues that international lawyers engage with anymore.Footnote ²⁹ According to Dinstein, one of the reasons for this absence within the international legal community has to do with how the issues behind the legality of war are of a philosophical, moral and possibly theological character. International law has, so it seems, solved the ius ad bellum problem by trying to outlaw war and claiming that any legal resort to violence has to be of a defensive nature. A war, consequently, can become justified provided that it is a response to an illegal act of aggression. Just war theorists thus have an excuse not to critique the ius ad bellum components. The philosopher Robert Holmes notes that, ‘Most modern theorists […] devote little attention to the question of whether a war is justified; they assume that it is and ask only under what conditions it is justified and how it is to be conducted justly.’Footnote ³⁰ To a certain degree this assumption is not surprising, although post September 11th 2001, this assumption is becoming increasingly challenged (especially when debating the war in Iraq).Footnote ³¹ Such challenges notwithstanding, if war is rendered illegal by inter national law, then what matters is not the question of resorting to force or the problem of proper authority, but how responses to illegal resorts to force can be kept within the moral codes that led to the outlaw of war in the first place.

According to Dinstein, ‘In the nineteenth and (and early part of the twentieth) century, the attempt to differentiate between just and unjust wars in positive international law was discredited and abandoned.’Footnote ³² W. E. Hall gives two reasons behind this abandonment in his famous Treatise on International Law. First, disputes or causes leading to war are usually not based in ‘any fundamental principle of law’,Footnote ³³ and are consequently, ‘too complex to be judged with any certainty […].’Footnote ³⁴ The rules which jurists have made in regard to a just cause have been, ‘mere abstract statements of principles, or perhaps of truisms, which it is unnecessary to reproduce.’Footnote ³⁵ Hall then references Ayala, Grotius, Vattel,Footnote ³⁶ and a few others as sources of such truisms and vague statements of principle. Hall's second reason is that even if it were possible to determine which side in war was right and which side was wrong, it would still be futile to attempt to punish the aggressor since no enforcement mechanism exists. ‘The obedience which is paid to law must be a willing obedience, and when a state has taken up arms unjustly it is useless to expect it to acquiesce in the imposition of penalties for its act.’Footnote ³⁷

First published in 1880, Hall's Treatise argues that any notion of just cause is not only legally useless, but also pointless. Even if it were possible to determine which side in war has the just cause, doing so does nothing to limit the possibilities for war. Moreover, because of the legal identity of states as parties of equal rights, it follows that any state has the legal right to wage war thus removing any legal need for a just cause. Hall writes,

In the 19th Century opinion was, as exemplified by Hall, that ius ad bellum issues were not a problem due to the practices of states, viewed as equal agents, which made such concerns irrelevant. After WWI, however, this opinion changed, as concerns about legitimate causes became a dominant issue. This shift is demonstrated by the international community's attempts to punish Germany and demand that Germany accept all culpability for the First World War.Footnote ³⁹ This shift continued with the development of positive law about legal and illegal wars, the Kellogg/Briand pact of 1928, and the UN Charter of 1945.Footnote ⁴⁰

Modern international law has tried to outlaw war (with varying degrees of success). International law started to formally limit the legality of war with Article 2 of the Hague Convention (I) of 1899 as well as that of 1907. The convention called for states to resort to arms only after non-violent means had been attempted. In 1919 the Covenant of the League of Nations attempted to further limit the possibilities of war by giving the League some powers to prevent war from breaking out. In 1928, the Kellogg/Briand Pact declared war illegal in principle.Footnote ⁴¹ In 1945, the Charter of the United Nations continued this process of trying to outlaw war. Article 2 (Chapter 1) of the Charter states that, ‘All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.’Footnote ⁴² Chapter VII provides the legal options under which a war can be waged, which other than a war of self-defence, requires a resolution of the Security Council (in which case one wonder whether the term ‘war’ is accurate).

The legal theorist Hans Kelsen illustrates this shift in international legal thinking by using the concept of aggression to identify the illegality of a war. He writes,

Hedley Bull provides another example of this kind of theorising about war when he identifies a Grotian approach that seeks to distinguish when a war is sanctioned by international society and when it is not.Footnote ⁴⁴

The attempt to outlaw war has effectively altered how war is thought of. Michael Walzer's method in Just and Unjust Wars is to start with an account of aggression as the only real crime that exists between states. With a legal war requiring another to break the law with an act of aggression, to a significant degree ius ad bellum has in a sense been replaced by ius contra bellum (justice against war).Footnote ⁴⁵ International law is, of course, not so straightforward. A war or a similar resort to force could be legal under other sections of the Charter, or may be justified solely by reference to the purposes of the Charter. However, while approaches to the justifiability and legality of war have changed, the presumption on the authority of the state to wage war has not. The claim in the 19th Century that war is a presumed prerogative of the state effectively meant that ius ad bellum issues were not a problem. In the 20th Century, this presumption was no longer accepted and positive international law became concerned with the legality or illegality of war. However, in both the 19th and 20th Centuries, as well as in the 21st Century, there was no debate about what it is about the state that makes it the authority that may justifiably, either because of convention or because of positive law, go to war.

Nevertheless, such questions are important, as the early just war theorists knew. They point out that in order to provide an ethical argument about applying morality to war we need to think philosophically about the political conditions that give such ethical arguments the sound of plausibility and applicability. The problem of the obligation to die is, however, not solely about political obligation, but also about a variety of related and equally moral and political considerations that the ethics of war literature takes for granted. Consequently, it is time to recall a lesson of the classical just war theorists and take a critical look at what moral, political and philosophical questions arise in relation to the problem of being obliged into battle by the state. There are at least five explicitly relevant questions to the moral problem of being obligated to be exposed to the danger of death in war:

1. 1. That of individual consent;

2. 2. Whether or not any state can be justified in obliging its citizens in this regard and whether or not the type of government is important;

3. 3. Whether or not the problem of the obligation differs between conscript and volunteer armies;

4. 4. How any individual could be presumed to have a moral obligation to obey the law to be sent into war and not resist this politico-legal obligation;

5. 5. Whether a citizen may be obliged to go into any war.

These questions overlap and there are sub-questions and combination questions, including how membership involves an obligation that goes against the natural right to self-preservation, what makes the state an entity able to obligate its citizens to risk their lives on its behalf, how ideology serves as a justifying force for people who risk their lives in war, and does it matter who is obliged? There are surely other relevant considerations, but for now I am limiting myself to these five, thereby making it possible to demonstrate how these questions are linked, what broader questions they raise, and why it is important to address the philosophical issues that contextualise our ethical thinking about the morality of obligation, death and war.

1. Consenting to risk one's life

In his account of sending individuals to war, Kant raises a paradigmatic problem. Considering that in a state of international anarchy states may wage war against each other, and that the sovereign has the prerogative to do so when in the state's best interest, by what moral justification could the sovereign send his subjects to war? Kant, the moral philosopher who says that humans must be treated as ends and not means states in The Metaphysics of Morals that,

Kant claims that the individual must be given the chance to consent to this obligation, although there is some trouble as to how this consent is presumed to take place since Kant also says that the subjects must obey the sovereign. Thus, Kant implies that to think about the obligation to die is to think about the conditions under which legitimate resistance to authority may take place.

There is much more that can be said here, but what should not escape notice is that Thomas Hobbes provides a surprisingly similar argument. According to the basic argument contained in Leviathan that postulates that people trade certain liberties for security, if the sovereign were to ask its citizens to risk their lives by going to war then two problems immediately arise. First, the citizen could refuse the demand and claim that it makes no sense to go to war for the sake of a contract that is supposed to avoid war. Second, the citizen would have a legitimate right to rebel against the sovereign who has clearly been unable to guarantee the terms of the contract in which the sovereign is supposed to protect the lives of its subjects or citizens. The obligation to die would be a concrete example of a failed contract. However, Hobbes in chapter 21 of Leviathan recognises that this obligation is crucial for sovereignty. He claims that the inhabitants are obliged to risk their lives if the commonwealth is threatened. If the community is at risk of being dissolved by a foreign threat and for the sake of the good provided by the commonwealth an obligation to risk dying emerges. Presumably, wars of aggression would not justify such an obligation, although this conclusion does not apply since Hobbes asserts that the sovereign may go to war if the sovereign deems it necessary for the security and prosperity of the commonwealth.Footnote ⁴⁷

The problem that Hobbes and the consent tradition has to resolve is why the contract makes an allowance for people to violate that basic and inviolable natural right of self-preservation.Footnote ⁴⁸ Indeed, contra chapter 21, Hobbes could easily be assumed to say that under no conditions can the obligation to die be justified because nobody can give up their right to life without thereby entering the state of nature, and if the sovereign places them in this position they have no reason to obey. Empirically, however, we know that the state has been extremely successful, particularly in the 20th Century, in sending its citizens into war. Not only have various dictatorships, autocracies, monarchies and other non-democratic states been successful, but so have democracies. If consent is an important moral category in the construction of a just state, would a war be just if those sent into war are not given the chance to consent to going into war?Footnote ⁴⁹ Consequently, from a moral standpoint it may be that one of the just war tenets should take into account the type of government that sends its citizens into war, or if not the type of government, the type of state.

2. The type of state

Does it matter whether or not any state can be justified in sending its inhabitants to risk their lives in war? The problem of any authority sending its subjects into war was one of the considerations that animated the just war thinkers who sought to restrict who could be justified in declaring war. This restriction is approached in the just war literature under the tenet of proper authority, with the argument being that only a proper authority may declare war, and, subsequently, only the proper authority can obligate members of the community to risk their lives in war. I suggested above that the proper authority tenet contributed to contemporary ethics of war literature ignoring the problem of the obligation to die. In contemporary just war literature this tenet serves to legitimise states as the only actors who could wage war and legitimises states with specific powers in relation to other states. The proper authority tenet came to be seen not as a foundation for justifying the authority of the state in relation to its inhabitants, but in relation to other states. By linking together the state with the ability to legitimately declare war, ‘proper authority’ establishes a community of agents with similar abilities in relation to each other, thus restricting who may enter into the community of nations, who may wage war, conduct relevant treaty negotiations and so on. Consequently, while it was important for early just war theorists such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to justify the authority in relation to its domestic constituents, this feature became overshadowed by a process of reading this tenet as a feature explaining an international system. This shift became increasingly pronounced in modern international law.

This reading of the proper authority tenet, however, leaves unanswered whether or not any authority is justified in going to war and thus sending its inhabitants into battle? Medieval just war works also include treatments on the issue of rebellion and resistance to the proper authority. Both Augustine and Aquinas heavily circumscribe any possibility for legitimate disobedience to authority, but the important point is that they addressed it as part of their exploration of political obligation to the proper authority. For example, Augustine's claim that since we all live in a world of sin it would be futile to overthrow one imperfect ruler with another indicates a concern with the character of the authority doing the obliging. Augustine further addresses this issue in regard to different types of authority. For example, he claims that a priest should not take charge over material issues of rule, although a priest could certainly counsel or guide a temporal ruler.Footnote ⁵⁰ The outstanding question, however, which needs to be addressed, is whether or not any state has this proper authority. Some of the just war thinkers did in fact address this issue, such as Vitoria who asks whether or not the American Indians could be considered to have dominion over their land, and thus be justified in resisting the theft of their property.Footnote ⁵¹

This issue has also been addressed, albeit indirectly, in some modern liberal thought on the problem of political obligation. A notable example of this turn is with the idea of ‘hypothetical consent’. In a seminal two-part article on the problem of political obligation, Hannah Pitkin makes the case for what she terms, ‘hypothetical consent’. The idea is to focus on the nature of government and whether or not the government ought to be obeyed. ‘For a legitimate government, a true authority, one whose subjects are obliged to obey it, emerges as being one to which they ought to consent.’Footnote ⁵² Pitkin's account of ‘hypothetical consent’ is shorthand for defining the problem of political obligation as being obligated to consent and not consenting to be obligated, provided that the government is just. ‘It is not so much your consent not even the consent of a majority that obligates you. You do not consent to be obligated, but rather are obligated to consent, if the government is just.’Footnote ⁵³

Taking this approach to the problem of the obligation to die the issue becomes whether or not any state can be just in obligating its citizens into war by virtue of whether or not the state or the government ought to be obeyed. It is in this regard that Barry Buzan suggests that in thinking about bombing populations as part of a humanitarian intervention, a decisive factor should be whether the population deserves their government.Footnote ⁵⁴ The question remains, however, as to what kind of state can justifiably oblige its citizens into war. This question in turn leads to the thorny issue of disobedience and rebellion, since if the state goes to war and the citizenry refuse to fight the state has got a serious problem on its hands as its authority vaporises. At minimum the government would collapse. Nevertheless, it would be reasonable to suggest that there is more to this aspect of the obligation to die than to repackage it as one of rebellion or disobedience. In short, may any state justifiably obligate its citizens to risk their lives by being sent into war, why, and how come such states would be justified in doing so? It seems reasonable to suggest that to be just in this regard the state must respect the rights of its citizens, since it makes no sense to obligate people to risk their lives for the sake of a state that persecutes them. However, this in turn raises further questions about rights, as well as what forms of political structures best respect human freedoms or human values. This issue is complicated, but it is important and is worth further study in thinking about the ethics of war. For now, however, these questions about consent and about the type of state and type of government suggest another concern, that of how the state manages to populate its armed forces.

3. Conscripts or volunteers

Is the consent problem solved by whether or not those sent into war sign up voluntarily? Consent theory needs to explain how the rights of the individual are respected within the obligation to take part in war. This problem suggests categorising different types of soldiers: voluntary conscripts who sign up because the army provides a job, individuals who sign up for ideological reasons, or people who are drafted. Whether the force is voluntary or not suggests alternative models of the political obligation problem, and not specifically of the obligation to die. However, at issue here is not the issue of national service, but of such service in regard to war and the ethics of war and in this regard it is sensible to inquire into how those who are sent into battle come to find themselves in the armed forces. Serving in the army, air force, navy or other branch of the armed forces cannot be divorced from the possibility of also facing what Walzer called the obligation to die. Insofar as a volunteer force is concerned, volunteers would presumably have accepted at least the possibility of the obligation to die. However, in countries that institute a national draft, under what aegis does the obligation to serve and risk one's life become justifiable? Conventional approaches to this question would presumably turn on some account of consent theory, be it one framed on the type of government as in Pitkin's argument of ‘hypothetical consent’ already mentioned or some other logic of consent, of which there are many.Footnote ⁵⁵

However, whichever logic of consent is taken, the important point is that it does not matter how the army is populated since the state will presume the ability to send any kind of soldier into war. Being a volunteer does not necessarily excuse the state for demanding (even in a voluntary way) its citizens to risk their lives. The moral issue here is that the state can always oblige, if not enforce, its citizens to go to war regardless of the type of war or the type of conscript.Footnote ⁵⁶ This point is made by Tim O'Brien in his account of the Vietnam War. O'Brien notes that the state has always been able to send its youth into war and even those who do not want to go submit to the state, if only because they are afraid of incurring ‘society's censure’.Footnote ⁵⁷ For either conscripts or volunteers, there is no room for evaluating and then acting on the extent to which they agree with the war they are fighting. As O'Brien discovered first-hand, it does not matter if the war is just – they will still be sent into harm's way. Conscripts can be held accountable for refusing to relinquish their right to life, even in a just war, as in the extreme case of Private Eddie Slovik, who on General Dwight Eisenhower's orders, was executed for desertion in the Second World War.Footnote ⁵⁸ Dubiously, and as Peter Paret notes, those who face the death of battle are rarely those who have declared war and yet these decision makers will take it for granted that they can send conscript or recruit soldiers to face the danger of death in war.Footnote ⁵⁹

Nevertheless, there may be an additional justifying factor in the case where those who go to war are volunteers. However, this factor would need to be mitigated by two additional concerns: that of the necessity of the war and of the absolute need to win the war (that is, in cases where Walzer's supreme emergency clause would be relevant),Footnote ⁶⁰ and of the conditions under which people enlist. The second issue seems more serious since it challenges the assumption that the obligation to die would be justified in a volunteer army because those who sign up freely chose to do so. What if this free choice is not really free? What about those who sign up because otherwise they cannot afford university, or because it is a way to stay out of jail or a way to secure food, clothing and shelter? The volunteer army argument might work if there is a level playing field among those who have the option to volunteer.

This has become a particularly politicised issue in the US.Footnote ⁶¹ In a 2002 op-ed in The New York Times the Democratic Congressman from New York, Charles B. Rangel wrote, ‘A disproportionate number of the poor and members of minority groups make up the enlisted ranks of the military, while the most privileged Americans are underrepresented or absent.’Footnote ⁶² This perspective about the American Armed Forces is repeated in a November 2005 article in The Washington Post that claimed that Army recruits were primarily poor and from rural areas.Footnote ⁶³ The article implied that the Army effectively provided these individuals with a job, shelter and something to do. Another New York Times article claims that minorities feature heavily in the US Armed Forces,Footnote ⁶⁴ unlike the British Military where in the UK there remains a tradition of the upper classes enlisting in the Armed Forces.Footnote ⁶⁵ In 2005 the right-wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation, countered these views of US Army demographics, claiming that the Army is in fact representative of the American population.Footnote ⁶⁶ Moreover, the Heritage Foundation argued that in 1999 army recruits were more educated than the ‘equivalent general population’ and the ‘household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population.’Footnote ⁶⁷

However, there are significant segments of the American public not growing up with any equality of opportunity. According to the US Army's 2004 Demographic Report, from 1990–2004, approximately half of all Active Duty Officers have a Bachelor's Degree (47.2 per cent-54 per cent), although this is not the case with the Active Duty Enlisted. In 1990 94.8 per cent of Active Duty Enlisted men and women had less than a Bachelor's Degree, although only 1.8 per cent had no High School Diploma. These figures remain relatively constant from 1990 until 2004. In 2004, 0.8 per cent had no High School Diploma and 93.7 per cent had less than a Bachelor's Degree. The Army Enlistees are generally with little post-secondary education. In the same period (1990–2004) 18.3 per cent of Active Duty members are Black or African American, 64.0 per cent are White; in 2000, the US Census showed that 12.3 per cent of the American population is Black or African American and 75.1 per cent are White.Footnote ⁶⁸ In relation to other minorities, it is clear that they are proportionally over-represented in the US Military. Ultimately, there is doubt as to how much choice possible enlistees in the US Army face in their life prospects were they not to join the Army. In other words, it is possible that the voluntary force in the US is not so voluntary as it may appear. Many people may sign up because they have little other choices available to them and because, as the Christian Science Monitor reported in 2005, the Army offers the best economic opportunity.Footnote ⁶⁹

There has been work done on some of the moral issues involved in a volunteer army as opposed to national conscription,Footnote ⁷⁰ and of the problem of the political obligation of military service.Footnote ⁷¹ One question suggested by this literature is the extent to which a state can ignore the difference between a conscript and a volunteer force, and send either type of soldier into battle. Indeed, if we are to have a better grasp of the ethics of war and the justifiability of the obligation to die, surely it is important to think about the demographics of those sent into war.

4. The political obligation problem

The vast amount of literature that seeks to clarify and/or explain the problem of political obligation tends not to ask the question in relation to the obligation to die. One notable exception here is Michael Walzer's essay, in which he addresses the problem of being sent into war as a problem of political obligation. He ends his essay on the obligation to die by claiming that,

To claim that the obligation to die exists only if it is presumed to exist by each citizen is true in a sense, since at issue are social constructions. Moreover, there is something comforting about presuming that this obligation exists in the minds of the citizens and not in the abilities of the sovereign or the remote halls of government. However, this conclusion is not especially helpful or illuminating. It is ironic that this is one of Walzer's conclusions considering that he wrote this essay in response to the Vietnam War, which involved a draft for a war that many did not support. Yet, so long as Walzer's conclusion is of this kind, then the draft in this war would be just, which would seem to run counter to the intent of Walzer's examinations on war and ethics. Furthermore, the lottery draft at this time surely lends some empirical doubt as to how far consent counts when the state decides to go to war. To be fair, Walzer's essay, The Obligation to Die, is exceptional in scope and detail, and the strengths of the essay are in his observations about some of the classical arguments that have served to justify this obligation. As an argument serving to explain how the obligation could be just, however, the essay is lacking for Walzer does not explain how the obligation to die can be justified. His final statement on the obligation is to claim that people will choose to accept the obligation to die because it is a part of choosing to live like a citizen.

One of Walzer's additional conclusions in the essay is that feeling obliged and being obliged are different, and that being obliged is in a sense contingent on being a good citizen, bound to the common life of the community. Hegel, Rousseau, and Socrates heavily influence this argument. Indeed, the death of Socrates is an important example of the obligation to die. Yet, what does it mean to be a good citizen? Does being a good citizen mean that one has to be prepared to die for the state? If so, why? How does being a good citizen explain why the sovereign may justifiably oblige its subjects (in this case, citizens) in this manner? Why does being a good citizen mean that the sovereign can be presumed to have the power to oblige in this way? Walzer is either curiously silent or overly brief in regard to these questions insofar as they serve to justify the obligation to die. His justification of the liberal egalitarian state could provide some headway into what is necessary for the obligation to be just, although this line of inquiry would lead to a debate about what sort of state could justifiably oblige, which is a different question from what is it about the state that gives it the ability to justifiably send its citizens to their possible death in war and, subsequently, how this obligation is justified. If one were to take the consent argument at face value and presume that consent does take place, what would happen in a state where consent does not take place, or if people do not consent and are forced to go into war anyway? In this case, the obligation could not be morally justifiable, but in general remarkably little would be affected since the obligation would still stand and most citizens would still be sent or go into war, as was the case in the Vietnam War. In short, what Walzer does is repeat the Kantian dichotomy between individual morality demanding that those sent to war are given the choice and the reality that the state may compel its citizens into war if government decides to.Footnote ⁷³

5. War

Can the obligation be just in any war? This question suggests that there is a connection between the ius in bello and ius ad bellum requirements and the justifiability of the obligation to die. In normative terms there should be some relation, since it seems questionable to be just in risking one's life for an unjust war, although the classical just war theorists would claim that it would be just since the issue is one of obeying the authorities in order to have a pure soul. It was in regard to this problem that Vitoria provides his example of invincible ignorance, by which he means that one's soul is safe even if one commits an act of sin, provided that this person did everything possible to learn the truth, but since one cannot know everything it is often sufficient for one's soul to obey the proper authorities and thus act according to the law.Footnote ⁷⁴ Aside from this issue, which gets us back to the problem of resistance (and it may be that the strongest argument for justifying the obligation to die would be to ask whether or not the obligation should be resisted), there is the additional problem of how the just war tenets would be used in justifying the obligation to die. Just war is not a shopping list, and so the application of just war tenets to the obligation to die would have to match the way that the tradition is used, assuming that one is comfortable with the tradition and its usage. There is such a vast amount of scholarship on this regard that repetition here is both unnecessary and would inevitably be grossly insufficient. It is worth noting, however, that George Kateb suggests that one condition for the obligation to be just is for the obligation to arise in relation to a war of self-defence.Footnote ⁷⁵ Nevertheless, it may be worth thinking about the way that just war theory is used, and how the ethics of and in war could contribute to justifying the obligation to die.