NON-COMBATANT IMMUNITY MUST BE MAINTAINED. HARM TO CIVILIANS CANNOT BE MINIMIZED Thomas Donaldson. Nuclear Deterrence and Self-Defense.” Ethics, Vol. 95, No. 3, Special Issue Symposium on Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence (Apr, 1985), pp. 537-548 To conclude that the principle of discrimination means merely a "minimization" of noncombatant deaths leaves open the question of what counts as an acceptable minimum. To answer the question by reference to the principle of proportionality has the effect of reducing the principle of discrimination to the principle of proportionality, and this is an effect which flies in the face of the traditional insight that noncombatant immunity is a prior and limiting principle governing any weighing of costs and benefits. Worse, however, is the circularity that arises. Clearly, it is not an argument against a strict interpretation of noncombatant immunity to say that modern warfare as we know it would be impossible, for what is at stake is precisely the permissibility of certain aspects of modern warfare. Nor is it an argument against a strict interpretation to appeal to the right of self-defense, for, again, it is the character of the limiting conditions on the exercise of the right to self-defense that is at issue.
