National Defense and the Value of Independence

This chapter compares Ripstein’s treatment of wars of national defense with the treatment offered by the just war theory model. Wars of national defense are surprisingly difficult to justify within the just war theory approach. Attempts by some of the most prominent philosophers working within this approach have either concluded that wars of national defense are impermissible, or that they are permissible only in an implausibly restricted number of circumstances. If they are right, and if Ripstein’s account does a better job in dealing with these cases, that would be a reason to favor his Kantian approach over the traditional just war model. Renzo argues that neither of these claims is correct. Ripstein’s view ultimately lacks the resources to justify a right to wage wars of national defense, and contemporary just war theorists are wrong in believing that their approach can at best ground a weak version of such right. This gives us some reasons to prefer the just war approach over the Kantian one championed by Ripstein.