Moral Responsibility In Twenty First Century Warfare

2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Moral Responsibility in Twenty-First-Century Warfare explores the complex relationship between just war theory and the ethics of autonomous weapons systems (AWS). One of the challenges facing ethicists of war, particularly just war theorists, is that AWS is an applicative concept that seems, in many ways, to lie beyond the human(ist) scope of the just war theory tradition. The book examines the various ethical gaps between just war theory and the legal and moral status of AWS, addresses the limits of both traditional and revisionist just war theory, and proposes ways of bridging some of these gaps. It adopts a dualistic notion of moral responsibility—or differing, related notions of moral responsibility and legitimate authority—to study the conflicts and contradictions of legitimizing the autonomous weapons that are designed to secure peace and neutralize the effects of violence. Focusing on the changing conditions and dynamics of accountability, responsibility, autonomy, and rights in twenty-first-century warfare, the volume sheds light on the effects of violence and the future ethics of modern warfare.

This remarkably rich collection of articles focuses on moral questions about war. The essays, originally published in Philosophy & Public Affairs, cover a wide range of topics from several points of view by writers from the fields of political science, philosophy, and law. The discussion of war and moral responsibility falls into three general categories: problems of political and military choice, problems about the relation of an individual to the actions of his government, and more abstract ethical questions as well. The first category includes questions about the ethical and legal aspects of war crimes and the laws of war; about the source of moral restrictions on military methods or goals; and about differences in suitability of conduct which may depend on differences in the nature of the opponent. The second category includes questions about the conditions for responsibility of individual soldiers and civilian officials for war crimes, and about the proper attitude of a government toward potential conscripts who reject its military policies. The third category includes disputes between absolutist, deontological, and utilitarian ethical theories, and deals with questions about the existence of insoluble moral dilemmas.

Explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning, the relation between public and private morality, and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have focused new attention on a perennial problem: how to end wars well. What ethical considerations should guide war’s settlement and its aftermath? In cases of protracted conflicts, recurring war, failed or failing states, or genocide and war crimes, is there a framework for establishing an enduring peace that is pragmatic and moral? Ethics Beyond War’s End provides answers to these questions from the just war tradition. Just war thinking engages the difficult decisions of going to war and how war is fought. But from this point forward just war theory must also take into account what happens after war ends, and the critical issues that follow: establishing an enduring order, employing political forms of justice, and cultivating collective forms of conciliation. Top thinkers in the field—including Michael Walzer, Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Turner Johnson, and Brian Orend—offer powerful contributions to our understanding of the vital issues associated with late- and post conflict in tough, real-world scenarios that range from the US Civil War to contemporary quagmires in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Congo.

This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: • What role do the traditional elements of jus ad bellum and jus in bello—and the constituent principles that follow from this distinction—play in modern warfare? Do they adequately account for a normative theory of war? • What is the role of the state in warfare? Is it or should it be the primary actor in just war theory? • Can a just war be understood simply as a response to territorial aggression between state actors, or should other actions be accommodated under legitimate recourse to armed conflict? • Is the idea of combatant qua state-employed soldier a valid ethical characterization of actors in modern warfare? • What role does the technological backdrop of modern warfare play in understanding and realizing just war theories? Over the course of three key sections, the contributors examine these challenges to the just war tradition in a way that invigorates existing discussions and generates new debate on topical and prospective issues in just war theory. This book will be of great interest to students of just war theory, war and ethics, peace and conflict studies, philosophy and security studies.

An important, timely book on the morality of armed conflicts in the twenty-first century. Every society and every period of history has had to face the reality of war. War inevitably yields situations in which the normal ethical rules of society have to be overridden. The Just War tradition has evolved over the centuries as a careful endeavour to impose moral discipline and humanity on resort to war and in its waging, and the tradition deserves our attention now as much as ever. Just War traces the origin and nature of the tradition from its roots in Christian thinking and provides a clear summary of its principles, which are accessible to all beliefs. As the circumstances and necessities of war have changed over time, so too have the practical interpretations of the tradition. Drawing examples from Kosovo, Afghanistan and the wars in Iraq, Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan look at the key concepts in relation to modern armed conflict. The tradition sets rational limits and respects the adversary's humanity amid the chaos of war, and provides systematic questions which governments and armed forces must ask themselves before they engage in war. This short but powerful book is a timely re-examination of its tenets and their relevance in the twenty-first century, setting out the case for a workable and credible moral framework for modern war before, while and after it is waged.

Discusses how just war theory needs to be revised to better secure and respect human rights. Warfare in the twenty-first century presents significant challenges to the modern state. Serious questions have arisen about the use of drones, target selection, civilian exposure to harm, intervening for humanitarian reasons, and war as a means of forcing regime change. In Just War and Human Rights Todd Burkhardt argues that updating the laws of war and reforming just war theory is needed. A twenty-year veteran of the US Army, Burkhardt claims that war is impermissible unless it is engaged, fought, and concluded with right intention. A state must not only have a just cause and limit its war-making activity in order to vindicate the just cause, but it must also seek to vindicate its just cause in a way that yields a just and lasting peace. A just and lasting peace is motivated by the just war tenet of right intention and predicated on the realization of human rights. Therefore, human rights should not only dictate how a state treats its own people but also how a state treats the people of other countries, insulating them and protecting innocent civilians from the harms of war. Todd Burkhardt is Professor of Military Science at Indiana University at Bloomington.

"The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: "jus ad bellum," "jus in bello," the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: What role do the traditional elements of jus ad bellum and jus in bello--and the constituent principles that follow from this distinction--play in modern warfare? Do they adequately account for a normative theory of war? What is the role of the state in warfare? Is it or should it be the primary actor in just war theory? Can a just war be understood simply as a response to territorial aggression between state actors, or should other actions be accommodated under legitimate recourse to armed conflict? Is the idea of combatant qua state-employed soldier a valid ethical characterization of actors in modern warfare? What role does the technological backdrop of modern warfare play in understanding and realizing just war theories? Over the course of three key sections, the contributors examine these challenges to the just war tradition in a way that invigorates existing discussions and generates new debate on topical and prospective issues in just war theory." --Publisher's website.