Collateral Voices: Civilian Perspectives, Moral Injury, and the Ethics of War

Abstract

The prioritization of belligerent perspectives at the expense of civilian protection and welfare has a long history in just war theory and practice, from the works of early just war theorists to the legal and scholarly defenses of colonial conquest to the contemporary moral injury discourse. In this article, I show how this history has contributed to the ongoing infliction of devastating harms on civilians, as evidenced in the case studies of drone warfare and the war in Gaza, and I argue for the inclusion and prioritization of noncombatant civilian perspectives in academic, policy, and legal analyses of war. Doing so, as I demonstrate, radically disrupts traditional just war thinking and has important implications for broader social, legal, and policy approaches to armed conflict and its aftermath.