The Morality of Drone Warfare and the Politics of Regulation

The Morality of Drone Warfare and the Politics of Regulation
Author: Marcus Schulzke
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2016-10-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137533803

This book discusses the moral and legal issues relating to military drones, focusing on how these machines should be judged according to the principles of just war theory. The author analyses existing drones, like the Predator and Reaper, but also evaluates the many types of drones in development. The book presents drones as not only morally justifiable but having the potential to improve compliance with the principles of just war and international law. Realizing this potential would depend on developing a sound regulatory framework, which the book helps to develop by considering what steps governments and military forces should take to promote ethical drone use. It also critically evaluates the arguments against drones to show which should be abandoned and which raise valid concerns that can inform regulations.

Legal and Ethical Implications of Drone Warfare

Legal and Ethical Implications of Drone Warfare
Author: Michael Boyle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1315473437

Over the last decade, the U.S., UK Israel and other states have begun to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for military operations and for targeted killings in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Worldwide, over 80 governments are developing their own drone programs, and even non-state actors such as the Islamic State have begun to experiment with drones. The speed of technological change and adaptation with drones is so rapid that it is outpacing the legal and ethical frameworks which govern the use of force. This volume brings together experts in law, ethics and political science to address how drone technology is slowly changing the rules and norms surrounding the use of force and enabling new, sometimes unprecedented, actions by states. It addresses some of the most crucial questions in the debate over drones today. Are drones a revolutionary form of technology that will transform warfare or is their effect merely hype? Can drone use on the battlefield be made wholly consistent with international law? How does drone technology begin to shift the norms governing the use of force? What new legal and ethical problems are presented by targeted killings outside of declared war zones? Should drones be considered a humane form of warfare? Finally, is it possible that drones could be a force for good in humanitarian disasters and peacekeeping missions in the near future? This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.

Pursuing Moral Warfare

Pursuing Moral Warfare
Author: Marcus Schulzke
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1626166587

During combat, soldiers make life-and-death choices dozens of times a day. These individual decisions accumulate to determine the outcome of wars. This work examines the theory and practice of military ethics in counterinsurgency operations. Marcus Schulzke surveys the ethical traditions that militaries borrow from; compares ethics in practice in the US Army, British Army and Royal Marines Commandos, and Israel Defense Forces; and draws conclusions that may help militaries refine their approaches in future conflicts. The work is based on interviews with veterans and military personnel responsible for ethics training, review of training materials and other official publications, published accounts from combat veterans, and observation of US Army focus groups with active-duty soldiers. Schulzke makes a convincing argument that though military ethics cannot guarantee flawless conduct, incremental improvements can be made to reduce war’s destructiveness while improving the success of counterinsurgency operations.

Distributing the Harm of Just Wars

Distributing the Harm of Just Wars
Author: Sara Van Goozen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2021-03-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000364542

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 civilian life. However, there is no clear explanation of what ‘feasible precautions’ means in this context, or what would count as sufficiently minimised incidental harm. As a result, it is difficult to judge whether a particular war or offensive actually satisfies this requirement. Just war theorists often consider it common sense that merely not intending to harm innocent civilians is not sufficient, but there is little clarity in the literature regarding what this means. One crucial question that is almost always overlooked is that of what the appropriate baseline distribution of risk should be. This book defends the Minimal Harm Requirement (MHR), which states that combatants should make an effort to reduce merely foreseen harm to enemy non-combatants to the lowest reasonable level. In order to assess which risk impositions are reasonable, and which are not, an egalitarian baseline should be adopted, suggesting that other things being equal risk of harm should be distributed equally between just combatants and unjust non-combatants. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics, security studies, and international relations.

The Preservation of Art and Culture in Times of War

The Preservation of Art and Culture in Times of War
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0197610587

Conflict over cultural heritage has increasingly become a standard part of war. Today, systematic exploitation, manipulation, attacks, and destruction of cultural heritage by state and non-state actors form part of most violent conflicts across the world. Such acts are often intentional and based on well-planned strategies for inflicting harm on groups of people and communities. With this increasing awareness of the role cultural heritage plays in war, scholars and practitioners have progressed from seeing conflict-related destruction of cultural heritage as a cultural tragedy to understanding it as a vital national security issue. There is also a shift from the desire to protect cultural property for its own sake to viewing its protection as connected to broader agendas of peace and security. Concerns about cultural heritage have thus migrated beyond the cultural sphere to worries about the protection of civilians, the financing of terrorism, societal resilience, post-conflict reconciliation, hybrid warfare, and the geopolitics of territorial conflicts. This volume seeks to deepen public understanding of the evolving nexus between cultural heritage and security in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and perspectives, the chapters in this volume examine a complex set of relationships between the deliberate destruction and misuse of cultural heritage in times of conflict, on the one hand, and basic societal values, legal principles, and national security, on the other.

Twenty-First Century Military Innovation

Twenty-First Century Military Innovation
Author: Marcus Schulzke
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2022-09-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472220411

Contemporary war is as much a quest for decisive technological, organizational, and doctrinal superiority before the fighting starts as it is an effort to destroy enemy militaries during battle. Armed forces that are not actively fighting are instead actively reengineering themselves for success in the next fight and imagining what that next fight may look like. Twenty-First Century Military Innovation outlines the most theoretically important themes in contemporary warfare, especially as these appear in distinctive innovations that signal changes in states’ warfighting capacities and their political goals. Marcus Schulzke examines eight case studies that illustrate the overall direction of military innovation and important underlying themes. He devotes three chapters to new weapons technologies (drones, cyberweapons, and nonlethal weapons), two chapters to changes in the composition of state military forces (private military contractors and special operations forces), and three chapters to strategic and tactical changes (targeted killing, population-centric counterinsurgency, and degradation). Each case study includes an accessible introduction to the topic area, an overview of the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding that topic, and the most important theoretical implications. An engaging overview of the themes that emerge with military innovation, this book will also attract readers interested in particular topic areas.

War and Rights

War and Rights
Author: David L Rousseau
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 047212871X

Warfare in Europe contributed to the development of the modern state. In response to external conflict, state leaders raised armies and defended borders. The centralization of power, the development of bureaucracies, and the integration of economies all maximized revenue to support war. But how does a persistent external threat affect the development of a strong state? The “Garrison State” hypothesis argues that states that face a severe security threat will become autocracies. Conversely, the “Extraction School,” argues that warfare indirectly promotes the development of democratic institutions. ​ Execution of large-scale war requires the mobilization of resources and usually reluctant populations. In most cases, leaders must extend economic or political rights in exchange for resolving the crisis. Large-scale warfare thus expands political participation in the long run. The authors use empirical statistical modeling to show that war decreases rights in the short term, but the longer and bigger a war gets, the rights of the citizenry expand with the conflict. The authors test this argument through historical case studies—Imperial Russia, Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, African Americans in World War I and II, and the Tirailleurs Senegalese in World War I—through the use of large-N statistical studies—Europe 1900–50 and Global 1893–2011—and survey data. The results identify when, where, and how war can lead to the expansion of political rights.

The Transformation of Targeted Killing and International Order

The Transformation of Targeted Killing and International Order
Author: Martin Senn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429594356

This comprehensive volume addresses the important question of whether and how the current transformation of targeted killing is transforming the global international order. The age-old practice of targeted killing has undergone a profound transformation since the turn of the millennium. States resort to it more frequently, especially in the context of counter-terrorism operations. The rapid development of surveillance and drone technologies facilitates targeted-killing missions, and states are starting to slowly abandon their policies of secrecy and denial with regard to this form of violence. To answer this question, the volume introduces a theoretical framework that conceives the maintenance and transformation of international order as a dynamic, triangular process between violence, discourse, and the institutions that make up the international order. It then sheds light on different parts of this triangular process: the reinterpretation of international law to legitimize targeted killing, the contestation between state and non-state actors over the development of a new targeted-killing norm, the emergence of targeted killing in the context of changes in the broader normative context of international order, and the impact of new technologies, in particular autonomous weapons systems, on the future of targeted-killing practices and international order. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Security Policy.

Just War Theory and Civilian Casualties

Just War Theory and Civilian Casualties
Author: Marcus Schulzke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2017-08-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108101569

There are strong moral and legal pressures against harming civilians in times of conflict, yet neither just war theory nor international law is clear about what responsibilities belligerents have to correct harm once it has been inflicted. In this book, Marcus Schulzke argues that military powers have a duty to provide assistance to the civilians they attack during wars, and that this duty is entailed by civilians' right to life. Schulzke develops new just war principles requiring belligerents to provide medical treatment and financial compensation to civilian victims, and then shows how these principles can be implemented in governmental, military, and international practice. He calls for a more individual-focused conception of international law and post-war justice for victims - as opposed to current state- or group-based reconstruction and reparation programs - which will provide a framework for protecting civilian rights.

Simulating Good and Evil

Simulating Good and Evil
Author: Marcus Schulzke
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2020-09-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1978818580

Simulating Good and Evil shows that the moral panic surrounding violent videogames is deeply misguided, and often politically motivated, but that games are nevertheless morally important. Simulated actions are morally defensible because they take place outside the real world and do not inflict real harms. Decades of research purporting to show that videogames are immoral has failed to produce convincing evidence of this. However, games are morally important because they simulate decisions that would have moral weight if they were set in the real world. Videogames should be seen as spaces in which players may experiment with moral reasoning strategies without taking any actions that would themselves be subject to moral evaluation. Some videogame content may be upsetting or offensive, but mere offense does not necessarily indicate a moral problem. Upsetting content is best understood by applying existing theories for evaluating political ideologies and offensive speech.