9
II. Michael Walzer’s Just War Theory and the Two Simple Models
We turn now to examine Michael Walzer’s just war theory in order to illustrate
the (partial and qualified) use Walzer makes of the two simple models and to demonstrate
that certain internal tensions that remain within his normative prescriptions derive from
his lack of a more adequate model of the nature of international order. We focus on
Walzer’s work not only because his 1977 work, Just and Unjust Wars has proven so
powerfully influential, but also because Walzer’s meditations about specific cases in that
work and elsewhere, including his essay on the “dirty hands” problem
19
and in more his
recent essays, collected in Arguing About War,
20
are among the most impressively
learned, thoughtful, and humane discussions of the problem of war available anywhere.
Although we occasionally differ with some of Walzer’s first-order normative judgments,
our principal aim is to cast light upon—and, we hope, to shore up—the normative
foundations of just war theorizing.
In Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer develops a two-part normative theory of war.
The first part, the theory of jus ad bellum, governs the decision to wage war and regulates
the appropriate ends of a just war; the complementary theory of jus in bello regulates the
scope of permissible means to be used in war. Walzer’s own method is historical and
casuistical. His focus is always the particular and the concrete; his normative theory
develops out of his sustained reflections on an impressively wide array of moral
19
Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 2 (Winter 1973): 160.
20
Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Convention