The Hostage Principle

[Philip Coates]

The Hostage Principle

by Philip Coates

During the 70's, after leaving school, I moved to New York City and audited courses from both Leonard Peikoff and Murray Rothbard at Brooklyn Polytechnic. I apparently was the first Objectivist to develop a key principle regarding the ethics of the use of force. I was sitting in Rothbard's class and heard him say that if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack on the United States, it would be immoral to unleash a retaliatory strike because of the millions of innocent Russians who would be killed. The U.S. would be guilty of murder because those people did not initiate force.

I sat down and wrote basically the following (a condensed version) and sent it to Rothbard. When I asked him what he thought of it, he answered angrily "not much!" and rushed off. But I gave a copy to Harry Binswanger and one to Leonard Peikoff, who told me I had made some good points. And a number of these points (and the bank robber example and the name for the principle which I coined) have appeared many times in Objectivist discussions since.

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"The Hostage Principle"

Who bears the responsibility for the death of innocent people in a war or other physical conflict? Have you committed murder if you kill them, since they didn't initiate force against you?

Consider a bank robber who has entered a bank and is shooting at a policeman while holding a human shield in front of him. Suppose that in order to protect his own life the cop has to shoot back, even if he kills the hostage? In that case, one would say (and the law is in accord with this--one does not prosecute the cop) that the cop was in the right. He did what he had to do. And the sole moral responsibility for the deaths of innocent hostages in a criminal situation rests on the criminal who caused the situation in the first place. In a very real metaphysical sense, it's as if the bank robber were the one who pulled the trigger. He is the metaphysical cause of the chain of events.

Similarly in the case of a war. If the Soviet Union or another aggressor initiates a war, it puts its own population in the line of fire. It is using them as human shields, as hostages, placing them in between the party against whom force is being initiated (the United States in Rothbard's nuclear exchange example) and the necessities of its own defense. The aggressor bears sole moral responsibility for the deaths of however many civilians (on both sides) are killed in actions that the defending party reasonably judges necessary to win the war, to defend itself from physical force.

Just as in the case of the bank robber's hostage, the civilian population of the Soviet Union are hostages many of whom may die in a war. The dictatorship which caused the war bears *full moral responsibility for such deaths*...and in a very real sense is the party that caused those deaths, not the retaliating party who actually "pulled the trigger".

( At the time I wrote this essay, over thirty years ago, I didn't anticipate that anyone would abuse the hostage principle by using it to excuse killing innocents even when it is not necessary to defend oneself. I would today add the following-->)

On the other hand, the harm you are allowed to cause to innocents is morally limited. It is limited by what, in the judgment of the moment, seems to be *necessary* for self-defense. The aggressor bears the blame for your use of force which kills the innocent only if he "backed you into a corner", if he put you in a situation where you had no other way to defend yourself (or in the context of as much information as you possessed could not see another way that clearly would succeed...even if it later turns out you misjudged: part of the blame the aggressor must bear is putting you in a situation where you may not have the luxury of prolonged or unending academic deliberation).

The cop or SWAT team is not justified in blowing up the entire bank or city block to try to get a bank robber, or in shooting through the hostage to kill the bank robber when he is not threatening their lives. Or in using nuclear weapons in a situation which does not require them for survival or defense or to prevent conquest by totalitarian invaders. The United States is not justified in indiscriminately attacking the civilian population of countries it is at war with when such killing is not necessary to the war and does not promise to shorten it. The judgment of when to send in a SWAT team in a domestic law enforcement situation can be a tricky and complex decision. The same applies in the use of force in wartime (always bearing in mind the "fog of war" and that one does not always have twenty-twenty hindsight in situations involving force where one does not have all the information one might like to have).

The principle is that one must attempt to make the force proportional to and directed at the removal of the threat. You must walk the line between the principle that you are morally justified in and morally *required* to ruthlessly use every bit of force that is necessary to fully accomplish a moral goal. And the principle that you do not use -more- force than is necessary and effective.

You try not to kill hostages when you can avoid it. But (especially on a global stage) you can't let hostage-taking be a weapon that emboldens or allows the initiation of force or the destruction of your freedoms.

[Roger Bissell]

Well said, Phil. And good for you, for getting this clear thinking into the Objectivist mainstream so early on.

REB

[zantonavitch]

So what do Peikoff, Binswanger, et al. say to you regarding your addendum? :question:

[Chris Grieb]

Phil Coates; Good job! The contrast between your thinking and whatever Jimmy Carter was doing about the hostages in Tehran is monumental. Carter was afraid of possibly killing the hostage takers not to mention "so called" innocent Iranians.

[Kat]

Thanks, Phil, for a very good article. I like the bank robber principle. I'm glad you went back and clarified your thinking on this. It just seems like good old-fashioned common sense to try to avoid killing innocents.

Kat