Ethical judgments are relevant to all phases of protracted violent conflict and inter-state war. Before, during, and after the tumult, martial forces are guided, in part, by their sense of morality for assessing whether an action is (morally) right or wrong, an event has good and/or bad consequences, and an individual (or group) is inherently virtuous or evil. This new book series focuses on the morality of decisions by military and political leaders to engage in violence and the normative underpinnings of military strategy and tactics in the prosecution of the war.
Edited
By Daniel Brunstetter, Cian O'Driscoll
November 25, 2024
This book comprises essays that focus on a range of thinkers that challenge the boundaries of the just war tradition. The ethics of war scholarship has become a rigid and highly disciplined activity, closely associated with a very particular canon of thinkers. This volume moves beyond this by ...
By Richard Adams
November 25, 2024
This book argues for reform of the convention that, when politicians decide on a course of action, the general in supreme command obeys without question. The entire spread-out chain of command is unified in the general, who offers the only connection between the military and politics. Offering the ...
By Kevin Cutright
August 26, 2024
This book shows the contribution that empathy can and should make to the proper conduct of war. US Army doctrine identifies empathy as an essential trait in soldiers; despite this endorsement of senior leaders, empathy’s role in the military profession remains obscure. The notion of soldiers ...
Edited
By Sumner B. Twiss, Ping-cheung Lo, Benedict S. B. Chan
April 11, 2024
This volume explores East Asian intellectual traditions and their influence on contemporary discussions of the ethics of war and peace. Through cross-cultural comparison and dialogue between East and West, this work charts a new trajectory in the development of applied ethics. A sequel to the ...
By Michael Skerker
January 29, 2024
This book develops a new contractualist foundation for just war theory, which defends the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants and associated egalitarian moral norms. Traditionally it has been viewed that combatants on both sides of a war have the same right to fight, irrespective ...
By Deane-Peter Baker, Rufus Black, Roger Herbert, Iain King
December 20, 2023
This book debates competing approaches to ethical decision-making for members of the armed forces of liberal democratic states. In this volume, four prominent thinkers propose and debate competing approaches to ethical decision-making for military personnel. Deane-Peter Baker presents and expounds ...
Edited
By Eric Patterson, Marc LiVecche
December 19, 2023
This book analyzes the concept of military necessity and just war thinking and argues that it should be seen as a vital moral principle for leaders. The principle of military necessity is well understood in the manuals of modern militaries and is recognized in the war convention. It is the idea ...
By Sara Van Goozen
September 25, 2023
This book argues that the risk of harm in armed conflict should be divided equally between combatants and enemy non-combatants. International law requires that combatants in war take ‘all feasible precautions’ to minimise damage to civilian objects, injury to civilians, and incidental loss of ...
By Tine Molendijk
May 31, 2023
This book advances an interdisciplinary understanding of moral injury by analyzing the stories of military veterans of combat and peace missions. In the past decade, the concept of moral injury has emerged to address the potential moral impact of deployment. This book contributes to an ...
By George Lucas
December 16, 2022
This book addresses issues of legal and moral governance arising in the development, deployment, and eventual uses of emerging technologies in military operations. Proverbial wisdom has it that law and morality always lag behind technological innovation. Hence, the book aims to identify, enumerate...
By George Lucas, Jr.
July 23, 2019
This book examines the importance of "military ethics" in the formulation and conduct of contemporary military strategy. Clausewitz’s original analysis of war relegated ethics to the side-lines in favor of political realism, interpreting the proper use of military power solely to further the ...
By Eric Patterson
September 27, 2018
This book examines the moral choices faced by U.S. political and military leaders in deciding when and how to employ force, from the American Revolution to the present day. Specifically, the book looks at discrete ethical dilemmas in various American conflicts from a just war perspective. For ...