Applied Afro-Communitarian Ethics and Foreign Armed Intervention

Just war theory concerns the morality of engaging in warfare, the conduct in war and justice - including democratization and reconstruction - in the aftermath to end war. The morality of war can be measured from a variety of military and philosophical ethics that include theological, consequentialist and realist schools of thought. Various military interventions, such as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, have been analyzed and evaluated and criticized from a Western and, especially, liberal point of view.

In this book, Danny Singh addresses foreign interventions from a different normative paradigm. Namely, he addresses the morality of foreign military interventions in light of Afro-communitarianism, a dominant philosophical approach in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Afro-communitarianism, positive communal relationships/social harmony are the greatest good that can be achieved to form friendship (which can be understood as the combination of shared identity and goodwill). Even though Afro-communitarianism prioritizes peaceful communal relations, enmity-behavior and violence are morally permissible if it either leads to a less disharmonious state of affairs or to a harmonious state of affairs or there are no friendly alternatives to achieve any of both desired outcomes but the initiator of conflict desires to promote them. Moreover, Afro-communitarianism prescribes dialogue as a guiding action to avoid military conflict. The book provides an alternative, and non-Western, approach to the morality of war and efforts to promote sustainable peace in the aftermath of conflict between warring belligerent parties.

Danny Singh is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Teesside University, UK.