Blog
Drones and War: The Impact of Advancement in Military Technology on Just War Theory and the International Law of Armed Conflict
Since the first use of drones as lethal tools of war, certain pundits, politicians, and ethicists have argued for holding the use of drones to a different moral standard than conventional weapons.
Ecological Dimension of Foreign Policy
One of the emerging narratives about U.S. foreign policy is the use of climate change as the central organizing principle. Based on the assessment that environmental security engenders national security, this approach prioritizes efforts to project influence through solving or mitigating environmental problems–to make the U.S. safer from climate-enhanced threats, to build up a new […]
The Ethics of Non-Cooperation: Covid Vaccine Questions
One of the assumptions that Bill Gates, among others, made as the coronavirus pandemic burst onto the world this past spring was that the disease would force cooperation among nations, even among rivals and competitors. However, covid-19 arrived during a particular point of stress in global affairs–a situation that Damjan Krnjevic and I described under […]
Hard Choices on China
The U.S. Global Engagement program has opened its second survey on U.S. foreign policy, and this one has an emphasis on assessing the relative ranking of values and support for democracy within the respondent’s overall calculus. One of the complaints that the survey has been drawing, based on reactions on social media, is the inflexibility […]
Senator Kamala Harris and Foreign Policy Narratives
The selection of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) to be the presumptive vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2020 elections represents a series of shifts: she is the first member of Generation X (President Barack Obama is more properly described as a member of “Generation Jones“–the last wave of the Boomers) to advance this […]
House Democrats: Ethical Choices and Narratives
Who WIll Be the Head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee?
For the last two years, one of the foci of the U.S. engagement program has been how generational and demographic change in the United States will or will not impact how U.S. foreign policy is prioritized and what ethical benchmarks will be employed. The Democratic Party currently shelters under its “big tent” several different ethical […]
Ethical Dilemmas in Ensuring Human Security
Thoughts After the Webinar
Following Wednesday’s session with Derek Reveron on human security in an age of a pandemic, I was struggling with how to relate our discussion with earlier conversations about the ethical choices the United States (and the rest of the world more broadly) faces in the relationship with China under the leadership of Xi Jinping. A […]
Cyber Resilience in an Age of Climate Chaos
Although both cybersecurity and climate change are increasingly seen as two of the most urgent threats of this century, seldom are they considered together. Yet, arguably, the true challenge of both is the ways in which they intertwine, in evermore unexpected ways.
