No, the rock is not used to produce an outcome, only to produce a choice of outcomes. The people who put it there have no culpability for the worse outcome, if that is chosen, only for the least worst available outcome of those on offer. There is no mistake about others valuing things differently, because their values aren’t involved in the measure of culpability.

Getting back to the case in point, the British did not intend starvation; thinking that was the error in Raico’s assessment that I originally pointed out. The British did intend to win, and were willing to erode Germany’s war effort to do it. They knew or ought to have known that that could come about in a more round about way than by cutting Germany’s military manpower and munitions production, with its food production suffering instead. However, that worse outcome is not a matter of British culpability; that only extends to the least worst option. The further damage to Germany over and above that is down to Germany, for choosing that instead. If the Germans felt that that starvation was not the least worst option but that damage to German war making capability was, they had no grounds for complaining about starvation – since they felt it wasn’t that bad. But if they complained that it was bad (which they did), the rebuttal is that they could have had the damaged war effort if they had preferred. British culpability covers that, but no more, just as trapping a bank robber who has hostages doesn’t make it down to those doing the trapping if he then kills the hostages; their risk should be borne in mind, which is why things are usually put on hold at that point – but it doesn’t create a moral obligation to let the bank robber go, because what happens next is his call and his fault.

The Germans didn’t even have the moral and intellectual honesty to say “look what you made me do”, but the starvation was the direct consequence of what they did all the same, not of what the British did. They preferred to starve, and they couldn’t pass that responsibility on, only the responsibility for the least worst outcome that they didn’t pick after all.

Dagnytg, I’m not arguing semantics at all, I’m using semantics to bring out the subject matter needed to assess the ethical situation accurately. Here, the British do indeed have a measure of culpability – but it does not extend to the actual (worse) outcome, but only to the least worst option of those options Britain forced on Germany with the dilemma. The original point I addressed, of course, was the Raico/Higgs contention that starvation was a deliberate British policy and strategy; it was not, but eroding German war making capacity was. That last is a factual matter, with ethical significance but factual none the less. Britain is no more responsible for the starvation, ethically speaking, than for the rise of the Nazi Party (I regret any close pass to Godwin’s Law, but it is historically connected, and I am not likening things to the Nazis but distancing them). So what if stopping the blockade would have led to ending the starving? Ethically, that would have been an act of grace, because of the distancing from the immediate (German) cause of the starving, just as it would have been if the French had decided to surrender to stop the starving. In fact, any number of outsiders could have acted to stop the starving even though they never took any hostile actions regarding the war at all, e.g. the Dutch, Danes, Swedes and Norwegians could have decided to share their food with the Germans, and the British wouldn’t have been able to prevent that physically. One might as well connect their inaction with that level of moral responsibility; this should show the reductio ad absurdum of blaming the British for unnecessary and avoidable consequences.

For what it’s worth, once hostilities ceased the naval side of the blockade became much less material; the land borders were no longer blocked incidentally by hostilities, and the continuing embargo was a joint effort by all the allies.

Beefcake the Mighty wrote:-

This IS semantics.

Of course it is. I never denied it. However, I pointed out that I was using semantics to bring out the substantive matter for the ethical discussion.

You are misrepresenting my position by omission. Don’t.

“The original point I addressed, of course, was the Raico/Higgs contention that starvation was a deliberate British policy and strategy; it was not, but eroding German war making capacity was. ”

Higgs in fact wrote,

“You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans — men, women, and children alike — not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. ”

Precisely – he (incorrectly) asserted that the British undertook to do that. They did not. They actually undertook a blockade to stop war materiel – contraband – from going in, contraband which incidentally included anything that might contribute to the German war effort by freeing resources for that; so dual use and fungible stuff was also blocked.

In the essay in question, Raico points out the ways in which the British blockade violated international law, specifically concerning that law’s intent to minimize civilian suffering. (He also notes Churchill’s characteristic glee over the prospect of civilian deaths.) There is simply no way you can spin this by saying the British were merely targeting Germany’s military capacity and not civilians as such. The British policy made no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. It is immaterial whether the Germans were any better in this regard (they weren’t), although it should be noted that the policy originated with the British and not the Germans.

Of course I can’t spin that – nor do I want to rise to your overstated misrepresentation of the situation. Luckily, spinning is not necessary; all that is necessary is to bring out the truth of the matter, so that constant repetition of assertions like yours, that conflate different things, won’t stand unchallenged to deceive unwary surfers who might happen upon this thread.

Raico has omitted the great care and attention the British took to use a navicert inspection system that let through non-contraband – basically a visa system for cargoes (see if you can find if he or Higgs makes any mention of that and how it worked). It was all carefully within the bounds of what was accepted practice at the time (and since), precisely because Britain didn’t want to lose the moral high ground with neutrals who were potential allies, notably but not only the USA. Germany’s approach, on the other hand, did manage to lose that. Churchill’s “glee” (another hyperbole) is an understandable reaction to the poetic justice of Germany reaping what it had sowed, but not at all a policy or strategy position. And of course the policy didn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants; that is a red herring, since that was not where the point of application lay. It did (quite properly) distinguish between contraband and non-contraband, which was all it needed to do, whether at the policy or at the ethical level. So, of course, the policy did originate with the British; the Germans never used it at all, but applied first a restricted and then an unrestricted submarine warfare that did block essential survival resources very considerably and not merely things that Germany could replace (if it cut back on its war effort). At one point in 1916, I believe it was, Britain had less than one week’s supply of food in hand – and no way (unlike Germany) to raise food production by switching resources away from the war effort.

Beefcake, you appear to be resorting to abuse. Don’t.

And that is not a threat, either, but just an instruction on how you ought to conduct yourself. People generally resort to abuse when argument fails, and you are lumping yourself in with that. Nothing of what I have presented is as you have misrepresented – and you have mostly been misrepresenting. Unbiassed readers will now find it easier to spot you for what you are. They will also be able to see how often you have simply thrown terms like “specious” around rather than actually addressing the matters raised – which is “argument by assertion”, and also a giveaway for not having anything to back it up. After all, it is hardly a violation of international law to get favourable opinions of a policy; if anything, it shows respect for it – so misrepresenting that as a violation of international law is not addressing, let alone rebutting, what I raised earlier, that Britain was acting in due form.