This book offers an overview of the ethical problems posed by Information Warfare, and of the different approaches and methods used to solve them, in order to provide the reader with a better grasp of the ethical conundrums posed by this new form of warfare. -/- The volume is divided into three parts, each comprising four chapters. The first part focuses on issues pertaining to the concept of Information Warfare and the clarifications that need to be made in order to (...) address its ethical implications. The second part collects contributions focusing on Just War Theory and its application to the case of Information Warfare. The third part adopts alternative approaches to Just War Theory for analysing the ethical implications of this phenomenon. Finally, an afterword by Neelie Kroes - Vice President of the European Commission and European Digital Agenda Commissioner - concludes the volume. Her contribution describes the interests and commitments of the European Digital Agenda with respect to research for the development and deployment of robots in various circumstances, including warfare. (shrink)

This paper is about the effects of the absence and the possibility of the emergence of a normatively meaningful political public sphere. The effects of the lack of a global public sphere are far-reaching. Namely, the current crisis of global governance and the global political system can be traced back to the absence of a normatively meaningful public sphere that can mediate between global society and the authoritative institutions of global governance. At the same time, I argue that the absence (...) of the public sphere is not primarily due to the population’s attitudes trapped in national horizons but must be primarily attributed to the deficient institutional structure of the global political system. (shrink)

In "The Ethics of America's Afghan War," Richard W. Miller argues that reflecting on whether and how to end the war in Afghanistan exposes serious deficiencies in just war theory. I agree, though for different reasons than those canvassed by Professor Miller.

Even if preventive military counter-terrorism may sometimes be ethically justifiable, it remains an open question whether the Bush Doctrine presents a discursively coherent account of the relevant normative conditions. With a view towards answering this question, this article critically examines efforts to ground the morally personifying language of the Bush Doctrine in term of hegemonic stability theory. Particular critical attention is paid to the arguments of leading proponents of this brand of game theory, including J. Yoo, E. Posner, A. Sykes, (...) and J. Goldsmith. When examined in their terms, the Bush Doctine is best understood as an ethically hypocritical and shortsighted international discursive strategy. Its use of moralistic language in demonizing 'rogue states' for purely amoral purposes is normatively incoherent and discursively unsustainable. If it is a strategically rational piece of international communication, it seems designed to undermine globally shared normative meanings for the sake of short-term unilateral military advantage. (shrink)

Even if preventive military counter-terrorism may sometimes be ethically justifiable, it remains an open question whether the Bush Doctrine presented a discursively coherent account of the relevant normative conditions. With a view towards answering this question, this article critically examines efforts to ground the morally personifying language of the Bush Doctrine in term of hegemonic stability theory. Particular critical attention is paid to the arguments of leading proponents of this brand of game theory, including J. Yoo, E. Posner, A. Sykes, (...) and J. Goldsmith. When examined in their terms, the Bush Doctine is best understood as an ethically hypocritical and shortsighted international discursive strategy. Its use of moralistic language in demonizing ‘rogue states’ for purely amoral purposes is normatively incoherent and discursively unsustainable. If it is a strategically rational piece of international communication, it seems designed to undermine globally shared normative meanings for the sake of short-term unilateral military advantage. (shrink)

This essay makes three claims about preventive war, which is demarcated from preemptive war and is part of a broader class of ?anticipatory? wars. Anticipatory wars, but especially preventive war, are ?hard cases? for traditional Just War theory; other puzzles for this tradition include nuclear deterrence, humanitarian intervention, and provability a priori of the success of Tit-for-Tat. First, and despite strong assertions to the contrary, it is far from clear that preventive war is absolutely prohibited in traditional Just War Theory, (...) and it is also dubious that it is in all cases ?clearly illegal?. Second, the morality of both preemptive and preventive wars is shown to turn on epistemological considerations: on what degree and kind of justification the primary metaphysical facts of threat can be reasonably believed. Third, an argument is made that whatever epistemic threshold is held to be necessary, some preventive wars will exceed it, and that this is more likely with advancing technologies of information acquisition. Finally, the common argument that allowing all nations to follow policies of preventive war would result in more wars than barring such policies is shown to be mistaken by simulations in game theory. Suggestions are made about the derivation of traditional Just War criteria from more basic moral principles, and about their subtle failures as jointly necessary conditions for the morality of war. (shrink)

James Turner Johnson is the foremost scholar of the just war tradition working today. His treatment of the historical development of the just war tradition has been hugely important, influencing a generation of theorists. Despite this, Johnson's work has not generated much in the way of critical commentary or analysis. This paper aims to rectify this oversight. Engaging in a close and critical reading of Johnson's work, it claims that his historical reconstruction of the just war tradition is bounded by (...) two key thematic lines — the imperative of vindicative justice and the ideal of Christian love — and occasionally betrays an excessive deference to the authority of past practice. By way of conclusion, this paper sums up the promise and limits of Johnson's approach, and reflects upon its contribution to contemporary just war scholarship. (shrink)

Drawing on the historical insight of Emer de Vattel to build on the contemporary arguments of Michael Walzer and David Luban, this article develops a model of sufficient risk as a necessary condition for anticipatory war to be deemed self-defence. This model holds that an anticipatory war may constitute legitimate self-defence (as opposed to aggression) when it aims to forestall a threat that poses a sufficient risk to the anticipating state. This is the point where a threat is both sufficiently (...) likely to materialise and sufficiently large to pose a grave risk. Due to crucial problems with the imminence condition for self-defence, I propose that the sufficient risk condition subsume that of imminence. The power of this model lies in its ability to encapsulate all factors raised by previous authors that are morally relevant specifically for anticipatory wars and categorise them as contributing to the judgement of the likelihood of the threat materialising and/or the magnitude of the potential threat. This parsimonious categorisation increases the accuracy and clarity of the moral theory on anticipatory war, making it more robust to change in the types of threats faced by states, and less ripe for manipulation to justify immoral wars. (shrink)

Steven Lee critiques an essay by Allen Buchanan and Robert Keohane on the preventive use of military force.

This paper argues that citizens should be wary of a policy of Reformed Preemption such as is found in the National Security Strategy of the United States. This policy is too permissive with regard to the use of force and it suffers from epistemological difficulties. The war in Iraq is examined in an effort to see how the new policy of Reformed Preemption will be employed in practice. This case shows us two risks of the new policy: it permits wars (...) even when the threats are vague and merely potential; and it allows for disproportionate use of force. (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, international ethicists have focused largely on issues outside the traditional scope of security studies. The nuclear ethics literature needs to be revived and reoriented to address the new and evolving 21st century nuclear threats and policy responses.

In her essay , 82–111), Shell wants to demonstrate that 1. Kant's theory of the right of nations ‘can furnish us with some much needed practical help and guidance’, and 2. ‘Kant is less averse to the use of force, including resort to pre-emptive war… than he is often taken to be’ . The first claim is unconvincing. The second one is in need of clarification. Shell turns Kant into a kind of realist and just-war theorist, into a liberal who (...) is prejudiced against illiberal regimes. In the end, her Kant is closer to Locke, Vattel and other early liberal international lawyers than to himself. Almost all that is unique in Kant's theory of the right of nations gets lost. In this, Shell follows a general trend among some Kant interpreters: the interpretation is only loosely based on Kant; it claims to follow his ‘spirit’ and offers creative ‘Kantian perspectives’. Amidst interpretational creativity, Kant's texts more or less disappear in the mist. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that there is a just cause for war to prevent the future hazards of anthropogenic climate change even if, because of what is known as the Non-Identity Problem, that caus...

This paper surveys the most important recent debates within the ethics of war. Sections 2 and 3 examine the principles governing the resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the principles governing conduct in war (jus in bello). In Section 4, we turn to the moral guidelines governing the ending and aftermath of war (jus post bellum). Finally, in Section 5 we look at recent debates on whether the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello can be evaluated independently (...) of each other. (shrink)

War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities. Thus, fisticuffs between individual persons do not count as a war, nor does a gang fight, nor does a feud on the order of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. War is a phenomenon which occurs only between political communities, defined as those entities which either are states or intend to become states (in order to allow for civil war). Classical war is international war, a war (...) between different states, like the two World Wars. But just as frequent is war within a state between rival groups or communities, like the American Civil War. Certain political pressure groups, like terrorist organizations, might also be considered “political communities,” in that they are associations of people with a political purpose and, indeed, many of them aspire to statehood or to influence the development of statehood in certain lands. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a significant moral difference between force applied against (imminent) attackers on the one hand and force applied against “threatening” people who are not (imminent) attackers on the other. Given that there is such a difference, one should not blur the lines by using the term “self-defense” (understood as including other-defense) for both uses of force. Rather, only the former is appropriately called self-defense, while for the latter, following German legal terminology, the term “justifying defensive (...) emergency” will be used here. The two justifications are not governed by the same criteria and thus lead to different results. The paper will proceed by providing first, in section (1), a brief sketch of the contours of the self-defense justification, putting particular emphasis on the necessity criterion. On the account presented here, the necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is particularly harsh on the aggressor (and thus not to be interpreted as literally requiring the employment of “the mildest means”) and its applicability is only triggered by an (imminent) attack, not by other kinds of threats. Section (2) will then further explain the differences between self-defense and justifying defensive emergency. A particularly important difference is that people who are subjected to justified self-defense cannot permissibly defend themselves, while people who are subjected to (extremely harmful or even lethal) justified defensive emergency measures can. Thus, in this latter case we have a “moral equality” (of sorts) of the involved parties: they can permissibly use force against each other. Section (3) will list and defend some conditions that a successful argument against the imminence requirement of the self-defense justification has to satisfy. In the light of these conditions, sections (4) to (7) will discuss a number of objections that have been adduced against the imminence requirement as well as proposals that have been made in support of alternative accounts. It will be argued that all these objections and proposals fail. Section (8) will provide a number of thought experiments in support of the claim that the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is only triggered by imminence while force against non-imminent threats can be justified with the help of the justifying emergency exemption, as well as for the claim that the justifying emergency exemption puts the person using preventive force against non-imminent threats on a shorter leash and makes him liable to counter-measures. Section (9) will explain the rationale for tying the applicability of the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification to imminent attacks. Section (10) will discuss some special cases and show why they do not undermine the normative validity of this tie. (shrink)