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ID: 155495

Expanding the history of the just war: the ethics of war in ancient Egypt / Cox, Rory

Cox, Rory	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

This article expands our understanding of the historical development of just war thought by offering the first detailed analysis of the ethics of war in ancient Egypt. It revises the standard history of the just war tradition by demonstrating that just war thought developed beyond the boundaries of Europe and existed many centuries earlier than the advent of Christianity or even the emergence of Greco-Roman doctrine. It also argues that the creation of a prepotent ius ad bellum doctrine in ancient Egypt—based on universal and absolutist claims to justice—hindered the development of ius in bello norms in Egyptian warfare. I contend that this development prefigures similar developments in certain later Western and Near Eastern doctrines of just war and holy war.

Key Words

Ethics of War ; History of the Just War ; Ancient Egypt

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ID: 163102

Historicizing waterboarding as a severe torture norm / Cox, Rory

Cox, Rory	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

The debate on waterboarding and the wider debate on torture remains fiercely contested. President Trump and large sections of the US public continue to support the use of waterboarding and other so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ as part of the ‘War on Terror’, thus putting the anti-torture norm under pressure. This article demonstrates that the re-imagining of waterboarding as ‘torture-lite’ is contradicted by the long history of waterboarding itself. Examining pre-modern uses and descriptions of torture and waterboarding, this article highlights that the post-2001 identification of waterboarding as a relatively benign interrogation technique radically inverts a norm that has predominated for over 600 years. This historical norm unequivocally identifies waterboarding not only as torture but as severe torture. The article highlights the value of historically contextualizing attitudes to torture, reviews how and why waterboarding was downgraded by the Bush Administration, reveals the earliest explicit description of waterboarding from 1384, and argues that the twenty-first-century re-imagining of waterboarding as torture-lite is indicative of the fragility of the anti-torture norm.

Key Words

Torture ; CIA ; Legal History ; Anti-Torture Norm ; Comparative Ethics ; Torture-Lite ;
Waterboarding

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