Increasingly, the United States has come to rely on the use of drones to counter the threat posed by terrorists. Drones have arguably enjoyed significant successes in denying terrorists safe haven while limiting civilian casualties and protecting U.S. soldiers, but their use has raised ethical concerns. The aim of this article is to explore some of the ethical issues raised by the use of drones using the just war tradition as a foundation. We argue that drones offer the capacity to extend the threshold of last resort for large-scale wars by allowing a leader to act more proportionately on just cause. However, they may be seen as a level of force short of war to which the principle of last resort does not apply; and their increased usage may ultimately raise jus in bello concerns. While drones are technically capable of improving adherence to jus in bello principles of discrimination and proportionality, concerns regarding transparency and the potentially indiscriminate nature of drone strikes, especially those conduced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as opposed to the military, may undermine the probability of success in combating terrorism.

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In the preface of the 2006 edition of Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer makes an important distinction between, on the one hand, “measures short of war,” such as imposing no-fly zones, pinpoint air/missile strikes, and CIA operations, and on the other, “actual warfare,” typified by a ground invasion or a large-scale bombing campaign. Even if the former are, technically speaking, acts of war according to international law, he proffers that “it is common sense to recognize that they are very different from war.” While they all involve “the use of force,” Walzer distinguishes between the level of force used: the former, being more limited in scope, lack the “unpredictable and often catastrophic consequences” of a “full-scale attack.” Walzer calls the ethical framework governing these measures jus ad vim (the just use of force), and he applies it to state-sponsored uses of force against both state and nonstate actors outside a state's territory that fall short of the quantum and duration associated with traditional warfare. Compared to acts of war, jus ad vim actions present diminished risk to one's own troops, have a destructive outcome that is more predictable and smaller in scale, severely curtail the risk of civilian casualties, and entail a lower economic and military burden. These factors make jus ad vim actions nominally easier for statesmen to justify compared to conventional warfare, though this does not necessarily mean these actions are morally legitimate or that they do not have potentially nefarious consequences.

Contemporary just war theory is experiencing a period of renegotiation as scholars grapple with the dimensions the war on terror places on the relationship between justice and war. A closer examination of the history of the tradition reveals that such intellectual moments have occurred before, and represent a philosophical heritage which can be probed for insight into current questions.We turn to the 1550-1 Valladolid debates between Sepúlveda and Las Casas to gain insight into some of the questions facing just war theorists today because the debates lay bare the logic for expanding jus ad bellum in the case of those perceived to be barbarians, and a compelling counter-argument. Sepúlveda proposes that a more expansive understanding of jus ad bellum is necessary in the case of barbarians, defining just cause in terms of identity and the natural law, balanced by humanitarian ends such as saving the innocent and spreading the natural law. Las Casas illustrates the dangers of Sepúlveda's position and offers an alternative framework of jus ad bellum that focuses on injury and warns against including humanitarian benefits in the just cause criterion. Las Casas' ultimate wisdom lies in arguing for the restriction of jus ad bellum in the face of those who make compelling arguments, draped in moral universals and humanitarian imperatives, for its expansion.

The Contrat d'Accueil et d'Intégration is the keystone of France's revamped immigration paradigm aimed at integrating immigrants into French society and fostering social cohesion through adherence to a Rousseauian social contract. Because the use of the social contract as an immigration tool taps into an ideal (and thus flawed) philosophical tradition, it is important to move beyond the procedural mechanism and political implications to probe the deeper philosophical issues raised by grafting a Rousseauian social contract onto the immigration realm. From a Rousseauian perspective, discerning the nature of French republicanism is not a question of which paradigm-the traditional republican or the multicultural-has the better understanding of the fundamental values of modernity. Rather, what matters is how the French public views the scope of these values and whether the laws promulgated by the government in power reflect the general will of society as a whole. The contribution of this article lies in exposing the questions the immigrant contract raises regarding the power of the particular and/or general will, the problematic social patterns it engenders regarding the factionalization of society, and the tensions and trade-offs it creates regarding upholding the assimilationist paradigm, sentiments of inequality and fraternity, levels of social strife and definitions of national identity.