ABSTRACT
The relationship between ethics and war is at best strange, at worst, it can appear paradoxical. War is a situation in which the normal rules that govern civilised discourse in international affairs have broken down. Within a society there are many crimes that can be committed, but none is more serious than the act of deliberately taking another person’s life. Yet most societies consider it perfectly consistent with this to keep a military organisation of varying size to carry out precisely this function if the circumstances so dictate. Even so, those military organisations are only allowed to carry out this function in certain ways, adhering to all sorts of legal, social and ethical constraints. Warfare, despite taking place when the normal rules of political interaction no longer apply, always has been one of the most rule-bound activities that mankind conducts and this presents something of a conundrum.
