The way I see it, the decision should be a two-parter. First, the decision should be made as to whether the proposed war is just of not. Then, if there is a consensus the war is just, there can be a second debate as to what the most moral means are used to conduct out the war.
I don’t like the idea that a war can be conditionally just depending on what means are used to conduct it.
I think I get what you’re saying, but what about a war in which the purpose is also a potential means? So, for example, if we declare a just war to be one in which we prevent an immediate nuking of a country, but our means is to nuke the threat, then our rationale for justness breaks down.
In traditional “Just War” theory, the two parts are jus ad bellum, the right to go to war; the second establishing jus in bello, right conduct within war.
Of course, it ain’t that simple. Part of the jus ad bellum analysis was “proportionality” - that is, the anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms.
Given that the “evils and harms” are conditional on what means are used to wage the war - it follows that deciding the jus ad bellum question requires that analysis.
A better counter-factual would be the Abwehr, or some other more competent agency, assassinating Churchill in 1939 or earlier, not FDR. Have him hang or shoot himself; Churchill famously struggled with depression throughout his life, one reason I find him such an inspirational figure.
(Better assassinate Canaris first, and give the keys to Heydrich, who’d remake the Abwehr into another arm of the RSHA)
Anyways, no Churchill, and Germany’s chances of negotiating a settlement with Britain improve a great deal. Negotiated settlement with Britain, along with some savvy diplomacy by Germany—telling Japan to lump it, and never mind the Siberian reserves the IJA is supposedly tying down—ends the unrestricted submarine campaign and British blockade. Both of those restore Germany as a giant market for American goods, and removes a lot of the U.S. impetus to go to war with Germany. That frees up a lot of German resources to go after the U.S.S.R., which, I suspect, would have been viewed in the West as favorably as the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s: sell arms to both sides and lament that they both can’t lose.
As to why we don’t do assassination these days? My thought is that it’s because dictators are usually better able to shield themselves from it than leaders of free, open societies. Moreover, in an age of nuclear weapons, you really don’t want to be threatening people who have the ability to exterminate large swathes of your country in an afternoon. You want to keep the leaders around, so somebody can turn off and control the nuclear retaliatory response. But for someone like Ghadaffi, someone who’s on the run, without access to either retaliatory assassination teams or WMDs, and who’s silly enough to make public speeches in the open, why not kill him if it will end the bloodshed sooner?
I think the notion of proportionality is useful when looking at whether a particular war is more or less immoral. Fire bombing of Japanese cities was more immoral because the misery it caused noncombatants was out of proportion to the amount the Japanese war effort was damaged. Aerial mining of Japanese harbors, on the other hand, was less immoral because it did cause greater damage to the Japanese war effort, relative to the misery it caused noncombatants. I wonder if that decision makers at the time had enough information to make clear distinctions in these questions.
For that matter, it isn’t clear to me that the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto had any large effect on the course of the Pacific War.
I never thought of that as an assassination but I guess it could count as one. His plane was intercepted in the field of war, is that really assassination?
Obviously I’d agree that killing Gadaffi would be a good thing. Yay for emergency trepanation via .50 cal incendiary round.
On the other hand point, I am reminded of something that Heinlein wrote. We don’t shun the notion of assassination because we’re so moral and good, but because we’re not. Our politicians, I’d wager, figure that if assassinations were the norm for resolving international conflicts that it’d be their heads on the block rather than whichever troops they send to war. And they figure that they might get killed over trivial/unavoidable matters.
I disagree. If rulers are open to assassination whether or not they follow the rules of war, but are open to prosecution if they don’t, then their incentive will be to follow the rules of war and do their best to remain secure in their person. Especially if not following the rules of war not only leads to criminal sanctions, but to more pissed off people who may be willing to assassinate you. Likewise, if other nations see that leader behaving like a barbarian, they may decide to have him killed lest his attentions fall on them later, and to send a message to any future leaders of that nation that they won’t tolerate such actions.
Well, I think that’s somewhat unavoidable. Let’s say the first step of the decision making process is to decide if lethal force is justified or not. The second step, then, has to be “can we apply lethal force in a manner that is consistent with the just prosecution of a war?”
For instance, if we’d determined that it was justified to kill Sadaam Hussein (which I’d have agreed with) and then decided that the only way to be sure was to nuke Baghdad, then we’d have had to abort the mission entirely.
There was also an attempt, by the British, to kill Rommel during the war.