ABSTRACT
Two specialized agencies of the state, the police and the military, which are duty-bound to protect the lives and property of the citizens, continue to maintain the most significant control of the modern means of violence, despite the profileration of weapons to nationalist and terrorist groups. Certainly in modern industrial states, most threats to domestic peace are met by the police, those to international peace by the military. If we follow Max Weber in regarding the state as a human community claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, 1 then by definition the state’s specialized agencies employ violence legitimately—that is, in the interests and with the sanction of the community—although occasions do arise when either the police or, more often, the military, pose a threat to the very citizens it is charged with protecting. This most saliently occurs as a result of trampling on the people’s rights, forcing them to become aggressors or victims, or both. What is more, the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian populations during the Second World War, the use of nuclear weapons and their further development in the post-1945 period suggest that, in a future nuclear war, the very survival of the community that the military is charged with protecting can be imperilled. Two questions thus arise: in what ways can the military be a threat to the citizens, even in carrying out its appointed duty? Second, can the use of nuclear and other indiscriminate weapons be considered the legitimate use of violence?
