1st Edition

The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics

    This Companion provides scholars and graduates, serving and retired military professionals, members of the diplomatic and policy communities concerned with security affairs and legal professionals who deal with military law and with international law on armed conflicts, with a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in the area of military ethics. Topics in this volume reflect both perennial and pressing contemporary issues in the ethics of the use of military force and are written by established professionals and respected commentators. Subjects are organized by three major perspectives on the use of military force: the decision whether to use military force in a given context, the matter of right conduct in the use of such force, and ethical responsibilities beyond the end of an armed conflict. Treatment of issues in each of these sections takes account of both present-day moral challenges and new approaches to these and the historical tradition of just war. Military ethics, as it has developed, has been a particularly Western concern and this volume reflects that reality. However, in a globalized world, awareness of similarities and differences between Western approaches and those of other major cultures is essential. For this reason the volume concludes with chapters on ethics and war in the Islamic, Chinese, and Indian traditions, with the aim of integrating reflection on these approaches into the broad consideration of military ethics provided by this volume.

    General Introduction:; I: The Choice Whether to Use Military Force; 1: The Decision to Use Military Force in Classical Just War Thinking; 2: The Decision to Use Military Force in Recent Moral Argument; 3: Contemporary International Law on the Decision to Use Armed Force; 4: The Role of the Military in the Decision to Use Armed Force; 5: Special Problems I: The Question of Preemption; 6: Special Problems II: The Response to Asymmetric Warfare and Terrorism; 7: Special Problems III: The Question of Using Military Force in the Frame of the Responsibility to Protect; 8: Special Problems IV: Questions Posed by Nuclear and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction; II: Right Conduct in the Use of Military Force; 9: Framing the Issues in Moral Terms I: Applying Just War Tradition; 10: Framing the Issues in Moral Terms II: The Kantian Perspective on Jus in Bello; 11: Framing the Issues in Moral Terms III: Rights and Right Conduct; 12: International Humanitarian Law; 13: Boston to Where: The Challenges Posed by Local-Global Terrorism; 14: Terrorism and Ethics; 15: The Bombing of Dual-Use Targets; 16: The Ethics of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; 17: Targeted Killing; 18: Cyber Warfare; 19: The Moral Equality of Combatants; 20: Treatment of Prisoners and Detainees; 21: My Country, Right or Wrong: If the Cause is Just, is Anything Allowed?; 22: No Job for a Soldier? Military Ethics in Peacekeeping Operations; 23: Enforcing and Strengthening Noncombatant Immunity; 24: Understanding Proportionality in Contemporary Armed Conflict; III: Ethics After a Conflict is Over; 25: Security and Political Order: The Ethics of Who Is in Charge and Enforcing the Peace at War's End; 26: How Should This Conflict End? Implications of the End of an Armed Conflict for the Decision to Use Military Force and Conduct in the Use of Such Force; 27: War Crimes Tribunals after Armed Conflict; 28: Fostering Reconciliation as a Goal of Military Ethics; IV: Perspectives from Other Cultures; 29: Ethics in the Islamic Tradition on War; 30: Chinese Traditions on Military Ethics; 31: The Indian Tradition

    Biography

    James Turner Johnson is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at Rutgers University-The State University of New Jersey (USA). Johnson is a former Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and also served for nine years as founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Military Ethics. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Princeton University in 1968. Eric D. Patterson is Dean and Professor of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University (Virginia Beach, Virginia) and Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs, where he previously served as Associate Director for four years. He has served as a White House Fellow, at the U.S. State Department, and 17 years as an Air National Guard officer.

    ’This is an exceptional book: rich in content and highly relevant in a world where the ethics of military action grow ever more complex. I will have a copy on my shelf as soon as it is published and I will ensure that it is a key point of reference for the students I teach. I cannot recommend it highly enough.' Peter Lee, University of Portsmouth and RAF College Cranwell, UK ’This is an exquisite and provocative collection of contemporary thinking about military ethics. Besides distinguished academics, the editors also include writers with an authentic orientation towards military realities, something too often omitted in works of this type. Positively a must have volume for anyone interested in the indispensable role ethics play in modern conflicts.’ Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., USAF (Ret.), Duke Law School, USA