The Ethics of War and Peace
Backfire: The Dark Side of Nonviolent Resistance
In this essay, Michael L. Gross examines the ethics of provoking backfire in the context of nonviolent resistance.
Ending Atrocity Crimes: The False Promise of Fatalism
Some commentators suggest that the best way to minimize harm in atrocity situations is to let the state win as quickly as possible. Could this be a viable alternative to other options, including military intervention? This essay suggests not.
Threats and Coercive Diplomacy: An Ethical Analysis
Threats of armed force are frequently employed in international affairs, yet they have received little ethical scrutiny in their own right. This article addresses that deficit by examining how threats, taken as a speech act, require distinctive moral assessment.
The Irony of Just War
This review essay examines a series of benchmark books on the ethics of war published over the past year. All three grapple with the hard facts of modern violent conflict, and they all skillfully bring diverse traditions of just war thinking into conversation with one another.
Just War Thinkers: From Cicero to the 21st Century, edited by Daniel R. Brunstetter and Cian O’Driscoll
This volume provides an overview of the development of just war thinking over the centuries through a series of contextualized snapshots of individuals whose work has contributed to the development of the just war tradition in some way.
The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
In this book, Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro investigate the history, nature, and impact of the international legal prohibition on the use of force, focusing on the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
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.
