Payers might be morally liable for example to the

payers might be morally liable, for example, to the effects of certain
kinds of economic sanction, they would not be appropriate targets for
military force. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that, in contrast
to unjust combatants, even morally responsible noncombatants normally
make only a very slight causal contribution to their country’s unjust war,
so that attacking them would do little to diminish the threat their coun-
try poses or to advance the just cause.
A second objection is that, just as it is normally impossible to have
accurate information about an unjust combatant’s responsibility for the
threat he poses, so it is normally impossible to have detailed information
about whether and to what extent a particular noncombatant is re-
sponsible for her country’s unjust war. Again, this is true. But it does
not show that noncombatants cannot be liable, but only that just com-
batants can seldom know which ones are responsible or to what extent
they are responsible. And this drastically restricts the practical signifi-
cance of the responsibility criterion’s implication that some noncom-
batants may be legitimate targets in war. For, while a few noncombatants
may bear a high degree of responsibility for their country’s unjust war,
and many may be responsible to a much weaker degree, there are also
many others who are not responsible at all. Because one cannot normally
distinguish among the highly responsible, the minimally responsible,
and those who are not responsible at all, just combatants should in
general err on the side of caution by acting on the presumption that
noncombatants are innocent, that is, devoid of responsibility for their
country’s unjust war (just as just combatants must act on the presump-
tion that unjust combatants are responsible for the threat they pose).
And even if, on some occasions, just combatants were to have sufficient
information to be able to distinguish between responsible and nonres-
ponsible noncombatants, the responsible ones would normally be in-
termingled among the nonresponsible, making it impossible to direct
force, or even economic sanctions, against the responsible ones only.
And this is a further reason why military action can very rarely if ever
be proportionate against civilian targets. In this respect, attacks on ci-
vilian populations are again importantly different from attacks against
groups of unjust combatants, for all of the latter are (or may reasonably
be presumed to be) to some degree liable to defensive force.
I have thus far tried to show that the responsibility criterion is in
fact highly restrictive in its implications for the permissibility of attacking
noncombatants in war. But it does imply that it can be permissible, on
occasion, to attack and even to kill noncombatants—and not just, as
nonabsolutist versions of the traditional requirement of discrimination
concede, because the prohibition against intentionally attacking non-
combatants may in extreme circumstances be overridden, but also be-
cause noncombatants are in some cases morally liable to force or vio-