The Ethics of War and Peace
Shifting International Security Norms
In this review essay, Denise Garcia draws on two recent books to argue that new technology can reinforce security norms just as easily as it can undermine them. Additionally, she shows that contestation is a natural part of the process by which norms are reformed or replaced, and that this leads to ethical progress over the long term.
Preventive Force: Drones, Targeted Killing, and the Transformation of Contemporary Warfare, Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer M. Ramos, eds.
This collection of eleven original articles presents a wide variety of perspectives on what the moral and legal framework for preventive use of force by drones should look like. The most important chapter, however, thoughtfully questions the entire premise of using preventive force to combat terrorism.
Tomahawk Foreign Policy: Trump and The Use of Force Short of War
What can just war thinking and the use of force short of war tell us about Trump’s strike against Syria?
Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History by Markus Gunneflo
Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History, Markus Gunneflo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 290 pp., $110 cloth. Targeted killing is one of the most controversial topics in contemporary legal, ethical, and political discussion, and the literature on it has grown enormously over the past decade. Markus Gunneflo’s Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History is […]
The Yemen Raid and the Grievability of Lives Lost
Framing the debate about the Yemen raid around whether President Trump is to blame misses other crucial matters that ought to be explored, particularly about whose lives are considered grievable and about the function of grief in the silencing of critique.
Responsibility While Protecting (RwP) and the Intervention in Yemen
The Saudi-led coalition justified its intervention in Yemen with reference to its “responsibility” to protect the people of Yemen, yet the intervention has put more civilians at risk. Drew Thompson argues that RwP, if it were an established norm, may have led to a different outcome.
On War and Democracy by Christopher Kutz
There is a fundamental ethical dilemma confronting all democratic states: if they intervene in violence-ridden contexts, then they are readily accused of double standards. On War and Democracy avoids this ethical and political dilemma by beating what could be called a double retreat.
Taking Sides in Peacekeeping: Impartiality and the Future of the United Nations by Emily Paddon Rhoads
The norm of impartiality is pivotal to the United Nations’ activities in the areas of conflict resolution, mediation, peacekeeping, humanitarian action, and adjudication. In recent years, however, the organization’s principled adherence to impartiality has come under scrutiny.
