The Ethics of War and Peace
Governing Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems
The UN’s first formal meeting on lethal autonomous weapon systems took place in November 2017. Unfortunately, the end of this first historic meeting brought agreement on only the lowest common denominator.
Jonathan D. Caverley on Slowing the Proliferation of Major Conventional Weapons
In this interview, Johnathan D. Caverley and John Krzyzaniak discuss how the United States, pursuing it’s own self-interest, can slow the proliferation of major conventional weapons and at the same time promote human rights and anti-corruption efforts abroad.
Slowing the Proliferation of Major Conventional Weapons: The Virtues of an Uncompetitive Market
Proliferation of major conventional weapons (MCW) is at best a waste of valuable resources and at worst fuel for more and bloodier conflicts. In this essay, Jonathan D. Caverley shows how the United States, pursuing its own political interests, leverages its massive market power to slow the proliferation of MCW.
Looking Inward Together: Just War Thinking and Our Shared Moral Emotions
In this essay Valerie Morkevicius argues that just war thinking serves a social and psychological role that international law cannot fill. Law is dispassionate and objective, while just war thinking accounts for emotions and the situatedness of individuals. She proposes four ways that just war thinking can move beyond the law by focusing on moral emotions.
A Practically Informed Morality of War: Just War, International Law, and a Changing World Order
Just war, international law, and world order are all historically conditioned realities that interrelate with one another in complex ways. This essay explores their historical development and current status while critically examining their interrelationship.
On the Relationship Between the Ethics and the Law of War: Cyber Operations and Sublethal Harm
This essay examines the 2013 Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare in order to illustrate the importance of both ethical and legal perspectives on norms governing the initiation and conduct of a new form of interstate conflict.
Collateral Displacement in War
Military strategists fail to consider collateral displacement in their in bello proportionality calculations, and that’s a mistake.
“Utopian in the Right Sense”: The Responsibility to Protect and the Logical Necessity of Reform
In this article, Aidan Hehir writes that claims made about the success of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) echo the pejorative conceptions of “utopianism” as advanced by E. H. Carr and Ken Booth. In order to revive RtoP, Hehir suggests a potential reform of the existing international legal order that meets Carr’s preference for normative thinking that is “utopian in the right sense.”
