The ethics of business in war

Abstract

When scholars discuss the relationships between war and business, they typically come up with the prosecutions of German corporations for their complicity with the Nazi regime. Or, more recently, they remind us that Chiquita Brands International’s payment to Colombian paramilitary groups. What these and other such examples have in common is that both are focused on issues of retributive – as opposed to preventive – justice. On a different vein, a growing body of literature on the links between international business and global and regional security highlights the relative roles of business firms in contributing to reductions of violence and describes actual corporate initiatives in conflict prevention and social change. But this stream of research is more concerned with what corporations can do and actually do in fostering peaceful societies than with what they ought to do in wartime and their liability to defensive force in war. A reason for this emphasis in the literature is the widespread understanding that the responsibility for resorting to war rests on the state and its political authorities and the responsibility for how the war is waged rests on the state’s army. According to that view, business firms – as well as civilians – have no special obligations in wartime. The purpose of this paper is to challenge this common understanding of war responsibilities as a way to reconsider the ethical responsibilities of business firms in war and conflict situations. Building on Just War Theory – a tradition that enjoys a distinguished pedigree and is, arguably, the most influential perspective on the ethics of war and peace – I examine the moral status of the central requirement of the rules of engagement in war, namely the principle of discrimination.