Noncombatant Imnmunity and Military Necessity: Ethical Conflict in the Just War Ethics of William V. O'Brien and Paul Ramsey.

William V. OBrien and Paul Ramsey are two modern just war theorists who have opposite views on the relationship between the jus in bello principle of discrimination and the international law principle of military necessity. The purpose of this study is to analyze their positions to determine which is most consistent with a Christian ethical framework and to explore the possibility of a synthesis of their views. The study covers the history of the development of the principle of discrimination or noncombatant immunity the definition of the criteria and its place within modern just war theory the ethical tension between noncombatant immunity and military necessity in examples from World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War and how immunity and necessity are related in the just war theories of OBrien and Ramsey. The study concludes that Paul Ramseys position is the most consistent with a Christian ethical framework that no synthesis of these two positions is possible which reflects an internal conflict between deontological and teleological principles within the just war theory itself and that the ethical tension between the principle of discrimination and military necessity can be ameliorated somewhat by applying a stricter definition of the principle of double effect to noncombatant immunity and by recasting military necessity as a moral principle rather than as a pragmatic statement of military realism.