Journal for Peace and Justice Studies

This paper works through issues of moral psychology and Just War Theory to provide a framework for evaluating affective responses to killing in war. In lightof the second anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, it seems especially appropriate to examine our responses to this event. Weaving together the Just War accounts of Augustine and Walzer, and a cognitive-constructivist theory of emotions presented by thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Charles Taylor, I have developed an account of the moral and practical importance of cultivating proper emotional responses to killing in war, based on what I call “humanistic intuitions” that stem from an innate sense of common morality. It is my contention that recognizing and maintaining these humanistic intuitions is not only morally right, but also is necessary for facilitating healing from the psychological trauma of war.

Using hermeneutics, syllogistic reasoning, and critical thinking, this article examines social implications of Christ’s mediation for peacemaking in Africa. The main arguments and conclusions in the article rely on the author’s hermeneutics of Saint John’s gospel, John 14:6, and on the analysis of observations and open-ended interviews conducted from 1990 through 2010 in fifty Catholics parishes across twelve African countries on the role of the Church in African societies. The article addresses questions on the implications of Christ’s mediation for the Church, by articulating cross-arguments around two main points to demonstrate how Christ’s mediation requires that the Church engages more into peacemaking activities in conflict-affected countries in Africa. The first part of the article enhances Jesus’ way as an effective way of mediation for peacemaking. The second part develops some implications of Christ’s mediation for his followers with recommendations for the Church in war-torn societies in Africa.

The emergence of sophisticated cyber weapons such as Stuxnet and Flame, and widespread offensive cyber-operations revealed in documents leaked byEdward Snowden, pose challenges not only to international security and civilian infrastructure, but blur the distinction between violence and nonviolence, confusing the ethical discourse of cyber war and muting public discourse and resistance. Rethinking cyber war as destabilizing nonviolence reveals the moralambiguities and contested ontology of cyber weapons, heightens awareness of their conflicted linguistic representation and challenges the vantage point of “theresponsible actor” in justifying cyber war attacks. Such heightened awareness of the ontological and ethical complexity of cyber weapons makes room forreasoned public discourse and strategies of resistance to clandestine cyber war and to justified use arguments that defend cyber weapons as nonviolent.

Although the current consensus judgment on world government is highly negative, Alexander Wendt’s 2003 article in the European Journal of International Relations, entitled “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” has generated significant interest within the international relations (IR) profession. However, it may be that debating the inevitability thesis represents a misallocation of intellectual resources. The important question is not whether world government is inevitable or not, but rather whether it is desirable or not. And the question of desirability depends critically on the nature of the proposed world government. Up to this point, most discussion of world government, pro and con, proceeds from the assumption that the world government would be the “omnipotent world state” of traditional world federalist thinking: a very powerful and centralized state entity that would stand in relation to its component nations much as the federal government of the United States stands in relation to the component states. But more recent contributions focus on a limited world government, in which the component nations would retain such rights as unilateral withdrawal and independent military forces. A far more interesting case may be made for a limited—as opposed to an unlimited—federal world government.