Disagreement by War

This review essay examines Benbaji and Statman's War by Agreement. It raises two challenges to their contractarian account of war, which seeks to show that considerations of mutual advantage can generate novel permissions. First, if such a robust justification for participation in unjust wars is available, it is not clear that any kind of agreement between states is even required; if a state can make otherwise unjustified killings permissible, it would seem to be able to do so without the participation of other states. Second, more generally, I doubt that any such agreement could make otherwise unjustified killings permissible.