The Ethics of War and Peace
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.”
The Ethics of Insurgency
In this review essay, James Turner Johnson considers two recent books on the ethics of insurgency warfare. He draws on the deep history of moral and legal thought on the subject to forcefully defend many of the standards laid out in the classical just war tradition and enshrined in international law.
“Victory” In Mosul: Fighting Well and the Horrors of “Winning”
Mosul illustrates how victory at all costs is no victory at all, and why contemporary just war thinkers need to re-conceptualize the idea of victory.
Pro Mundo Mori? The Problem of Cosmopolitan Motivation in War
In this feature article, Lior Erez explores the problem of motivating soldiers to fight in cosmopolitan wars. First, he argues that the problem is best framed as a political one rather than an ethical or meta-ethical one. Then, he goes on to suggest how states might close the gap between cosmopolitan demands and soldiers’ motivations, evaluating a range of options.
Introduction: Legitimate Authority, War, and the Ethics of Rebellion
The three articles in this special section all investigate the idea that considerations of “legitimate authority” have a key role in constituting the modern idea of war and in determining the normative status of those who participate in it.
