POSTMODERN MORALS, ENDS, AND MEANS: SHIFTING IDEAS ABOUT WHY, HOW AND FOR WHOM WARS ARE FOUGHT

During the postmodern era moral reasoning on why and how nations fight has shifted. The just
war tradition was founded during the fourth century in a system of thought based on natural law
as defined by the Christian conception of God. This moral construct served as a means of valuing
both humanitarian concerns and state sovereignty. Then, during the Enlightenment era, modernist
thinkers removed God as a metaphysical basis of the just war tradition, and systematized it such
that state sovereignty had greater value over humanitarian concerns. The advent of
postmodernism in the last few decades, maintained the modern metaphysics, but prioritized
humanitarian concerns over sovereignty, hence the emergence of the recent international principle
of responsibility to protect. However, because of the lack of a moral or legal authority to
determine when humanitarian concerns should trump state sovereignty, the application of the
principle is surrounded in debate and uncertainty. Therefore, there is a search for international
bodies that can assume such authority. The National Security Council has accepted this
responsibility, but inherently lacks the process to execute the principle to achieve postmodern
purposes, so the search continues. Concurrent with the search for authority is a discussion
regarding the appropriate means of conducting humanitarian intervention. A viable means exists
in the postmodern technologically centric unmanned system. While there may be legitimate moral
concerns surrounding drone use, when judged using the just war tradition, there are no moral
concerns inherent in unmanned warfare that would prevent it from being used for humanitarian
intervention. In fact, unmanned combat vehicles are well suited for such police style enforcement
actions. Given the continuing search for an international authority to conduct humanitarian
intervention and the viability of unmanned combat vehicles as a means to conduct such missions,
these postmodern influences portend an international organization with the authority and means
to conduct international police functions in otherwise sovereign states.