“It’s important to me to highlight the nuances”. The philosopher Nadia Mazouz talks to Horizons about pacifism – both principled and absolute – and about ‘just’ wars. | Photo: Salvatore Vinci

Nadia Mazouz, if you’d been asked in 1939 whether you’d allow your research to help develop an atom bomb in the fight against Nazi Germany, would you have agreed?

(Thinks for a long time) You’re asking a general question about whether war can be just – in the sense of morally just, not in the modern sense of ‘just’ meaning to establish fairness between individuals. The answer is complicated and has several levels to it. The fact that the Poles and the French resisted the Nazis was acceptable even to most pacifists. But just because a war is justified does not mean that all the activities that you undertake in such a war are themselves justified automatically. In retrospect, we have to acknowledge that developing the atom bomb could not be justified. It was a matter of getting ahead of the Nazis, though they were far away from developing their own bomb. It was ultimately used to keep the communists in check.

Did the participating researchers know this?

When Albert Einstein – a pacifist – wrote to the US President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, calling on him to develop an atomic bomb, he was naturally unaware of it. But as for Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project: there is much controversy over whether or not he knew it, and, if so, when exactly. This also confirms that moral judgements depend on complex historical reconstructions that are themselves uncertain.

Let’s jump to the present day: It is morally justified for Ukraine to engage in a military struggle against the Russian invasion?

The war in Ukraine has made a lot of people realise that they are not absolute pacifists. But there is a strand of pacifism that regards war as wrong in principle, while acknowledging that there are exceptions. The core argument is that you may defend yourself militarily against an attacker who wishes to destroy you. But principled pacifists do not consider fighting a war to be morally acceptable when its aim is to defend territory or political sovereignty. The decisive question that a principled pacifist would ask is whether Russia is waging a genocidal war, or only a war about territory. In the latter case, such a pacifist would only consider civil resistance to be justified, not military resistance.

If you’re not a pacifist, does that automatically make you a warmonger?

No. There are also alternative positions, primarily the idea of a just war. According to this view, a war can be justified when certain conditions are fulfilled. The core issue is that there has to be a just cause for the war. This is largely the case when its aim is to defend territory and the political sovereignty of a community. The defence of fundamental human rights is also a just cause. Think of Rwanda, where small-scale military resources would have been enough to prevent a terrible genocide. There are a few further criteria too. What remains very important is that the aim of the war has to be to achieve peace. In this, the principled pacifists and the advocates of a just war are all in agreement.

So what’s your position?

This isn’t about me. It’s not the duty of a philosopher to offer their opinion to others about these difficult questions. What’s important to me is to highlight the nuances involved.

But you surely have an opinion about Ukraine.

Of course. Based on my overview of the political situation, I believe that the Ukrainians are justified in defending themselves militarily, even without the threat of a war of annihilation. But at the same time, it’s crucial to focus on developing institutions that can prevent war, and to protect them – especially multilateral, international organisations.

Is this opinion based on your own philosophical deliberations?

All over the world, for thousands of years, we philosophers have been grappling with the question of what constitutes a just war. One approach is theory driven. For example, one might consider whether it is viable to assume a stance based on the inalienable rights of people or states. Or one might adhere to a theory focusing on the consequences of actions. But neither of these two theories brings us to any consistent, thoroughly plausible stance. Applied ethics tries to solve these dilemmas by basing its approach on the concrete judgements of citizens. This is in fact derived from the field of medicine and uses case studies to arrive at well-considered assessments. In my research, I deal with attempts to establish the concept of a ‘just war’.

Different research institutions adopt different stances. The Swiss National Science Foundation is focused exclusively on civilian research. The European Commission, however, believes that it has a responsibility to promote defence capabilities. Who’s right?

If you accept that a defensive war can be morally justifiable, then it’s surely fundamentally right to conduct research into military capabilities. This is especially the case in times when we have to assume that our imperfect international order is unable to provide an effective deterrence to wars of aggression. However, this does not automatically mean that universities should assume such tasks. Other institutions could do it instead. But even if universities did undertake military research, it would remain unclear exactly what that research ought to be.

So who should be allowed to conduct armaments research?

It is the mission of universities to serve society. To this end, they are given the greatest possible research freedom. However, when it comes to research into war, determining the limits of that research freedom becomes controversial. Even some principled pacifists are against an overly narrow clause allowing only civilian research. For example, disaster protection is a generally recognised field, even though in a certain sense it’s also war research. From my point of view, the most crucial point is that universities have to come to an understanding amongst themselves about what research they want to carry out, including research that we might term ambivalent.

But the results of civilian research can also be used to military ends.

Sure. We’re dealing here with dual-use research. Even basic research can have unforeseeable consequences. Who would have thought that toy drones might suddenly be used to drop grenades into trenches in the Ukraine war? This is why one could in theory argue that a clause allowing only civilian research would in fact make all research impossible. But even if there are a lot of grey areas, there are still matters that are black and white. There are indeed major uncertainties and there’s a lot of ambivalence, but it’s a fact that there is morally acceptable research, and morally reprehensible research. Just how to define them remains highly controversial, for no absolute stance exists that could generate unproblematic results. Even a clause allowing only civilian research would have to be reviewed time and again to determine exactly what should be allowed, and what should be prohibited.

What’s the best forum to discuss issues of military research?

It’s my experience that researchers think about these matters a lot, but don’t know where to discuss them. Such complex ethical questions can overwhelm individuals. But in the past, we’ve managed as a society to set up appropriate bodies to resolve other thorny ethical issues. Commissions exist for interdisciplinary discussions about the limits of animal research, for example. We are currently in the process of setting up an ethics centre at ETH Zurich, where we’ll also be grappling with the topic of military research. Overall, there isn’t much of a theoretical basis for this field of discussion, but we need it so that society can start to reflect on it in a more complex way. The current feature topic of your research magazine is a good starting point.