ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates some of the main elements of that proportionality requirement. In the Just War Tradition (JWT), proportionality assessments come into play only if the just cause requirement has been satisfied, that is, only if one community endures some egregious violation that provides it with just cause to wage war against another. The use of military violence in war not only causes but also prevents evils. Those prevented evils can be just as relevant to the overall moral standing of a given war as the goods and evils actually engendered by war. The chapter focuses on the proportionality requirement as formulated by Thomas Hurka in his much-discussed Proportionality in the Morality of War. It suggests that only those goods to which human beings actually have rights and only those evils, the infliction of which actually wrongs human beings, are relevant to proportionality assessments.
