What is an intentional action? Do moral concepts pertain primarily to intentional actions and secondarily to their consequences? How are just war principles applicable to courses of action and plans of action? In this chapter, these and other questions that interrelate moral theory and the theory of action are investigated.

However, this book is not exclusively a theoretical study, and topics in the theory of action are discussed quite incompletely. The purpose is to enlarge the framework of presuppositions introduced in the preceding chapter. Again, to exhibit the relevance of the current chapter for later chapters, theoretical presuppositions are interrelated with topics in just war theory, including specific issues and particular cases.

To counterbalance overemphasis of the just cause principle, I am emphasising the last resort, proportionality and noncombatant immunity principles. For the sake of concreteness, this chapter continues to feature the idea of noncombatant immunity.

I. HUMAN ACTIONS

The military actions of groups such as tank crews, regiments and armies are emergent from, supervenient on or reducible to actions performed collectively by human beings. Preliminary to discussing the subject of military actions in the second part of this chapter, I discuss, in this first part, the subject of human actions.