Ethics on the Political Battlefield

Ethics on the Political Battlefield PDF Author: Ralph B. Churchill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper is intended to serve as an ethical primer for those professional military officers who are on an initial assignment beyond the familiar territory of their primary specialty training. It also can be used by more senior officers as they prepare for service at higher levels of government where the political aspects of their duties can cause increased stress on their ethical obligations. Through a series of real-life situations, the ethical dilemmas presented by military service in the highly politicized environment of Washington, D.C. are analyzed and discussed. Ethical correctness and professional obligation are explored in an attempt to help the reader understand the environment in which he/she will be serving. A model for ethical decision making is then presented and an ethical filter is provided to aid in the ethical decision making process. Use of the model and filter by officers serving in highly politicized positions will enable them to make ethically correct decisions and take the action that ought to be taken.

Ethics on the Political Battlefield

Ethics on the Political Battlefield PDF Author: Ralph B. Churchill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper is intended to serve as an ethical primer for those professional military officers who are on an initial assignment beyond the familiar territory of their primary specialty training. It also can be used by more senior officers as they prepare for service at higher levels of government where the political aspects of their duties can cause increased stress on their ethical obligations. Through a series of real-life situations, the ethical dilemmas presented by military service in the highly politicized environment of Washington, D.C. are analyzed and discussed. Ethical correctness and professional obligation are explored in an attempt to help the reader understand the environment in which he/she will be serving. A model for ethical decision making is then presented and an ethical filter is provided to aid in the ethical decision making process. Use of the model and filter by officers serving in highly politicized positions will enable them to make ethically correct decisions and take the action that ought to be taken.

Ethics on the Political Battlefield

Ethics on the Political Battlefield PDF Author: Ralph B. Churchill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description


Divided Armies

Divided Armies PDF Author: Jason Lyall
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069119243X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army's inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight. In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries—and for wars still to come.

On War

On War PDF Author: Carl von Clausewitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Religion on the Battlefield

Religion on the Battlefield PDF Author: Ron E. Hassner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501703684
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
How does religion shape the modern battlefield? Ron E. Hassner proposes that religion acts as a force multiplier, both enabling and constraining military operations. This is true not only for religiously radicalized fighters but also for professional soldiers. In the last century, religion has influenced modern militaries in the timing of attacks, the selection of targets for assault, the zeal with which units execute their mission, and the ability of individual soldiers to face the challenge of war. Religious ideas have not provided the reasons why conventional militaries fight, but religious practices have influenced their ability to do so effectively. In Religion on the Battlefield, Hassner focuses on the everyday practice of religion in a military context: the prayers, rituals, fasts, and feasts of the religious practitioners who make up the bulk of the adversaries, bystanders, and observers during armed conflicts. To show that religious practices have influenced battlefield decision making, Hassner draws most of his examples from major wars involving Western militaries. They include British soldiers in the trenches of World War I, U.S. pilots in World War II, and U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hassner shows that even modern, rational, and bureaucratized military organizations have taken—and must take—religious practice into account in the conduct of war.

The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War

The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War PDF Author: Seth Lazar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199944393
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest, among both philosophers, legal scholars, and military experts, on the ethics of war. Due in part due to post 9/11 events, this resurgence is also due to a growing theoretical sophistication among scholars in this area. Recently there has been very influential work published on the justificaton of killing in self-defense and war, and the topic of the ethics of war is now more important than ever as a discrete field. The 28 commissioned chapters in this Handbook will present a comprehensive overview of the field as well as make significant and novel contributions, and collectively they will set the terms of the debate for the next decade. Lazar and Frowe will invite the leading scholars in the field to write on topics that are new to them, making the volume a compilation of fresh ideas rather than a rehash of earlier work. The volume will be dicided into five sections: Method, History, Resort, Conduct, and Aftermath. The contributors will be a mix of junior and senior figures, and will include well known scholars like Michael Walzer, Jeff McMahan, and David Rodin.

Ethics Beyond War's End

Ethics Beyond War's End PDF Author: Eric Patterson
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589018974
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have focused new attention on a perennial problem: how to end wars well. What ethical considerations should guide war’s settlement and its aftermath? In cases of protracted conflicts, recurring war, failed or failing states, or genocide and war crimes, is there a framework for establishing an enduring peace that is pragmatic and moral? Ethics Beyond War’s End provides answers to these questions from the just war tradition. Just war thinking engages the difficult decisions of going to war and how war is fought. But from this point forward just war theory must also take into account what happens after war ends, and the critical issues that follow: establishing an enduring order, employing political forms of justice, and cultivating collective forms of conciliation. Top thinkers in the field—including Michael Walzer, Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Turner Johnson, and Brian Orend—offer powerful contributions to our understanding of the vital issues associated with late- and post conflict in tough, real-world scenarios that range from the US Civil War to contemporary quagmires in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Congo.

The Ethics of War

The Ethics of War PDF Author: Saba Bazargan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199376158
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Just War theory - as it was developed by the Catholic theologians of medieval Europe and the jurists of the Renaissance - is a framework for the moral and legal evaluation of armed conflicts. To this day, Just War theory informs the judgments of ethicists, government officials, international lawyers, religious scholars, news coverage, and perhaps most importantly, the public as a whole. The influence of Just War theory is as vast as it is subtle - we have been socialized into evaluating wars largely according to the principles of this medieval theory, which, according to the eminent philosopher David Rodin, is "one of the few basic fixtures of medieval philosophy to remain substantially unchallenged in the modern world". Some of the most basic assumptions of Just War Theory have been dismantled in a barrage of criticism and analysis in the first dozen years of the 21st century. "The Ethics of War" continues and pushes past this trend. This anthology is an authoritative treatment of the ethics and law of war by both the eminent scholars who first challenged the orthodoxy of Just War theory, as well as by new thinkers. The twelve original essays span both foundational and topical issues in the ethics of war, including an investigation of: whether there is a "greater-good" obligation that parallels the canonical lesser-evil justification in war; the conditions under which citizens can wage war against their own government; whether there is a limit to the number of combatants on the unjust side who can be permissibly killed; whether the justice of the cause for which combatants fight affects the moral permissibility of fighting; whether duress ever justifies killing in war; the role that collective liability plays in the ethics of war; whether targeted killing is morally and legally permissible; the morality of legal prohibitions on the use of indiscriminate weapons; the justification for the legal distinction between directly and indirectly harming civilians; whether human rights of unjust combatants are more prohibitive than have been thought; the moral repair of combatants suffering from PTSD; and the moral categories and criteria needed to understand the proper justification for ending war.

Soft War

Soft War PDF Author: Michael L. Gross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110713224X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This collection focuses on non-kinetic warfare, including cyber, media, and economic warfare, as well as non-violent resistance, 'lawfare', and hostage-taking.

Conspiring with the Enemy

Conspiring with the Enemy PDF Author: Yvonne Chiu
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231544170
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Despite the strong influence of just war theory in military law and practice, warfare is commonly considered devoid of morality. Yet even in the most horrific of human activities, there is frequent communication and cooperation between enemies. One remarkable example is the Christmas truce—unofficial ceasefires between German and English trenches in December 1914 in which soldiers even mingled in No Man’s Land. In Conspiring with the Enemy, Yvonne Chiu offers a new understanding of why and how enemies work together to constrain violence in warfare. Chiu argues that what she calls an ethic of cooperation is found in modern warfare to such an extent that it is often taken for granted. The importance of cooperation becomes especially clear when wartime ethics reach a gray area: To whom should the laws of war apply? Who qualifies as a combatant? Should guerrillas or terrorists receive protections? Fundamentally, Chiu shows, the norms of war rely on consensus on the existence and content of the laws of war. In a wide-ranging consideration of pivotal instances of cooperation, Chiu examines weapons bans, treatment of prisoners of war, and the Geneva Conventions, as well as the tensions between the ethic of cooperation and the pillars of just war theory. An original exploration of a crucial but overlooked phenomenon, Conspiring with the Enemy is a significant contribution to military ethics and political philosophy.