Moral Equality of Combatants
The moral equality of combatants (MEC) is a doctrine about the principles governing the conduct of combatants in a war (where “conduct” is taken to include not only how combatants are permitted to fight, but whether they are permitted to fight). According to MEC, the principles governing the conduct of combatants in a war do not depend on what side in the war the combatants are fighting on. Thus, if MEC is correct, then for any side in a war, the principles governing the conduct of the combatants do not depend on whether that side is fighting a just war. Consequently, if it is permissible to fight in a just war, combatants do no wrong by fighting in an unjust war. The most distinguished supporter of this application of MEC is Michael Walzer. In his influential book Just and Unjust Wars (2000), Walzer argues that the responsibility for waging an unjust war rests with military and civilian leaders – not with combatants who typically have no control over the decisions made by their leaders, and who typically are subjected to deception, indoctrination, and coercion by the state. Thus, in a war with a just and unjust side, the combatants fighting on the unjust side (unjust combatants) are typically no less morally innocent than those fighting on the just side (just combatants). Walzer argues that since both just and unjust combatants are morally innocent (unless they commit war crimes) the principles governing combat ought not to distinguish just combatants from unjust combatants. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
practical (applied) ethics; 
war and conflict
The Difference Uniforms Make: Collective Violence in Criminal Law and War
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put front and center the problem of dealing with non-uniformed combatants. They have also made central deep questions of the legitimacy of resorting to martial violence, and responsibility for picking up the pieces thereafter. I argue here that the special problem of non-uniformed combatants and the general problem of justifying war are profoundly linked. War, I shall argue, is but one form of a more general species: collective violence. Collective violence poses a particular set of challenges to the application of moral principles. In what follows, I identify a conflict between two themes in our response to collective violence. I call these themes of inculpation and exculpation. I illustrate these themes with three stories derived from actual events.
Individual Responsibility in a Global Age
As the twentieth century begins to draw to a close, Europe is undergoing a process of political transformation whose outcome cannot be predicted with confidence, in part because the process is being driven by two powerful but conflicting tendencies. The first is the movement toward greater economic and political union among the countries of Western Europe. The second is the pressure, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the countries of Eastern Europe to fragment along ethnic and communal lines.