Marc LiVecche

Marc LiVecche is the McDonald Distinguished Scholar of Ethics, War, and Public Life at Providence. He is also a non-resident research fellow at the US Naval War College, in the College of Leadership and Ethics.

Marc completed doctoral studies, earning distinction, at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain, until her death in August, 2013. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. Another project, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition, co-edited with Eric Patterson, was published by Stone Tower Press in the fall of 2020. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to working at a Christian study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which rendered him entirely ill-suited for pacifism.

Marc lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and children–and a marmota monax whistlepigging under the shed. He can be followed, or stalked, on twitter @mlivecche. Additional publications can be found at his Amazon author page.

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Just War 101 — E9: Prudence; or, Reality (Sometimes) Bites

Just war morality demands that ethical judgements must take into account certain cold, unrelenting, and frustratingly immovable facts. Wisdom matters.

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One End of Learning

Education in a free society is aimed at morally forming men and women of character capable of helping that free society to flourish

Jean Bethke Elshtain: An Augustinian at War
Jean Bethke Elshtain: After Ten Years

Today marks the denary anniversary of Jean Elshtain’s death. She is much missed. Her brand of Christian realist thinking is desperately needed today.

Russia and China at Once – Part III: The Importance of Alliances (Including Internal)

The United States cannot pursue a strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating both China and Russia at the same time alone. We need allies.

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People Were Not Directly In the Atomic Crosshairs

We can rightly regret the necessity of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But their primary purpose was never the killing of large numbers of civilians.

Russia and China at Once — Part II: We Must Increase Defense Spending

In order to meet the requirements of the two-front fight we are in, the morally responsible thing is to commit to properly funding our military

Russia and China at Once: Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Challenge of a Two Front War

U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia is not a distraction from defending Taiwan. It is a component of it. We are in a two-front fight.

Just War 101 — E8: Right Intent

The last essential requirement for a just war is to have a properly oriented set of intentions. These include rescue, justice, punishment, peace, and victory

French destroyer leader Mogador burning after shellfire at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940.
Just War 101 — E7: Retributive and Distributive Justice

Just War encompasses two overlapping but distinct forms of justice. Complex questions of desert accompany both, sometimes tragically.

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Just War 101 — E6: Just Cause

The presence of certain kinds of evil in the world–including aggression against the innocent–signal the possibility that war must be.