Principles Of Just War Theory

Ethics Essay The principles of Just War theory and different ethical frameworks have been used for many years to justify and reject plans for military interventions. These ideologies are useful tools for the leaders of governments and militaries to discuss and make decisions on the morality of different courses of action. If ISIS launched a series of terrorist attacks on American embassies as hypothesized, the given plan for military intervention would be morally justified due to several principles of Just War theory and various ethical frameworks. These include the ideas of jus ad bellum and jus post bellum from Just War theory and the ethical ideologies of utilitarianism and common good ethics. The jus ad bellum and just post bellum principles

Utilitarianism sums the benefits and harms of decisions in order to decide if options are morally acceptable. This framework supports the decision to intervene because the number of lives that could be saved through the intervention outweighs the possible number of lives that could be lost. The amount of benefit that could be accomplished by ending the civil war in Syria and preventing future attacks by ISIS would compensate for the harm that could be caused to the soldiers participating in the intervention and the hopefully limited number of civilian casualties. The intervention would cause the greatest benefit for the largest number of people in the long term rather than not responding to the threat. An opposition to this could be that pursuing another means of responding to the attack, like diplomacy or continued air strikes, could also reach the same benefits without the harms of going to war. However, the strategy of air strikes alone has been attempted and proved ineffective and as ISIS is not a sovereign state it is impossible to engage in true diplomacy with its leaders. The common good approach attempts to determine what course of action promotes the good of society as a whole. The aims of the intervention are to end a terrorist group and develop a new government in Syria and both of these aims would be beneficial to the entire global community. Terrorist groups threaten the safety and security of all of the countries in the world, which causes countries to spend more on defense and counter terrorism and also stress and anxiety for many civilians. Termination of a terrorist group promotes the common good of the global society as a whole. Promoting a free and democratic Syria also promotes the common good. Syrian citizens would then have the freedoms and self-representation to make positive