Category: The Ethics of War and Peace
In Defense of Smart Sanctions: A Response to Joy Gordon
I argue that smart sanctions have been more of a pronounced success than Gordon claims. In addition, I address some of the flaws that she identifies as significant in the discrete types of sanctions.
The Implications of Drones on the Just War Tradition [Full Text]
The aim of this article is to explore how the brief history of drone warfare thus far affects and potentially alters the parameters of ad bellum and in bello just war principles.
Introduction
The NATO-led intervention in Libya, Operation Unified Protector, is noteworthy for two central reasons. First, it is the first instance in over a decade of what Andrew Cottey calls “classical humanitarian intervention”—that is, humanitarian intervention that lacks the consent of the government of the target state, has a significant military and forcible element, and is [...]
Smart Sanctions Revisited
There are considerable difficulties with targeted sanctions. Some of these difficulties may be resolved as these measures continue to be refined. Others are rooted in fundamental conflicts between competing interests or intractable logistical challenges.
Is Humanitarian Intervention Legal?
The legality of humanitarian intervention is essentially indeterminate. No amount of debate over the law or recent cases will resolve its status; it is both legal and illegal at the same time.
RtoP Alive and Well after Libya
With the exception of Raphael Lemkin’s efforts on behalf of the 1948 Genocide Convention, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than “the responsibility to protect” (RtoP), which was formulated in 2001 by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). Friends and foes have pointed to the commission’s conceptual contribution [...]
“Leading from Behind”: The Responsibility to Protect, the Obama Doctrine, and Humanitarian Intervention after Libya
Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something, anything, is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the [...]
The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention in Libya
Wars and interventions bring to the fore certain ethical issues. For instance, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 raised questions about the moral import of UN Security Council authorization (given that the Council did not authorize the action), and the means employed by interveners (given NATO’s use of cluster bombs and its targeting of dual-use [...]
