The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics Justice, International Law and Global Security Series

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