The Ethics of War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy insisted that his masterpiece, War and Peace (1867/2004), was not a novel. Neither, Tolstoy claimed, was it a historical chronicle. But it has a plot and involves organisations at many levels – whether it is family, ballroom, military or government – and at each level we encounter ethical dilemmas. Undoubtedly, humanity strives for peace. However, there is much to support Winston Churchill’s (1947) claim that ‘the story of the human race is War’ (p. 184); especially as warfare has never been restricted to armed conflict between nations. Currently nations, political groups, companies and other organisations are engaged in ‘wars’ of greater or lesser impact. One could say that wars run amok. The word ‘war’ is used in many ways, and we refer to ‘war’ here without in any way suggesting that all meanings are the same. For simplicity, we have used the word war without quote marks even though not all agree that some of the circumstances are properly to be called a war.