292 CHAPTER EigHT ■ War and Strife
Just war is an evolving practice. Key con temporary debates surround the question
of how newer killing technologies— nuclear weapons, land mines, cluster munitions,
fuel air explosives, and in par tic u lar drone strikes— affect our assessments of moral and
ethical conduct during war. A key concern of just war theorists is the fact that some
technological advances make the notion of noncombatant immunity, the protection
of all civilians not using weapons and prisoners of war, among others, very difficult.
The use of nuclear weapons has been viewed as a just war concern for two reasons.
First, as observed earlier, unlike with most conventional weapons, the destructive effects
of nuclear weapons are impossible to restrict in time and space. Although as many as
110,000 Japa nese were killed in the first few hours after the atomic bombings of Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki, the Japa nese government estimates that total fatalities directly
attributable to the bombings today exceed 250,000. Second, the destructive potential
of con temporary thermonuclear weapons is simply unpre ce dented. No one can say for
certain what the impact of even a limited exchange of such weapons might be on the
global ecosystem. An all- out exchange, in which hundreds of such weapons were delib-
erately detonated, might end all life on the planet (save perhaps insect life), damage
the atmosphere, or plunge the earth into an extended “nuclear winter.” Thus, the pro-
portionality of means and ends, which stands as a second pillar of just war theory, would
be violated.
Other weapons have also come under fire under the “nondiscriminatory nature”
theory of unjust war. Two of par tic u lar note include antipersonnel land mines and clus-
ter munitions. Although land mines originally were viewed as legitimate weapons, the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) has succeeded in shifting percep-
tions of these weapons by emphasizing—as with other weapons of mass destruction—
the indiscriminate effect of their capacity to harm. That approach and pro cess has also
been adopted by the Cluster Munitions Co ali tion, a co ali tion of NGOs pres ent in over
100 countries. In 2008, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was signed, banning
the use of weapons with a high potential to harm noncombatants and providing assis-
tance for clearance and victim assistance.
The campaigns against antipersonnel land mines and cluster munitions reflect grow-
ing pressure to restrict or eliminate the use of vari ous weapons and practices in accord
with just war princi ples. Constructivists can rightly cite the power of norms and social-
ization to alter the be hav ior (and identity) of both state and nonstate actors in this
regard. After 2001, for example, the George W. Bush administration sought guidance
on whether certain interrogation techniques—in par tic u lar one called waterboarding,
in which suspects are nearly suffocated repeatedly during questioning— were “torture.”
If waterboarding were torture, it would be illegal, even within the context of the war on
terrorism. After being assured that waterboarding was not torture, the Bush administra-
tion approved its use in interrogations. The ensuing controversy proved fierce. Most
interrogation and legal experts consider waterboarding both an in effec tive interroga-