when a nation loses a war and after it changes the political system and political leaders, does it have moral responsibility to compensate victimized countries?
japan has given billions of dollars to south korea out of tax collecte from japanese people, most of which are not war criminals and have done no harm in any way whatsoever to war victims whom they compensated financially. is this action should be regarded as a pure political actions, or should the japanese be considered to have moral resposiblity to do so?Is there moral responsibility of a nation to compensate war victims?Well, my initial reaction is to say that yes there is a moral responsibility, and in the case of Japan there is a responsibility for a whole lot of compensation to a whole lot of people, not just the folks in South Korea (and I'm saying this as someone who loves Japan and her people dearly). But then I got to thinking, where does that responsibility stop? Are the people who lose wars the only people who should pay compensation to their victims? Personally, I think there are innocent people on all sides of every war, so if only the losers have to pay compensation, what happens to the innocent people on that side? Why don't they deserve some kind of compensation or aid? I think that there is a moral responsibility to make sure that all of the innocent people hurt by a war get the help they need. It would be great if a government or military would directly help the people most hurt by their actions, but I also think that the victims should come first and that helping them should be the top priority, even if that means the help comes from the folks who didn't directly hurt them. If a military or government needs to be punished for wartime actions, there should be ways to do that without making war victims wait for aid.Is there moral responsibility of a nation to compensate war victims?The people of a Nation, rightly or wrongly, are considered to have
responsibility for the actions of a Government to which they gave
their support.
(This has interesting implications for the U.S vis-a-vis the unjustified
war in Iraq, doesn't it?)Is there moral responsibility of a nation to compensate war victims?No. I think that would put us on a slippery slope of being responsible for every transgression in history...which, in itself, would be a victimization of everyone who was born after the fact.Ideally, a nation should follow Sun Tzu's Art of War and win by the least possible use of force. That would be the first moral obligation in war.
The US helped defeat Germany in WWII in a war the US did not start, yet gave them financial help to rebuild: a very commendable moral action.
Helping others in need is always a moral obligation.Of course there is no moral responsibility, it's purely political. It's as old a practice as humanity is old - making the losers pay tribute, enslaving (today only symbolically enslaving by confiscating their production) conquered people. Always the innocent civilians do the sweating for tribute, so it's got nothing to do with morality, it's only about justice at the level of political entities.
