Mr Tuukka Kaikkonen1
1Australian National University, Acton, Australia
Biography:
Tuukka Kaikkonen is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. His PhD project examines how the concept of luck shapes our study of international politics. It does this by drawing insights from past international thinkers to inform our present-day analyses and assessments of foreign affairs. This work shares connections with his other research interests, the foremost among which is the ethics of war.
Abstract:
In this paper, I argue that paying attention to luck adds to the case against the initiation of wars. One notable aspect of war and its initiators is their vulnerability to luck. By luck, I mean events and circumstances that are beyond agent-control. The course and outcomes of war are subject to luck. As Clausewitz noted, war is a domain of chance and the outcomes of war uncertain. Ignoring this is hazardous. Specifically, I argue that lucky wars can make actors prone to misjudgements about future wars. A successful war can grant its prosecutor a sense of competency and moral righteousness. However, if the success of a war was due to luck rather than skill or virtue, then the prosecutor risks drawing unwarranted lessons from their ostensible success. Such mistaken learnings may distort judgment and predispose actors to complacency, such as by making them (or others) more prone to initiate new wars. Taking luck into account therefore matters for how we assess wars, both in advance and in retrospect. Even if we were unable to conclusively attribute the outcomes of a war to luck, the mere prospect that the outcome of a war might have been a product of luck gives reason for prejudice against war. To argue this, I draw on philosophical and historical literature on luck and war and connect these to illustrative examples. This is with the hope that awareness of luck’s confounding effects will serve to curtail military adventurism and introduce caution into decision-making about war.