Krankheit und Verwundung gehörten in der Antike zum Alltag der Soldaten. Die militärische Fachschriftstellerei der Antike hat sich aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln und mit unterschiedlichen Zielstellungen mit zahlreichen Aspekten des Militärwesens ihrer Zeit befasst. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht deshalb die Behandlung von Krankheit und Verwundung in den griechischen und römischen militärischen Fachschriften vom 4. Jh. v. Chr. bis ins 6. Jh. n. Chr. Aufgrund der spärlichen Forschungsliteratur zu diesem Thema steht die vergleichende Quellenanalyse der erhaltenen militärischen Fachschriften dieses Zeitraums im Vordergrund. (...) Ein kurzer Überblick über die literarische Gattung „Antike militärische Fachschriften“ sowie über die Entwicklung der Militärmedizin in der griechisch-römischen Antike bietet den nötigen Bezugsrahmen für die historische und literaturhistorische Einordnung der untersuchten Quellen. -/- Diseases and wounds were part of a soldier‘s everyday life in Greco-Roman antiquity. Ancient military manuals dealt with numerous aspects of contemporary military affairs from different perspectives and with various objectives. Therefore, this paper analyses how ancient Greek and Roman military manuals between the fourth century BC and the sixth century AD deal with diseases and wounds in the military. Due to scarce research literature on this topic the present paper focuses on the analysis of the surviving military manuals from this period. A brief overview of ancient military manuals as a literary genre as well as of the development of the ancient military medicine provides an historical and literary historical reference framework for the source analysis. (shrink)

Military doctors and nurses, working neither as pure soldiers nor as merely doctors or nurses, may face a ‘role conflict between the clinical professional duties to a patient and obligations, express or implied, real or perceived, to the interests of a third party such as an employer, an insurer, the state, or in this context, military command’. This conflict is commonly called dual loyalty. This chapter gives an overview of the military and the medical ethic and of (...) the resulting dual loyalty problem for medical personnel working in the military. It considers how dual loyalties relate to being a professional, something medical personnel are the paradigmatic examples of, but also something military personnel claim to be. Against that background, the chapter elaborates on the medical rules of eligibility used in Afghanistan, and on the policies concerning military involvement in local healthcare, to see what the existing rules and policies are, and whose interests they serve. (shrink)

Health care providers (HCPs) are routinely placed into morally challenging situations that have the potential to cause moral distress. This is especially true for HCPs working in the military, whether they are on deployment outside their typical contexts of practice such as in disaster relief (e.g., Haiti and the Ebola missions in West Africa), or in more typically military settings such as peace keeping or armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria). Moral distress refers to “painful feelings and/or psychological (...) disequilibrium” (Nilsson, Sjöberg, Kallenberg, & Larsson, 2011, p. 50) that occur when an individual is aware of a morally appropriate action in a moral dilemma but obstruction prevents them from carrying it out, or when in a situation where they must choose between upholding equally treasured but conflicting moral values. Similarly, moral distress can occur when faced with a ‘tragic choice’ where all available courses of action require something of moral significance to be given up, such as surgical triage in a mass casualty event (Hunt, Sinding, & Schwartz, 2012). In the literature, moral distress has been connected to negative psychological effects and even stress related mental health issues including compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Owen & Wanzer, 2014; Gustafsson, Eriksson, Strandberg, & Norberg, 2010; Litz, et al., 2009). (shrink)

With insights from philosophy of language and semiotics, this article addresses judicial choices and semantic errors involved in United States v. Stevens, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010) (refusing to read “killing” and “wounding” to include cruelty and thus striking down a federal statute outlawing videos of animal cruelty), and Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S.Ct. 1207 (2011) (finding a First Amendment right to picket military funerals and verbally attack parents of dead soldiers as part of purportedly-public expression). -/- This article maintains (...) that a better understanding of semiotics (the theory of signs) exposes the flaws in both decisions and bolsters the arguments of the lone dissenter in both cases, Justice Alito. Such a better understanding of semiotics involves grasping (a) how expression involves signs, (b) how signs work in general, and (c) the differences between three basic kinds of signs (indexes, icons and symbols). This article maintains that the expression involved in Stevens and in Phelps was a type of indexical or quasi-indexical expression that, for reasons similar to those involved in child pornography cases, should have no First Amendment protection. -/- This article also notes shifting interpretive positions in the Court that cry out for reform. Although Chief Justice Roberts uses a textualist approach in his majority opinion striking down the animal cruelty statute in Stevens, his majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (2012), has no trouble finding a “penalty” a “tax,” upholding the Affordable Care Act, and chastising the dissent for voting to strike down a statute simply because “. . . Congress used the wrong labels.” Id. at 2597. -/- This article attempts to expose such gamesmanship in “textualism” and attempts to lay out a better semiotic path for the Court. It calls for more forthright judicial decision-making in constitutional and statutory interpretation; calls for rejecting mechanical notions of law that conceal judicial choice involved in constitutional and statutory interpretation; and calls for rejecting claims that dictionaries can settle constitutional or statutory interpretation issues without reference to constitutional and statutory goals. -/- Keywords: interpretation, construction, meaning, plain meaning, originalism, original intent, canon, semiotics, signs, signals, symbol, icon, index, signifier, signified, ordinary meaning, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, animal cruelty, first amendment, statutes. (shrink)

When militaries mention loyalty as a value they mean loyalty to colleagues and the organisation. Loyalty to principle, the type of loyalty that has a wider scope, plays hardly a role in the ethics of most armed forces. Where military codes, oaths and values are about the organisation and colleagues, medical ethics is about providing patient care impartially. Being subject to two diverging professional ethics can leave military medical personnel torn between the wish to act loyally towards (...) colleagues, and the demands of a more outward looking ethic. This tension constitutes a test of integrity, not a moral dilemma. (shrink)

New scientific advances have created previously unheard of possibilities for enhancing combatants' performance. Future war fighters may be smarter, stronger, and braver than ever before. If these technologies are safe, is there any reason to reject their use? In this article, I argue that the use of enhancements is constrained by the importance of maintaining the moral responsibility of military personnel. This is crucial for two reasons: the military's ethical commitments require military personnel to be morally responsible (...) agents, and moral responsibility is necessary for integrity and the moral emotions of guilt and remorse, both of which are important for moral growth and psychological well-being. Enhancements that undermined combatants' moral responsibility would therefore undermine the military's moral standing and would harm combatants' well-being. A genuine commitment to maintaining the military's ethical standards and the well-being of combatants therefore requires a careful analysis of performance-enhancing technologies before they are implemented. (shrink)

Modern military organizations are paternalistic organizations. They typically recognize a duty of care toward military personnel and are willing to ignore or violate the consent of military personnel in order to uphold that duty of care. In this paper, we consider the case for paternalism in the military and distinguish it from the case for paternalism in medicine. We argue that one can consistently reject paternalism in medicine but uphold paternalism in the military. (...) We consider two well-known arguments for the conclusion that military organizations should not be entitled to use experimental drugs on troops without first obtaining the informed consent of those troops. We argue that both of these are unsuccessful, in the absence of an argument for the rejection of paternalism in the military altogether. The case for military paternalism is widely accepted. However, we consider three ways in which it could be challenged. (shrink)

What proper role should considerations of risk, particularly to research subjects, play when it comes to conducting research on human enhancement in the military context? We introduce the currently visible military enhancement techniques (1) and the standard discussion of risk for these (2), in particular what we refer to as the ‘Assumption’, which states that the demands for risk-avoidance are higher for enhancement than for therapy. We challenge the Assumption through the introduction of three categories of enhancements (3): (...) therapeutic, preventive, and pure enhancements. This demands a revision of the Assumption (4), alongside which we propose some further general principles bearing on how to balance risks and benefits in the context of military enhancement research. We identify a particular type of therapeutic enhancements as providing a more responsible path to human trials of the relevant interventions than pure enhancement applications. Finally, we discuss some possible objections to our line of thought (5). While acknowledging their potential insights, we ultimately find them to be unpersuasive, at least provided that our proposal is understood as fully non-coercive towards the candidates for such therapeutic enhancement trials. (shrink)

Primul Război Mondial a fost un eveniment de neaşteptat, o dramă prin care au trecut milioane de oameni. La începutul secolului XX mulţi credea că Belle Epoque ( Epoca cea Frumoasă) a început şi nu are sfârşit. În opinia multor oameni de cultură ale acelor timpuri această epocă trebuia să dureze o veşnicie. O perioadă de pace şi linişte, o perioadă în care oamenii nu credeau că războiul va mai fi o prezenţă în viaţa lor. De cele mai (...) multe ori istoria ne oferă evenimente surprinzătoare, hazard sau nu istoria este plină de evenimente de neînţeles. Declanşarea Primului Război Mondial în acest moment ne este uşor explicabilă, dar în aceea epocă nimeni nu a perceput acest eveniment, pe care îl putem denumi un accident nefericit al istoriei. Războiul nu a lăsat în urma lui numai glorie, au fost şi momente pline de suferinţă şi de un tragism rar întâlnit. (shrink)

Military doctors and nurses, employees with a compound professional identity as they are neither purely soldiers nor simply doctors or nurses, face a role conflict between the clinical professional duties to a patient and obligations, express or implied, real or perceived, to the interests of a third party such as an employer, an insurer, the state, or in this context, military command (London et al. 2006). In the context of military medical ethics this is commonly called dual (...) loyalty (or, less commonly, mixed agency). Although other professionals in the military, for instance counsellors or lawyers, might experience similar problems of dual loyalties, it seems that the dual loyalties experienced by military medical personnel are particularly testing. (shrink)

The UN Convention against Torture defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person” by someone acting in an official capacity for purposes such as obtaining a confession or punishing or intimidating that person.1 It is unethical for healthcare professionals to participate in torture, including any use of medical knowledge or skill to facilitate torture or allow it to continue, or to be present during torture.2-7 Yet medical participation (...) in torture has taken place throughout the world and was a prominent feature of the US interrogation practice in military and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detention facilities in the years after the attacks of 11 September 2001.8-11 Little attention has been paid, however, to how a regime of torture affects the ability of health professionals to meet their obligations regarding routine clinical care for detainees. -/- The 2016 release of previously classified portions of guideline from the CIA regarding medical practice in its secret detention facilities sheds light on that question. These show that the CIA instructed healthcare professions to subordinate their fundamental ethical obligations regarding professional standards of care to further the objectives of the torturers. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents, which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, the article argues that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents must (...) comply with high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him- or herself. It is argued that accidentally but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, can unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently using. (shrink)

In this critical notice, I review and critique ‘Psychiatric Casualties’ (2021) by Mark C. Russell and Charles Figley. In so doing, I analyze a natural experiment from WWII, which has previously only been misinterpreted. The natural experiment leads me to conclude that predisposition results in some individuals being far more likely than others to develop war stress disorders such as PTSD. This point puts me in disagreement with Russell and Figley, though I endorse the general message of their book: that (...) the military has failed in its responsibility to properly care for psychiatric casualties, and that there are steps which could be taken to improve the situation. (shrink)

Owing to its grappling with a motley of intricate socioeconomic, as well as medico-legal, crises, Haiti has found itself bereft of some of its people, many of whom have had to leave the Caribbean country in search of improved lives elsewhere. Receiving some of the Haitian refugees fleeing abject poverty, unemployment, and other harms and barriers has been the United States, one of Haiti's northern neighbors and a country that has played an outcome-determinative, if not outsized, role in steering the (...) country toward its presently hobbled state. Drawing on the U.S.’s recent treatment of Haitian refugees, this paper argues that U.S. reception of Haitian immigrants rubs salt in the wound of a long history of dehumanizing and oppressive abuses endured by Haitians. Furthermore, and more importantly, this paper posits that U.S. failure to wholly embrace its legal obligation to accept Haitian refugees under international law needs to be understood in the light of the specific horrors inflicted by science, in pre-independence Haiti, on non-consenting, Afro-Haitian experimental subjects. And by extension, such a contextually-nuanced understanding is crucial in shaping the delivery of healthcare services to Haitian refugees fortunate enough to remain in the U.S. —as an awareness and appreciation of the socio-historical context of patients' lived experiences, i.e., their complete social history, can furnish important clues vis-à-vis the presence and etiologies of disease, influence the foci of physical exams, and generally pave the way for the provision of cost-efficient and evidence-based care. (shrink)

Some bioethicists argue that conscientious objectors in health care should have to justify themselves, just as objectors in the military do. They should have to provide reasons that explain why they should be exempt from offering the services that they find offensive. There are two versions of this view in the literature, each giving different standards of justification. We show these views are each either too permissive (i.e. would result in problematic exemptions based on conscience) or too restrictive (...) (i.e. would produce problematic denials of exemption). We then develop a middle ground position that we believe better combines respect for the conscience of healthcare professionals with concern for the duties that they owe to patients. Our claim, in short, is that insofar as objectors should have to justify themselves, they should have to do it according to the standard that we defend rather than according to the standards that others have developed. (shrink)

Not only the direct physical experiences of deployment can severely harm soldiers’ mental health. Witnessing violations of their moral principles by the enemy, or by their fellow soldiers and superiors, can also have a devastating impact. It can cause soldiers’ moral disorientation, increasing feelings of shame, guilt, or hate, and the need for general answers on questions of right and wrong. Various attempts have been made to keep soldiers mentally sane. One is to provide convincing causes for their deployment, which (...) risks an “end justifies the means” way of thinking. The good cause can provide a moral justification for horrible atrocities. Another method, introduced in the USA, Canada, and Australia, aims to strengthen military personnel’s resistance by promoting and maintaining a happy, optimistic state of mind through the use of positive psychology. Alongside making soldiers “morally fit” for all kinds of situations, the focus could also be on moral recovery and forgiveness. Such a care-based military ethics approach, aimed at mutual understanding and interdependence, could help soldiers handle the emotional impact of moral conflicts. This demands that military units reflect on their organizational culture and rethink oaths and codes of conduct that focus mainly on efficiency and readiness, as well as the soldierly self-image with its seemingly still deeply rooted warrior ethos. Today, resilience and positive psychology in the military is apparently mainly geared to assuring its soldiers’ readiness. An appropriate set of virtues and understanding of virtue ethics that are less centered on self-perfection and autonomy could point to a different form of character-building and lead to a better understanding of others. (shrink)

Academics working on military ethics and serving military personnel rarely have opportunities to talk to each other in ways that can inform and illuminate their respective experiences and approaches to the ethics of war. The workshop from which this paper evolved was a rare opportunity to remedy this problem. Our conversations about First Lieutenant (1LT) Portis’s experiences in combat provided a unique chance to explore questions about the relationship between oversight, accountability, and the idea of moral risk in (...) military operations. In this paper, we outline a particular experience of 1LT Portis’s that formed the basis of our discussions, before elucidating the ethical issues this experience raised. In particular, we see 1LT Portis’s experience as, first, illustrative of the problem of moral risk – when military personnel are placed in situations of moral temptation. The problem of moral risk, we propose, is best understood through the framework of the military’s duty of care. Second, we see his experience as highlighting tensions within the dominant moralized warrior model of the military profession. What we call a toxic warrior identity — a distorted form of the moralized warrior identity — can negatively affect the attitudes of military personnel toward rules, policies, procedures, and accountability mechanisms, particularly in relation to non-combat related roles and duties and when leaders must choose between competing bureaucratic demands. We see 1LT Portis’s experience as illustrative of these tensions, yet his experiences also highlight important concerns about the impact of increasing bureaucratic demands on military functioning. In the conclusion, we address the need to balance concerns about toxic warrior identity with legitimate criticisms of overly demanding bureaucracy and suggest avenues for further research on this issue. (shrink)

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) are robotic weapons systems, primarily of value to the military, that could engage in offensive or defensive actions without human intervention. This paper assesses and engages the current arguments for and against the use of LAWs through the lens of achieving more ethical warfare. Specific interest is given particularly to ethical LAWs, which are artificially intelligent weapons systems that make decisions within the bounds of their ethics-based code. To ensure that a wide, but not exhaustive, (...) survey of the implications of employing such ethical devices to replace humans in warfare is taken into account, this paper will engage on matters related to current scholarship on the rejection or acceptance of LAWs—including contemporary technological shortcomings of LAWs to differentiate between targets and the behavioral and psychological volatility of humans—and current and proposed regulatory infrastructures for developing and using such devices. After careful consideration of these factors, this paper will conclude that only ethical LAWs should be used to replace human involvement in war, and, by extension of their consistent abilities, should remove humans from war until a more formidable discovery is made in conducting ethical warfare. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has a fairly bad reputation in military ethics, mainly because it is thought to make military expedience override all other concerns. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a famous instance of such a skewed utilitarian calculation that “the rules of war and the rights they are designed to protect” should have stopped (Walzer 1992: 263-8). Most of its critics seem to think that utilitarianism is not bad per se, but prone to be misapplied in a (...) self-serving way. That idea, William H. Shaw argues in his careful and mostly convincing defense of utilitarian thinking about the moral issues that war occasions, is misguided, as are most of the other common objections to utilitarian thinking about the moral issues war raises. (shrink)

Abstract In light of the complexity of unfolding disasters, the diversity of rapidly evolving events, the enormous amount of generated information, and the huge pool of casualties, emergency responders (ERs) may be overwhelmed and in consequence poor decisions may be made. In fact, the possibility of transporting the wounded victims to one of several hospitals and the dynamic changes in healthcare resource availability make the decision process more complex. To tackle this problem, we propose a multicriteria decision support service, based (...) on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, that aims to avoid overcrowding and outpacing the capacity of a hospital to effectively provide the best care to victims by finding out the most appropriate hospital that meets the victims’ needs. The proposed approach searches for the most appropriate healthcare institution that can effectively deal with the victims’ needs by considering the availability of the needed resources in the hospital, the victim’s wait time to receive the healthcare, and the transfer time that represents the hospital proximity to the disaster site. The evaluation and validation results showed that the assignment of hospitals was done successfully considering the needs of each victim and without overwhelming any single hospital. (shrink)

Universal Game Theory - The theory that all of life is a game played by consciousness’es, (Living Beings). The board is a dream like structure of the universe. The progression is through an active process of intent witnessing, and passive meditation. Which releases the tension in the nerves of the body and leads to selfless actions, moral goodness, and eventually the finish, Enlightenment. Just like a wounded creature only cares about it’s own self. Man in tensionthrough self-centered thought only thinks (...) about his own predicaments. Even if he is thinking about others it is only through his own objectionable view from his false-created center. The enemy or deterrents in the game is the conditioning created by society for ambition, greed, control and general brain washing to give theindividual a false sense of identity, the ego. This is achieved by Religion; tradition, culture, education, reasoning, linear thought, and the creation of time. Leaving him/her in constant anxiety about millions of future contingencies. Through witnessing one realizes the whole futility of one dimensional thought which only leads to more and more thought. Simple or constructed elaborately, thought being time, a human construction. The final step of the Universal Game Theory is understanding the whole process of thought and the eventual revelation of Enlightenment, Bliss, ecstasy. Which the person then understands that he/she is the creator of the life/dream with which they are in. That point being a sexual ecstasy similar to what happens in death to men. i.e. Human males release semenwhen they die, having a sexual ecstasy at their last breath. (shrink)

While Autonomous Weapons Systems have obvious military advantages, there are prima facie moral objections to using them. By way of general reply to these objections, I point out similarities between the structure of law and morality on the one hand and of automata on the other. I argue that these, plus the fact that automata can be designed to lack the biases and other failings of humans, require us to automate the formulation, administration, and enforcement of law as much (...) as possible, including the elements of law and morality that are operated by combatants in war. I suggest that, ethically speaking, deploying a legally competent robot in some legally regulated realm is not much different from deploying a more or less well-armed, vulnerable, obedient, or morally discerning soldier or general into battle, a police officer onto patrol, or a lawyer or judge into a trial. All feature automaticity in the sense of deputation to an agent we do not then directly control. Such relations are well understood and well-regulated in morality and law; so there is not much challenging philosophically in having robots be some of these agents — excepting the implications of the limits of robot technology at a given time for responsible deputation. I then consider this proposal in light of the differences between two conceptions of law. These are distinguished by whether each conception sees law as unambiguous rules inherently uncontroversial in each application; and I consider the prospects for robotizing law on each. Likewise for the prospects of robotizing moral theorizing and moral decision-making. Finally I identify certain elements of law and morality, noted by the philosopher Immanuel Kant, which robots can participate in only upon being able to set ends and emotionally invest in their attainment. One conclusion is that while affectless autonomous devices might be fit to rule us, they would not be fit to vote with us. For voting is a process for summing felt preferences, and affectless devices would have none to weigh into the sum. Since they don't care which outcomes obtain, they don't get to vote on which ones to bring about. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese ThinkingJeremy E. HenkelA Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking. By François Jullien, translated by Janet Lloyd. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. Pp. x + 202. $22.00.In A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking François Jullien argues that the different ways Chinese and Western thinkers have dealt with warfare and diplomacy reflect important differences in how (...) the two cultures understand human action in the world. When Chinese texts such as the Sunzi and the Guiguzi are set up as counterpoints to the Europeans Clausewitz and Machiavelli, Jullien argues that the Aristotelian inheritance of the latter pair is shown to be the cause of their inability to provide clean theories with the consistent predictive power they desired. Chinese strategists, by contrast, meet with no such limitations in the realm of human interaction. The basic difference between Western and Chinese thought that Jullien seeks to demonstrate is that "one constructs a model that is then projected onto the situation, which implies that the situation is momentarily 'frozen.' The other relies on the situation as on a disposition that is known to be constantly evolving" (p. 189; italics in original).Jullien's regular use of the generic terms "Western" and "Chinese" in constructing his comparison will likely give many comparative philosophers pause. But this [End Page 347] need not be a source of worry, as he is careful not to essentialize the two world-views. While he is pointing out patterns and tendencies in the thinking of Europe and China, he is not positing an essential incommensurable difference between them. Rather, he is pointing out that "what remains underdeveloped in the one context is more developed in the other" (p. 145). He goes on to say, "The purpose of our foray into China is not to imagine-let alone fabricate-other 'mentalities'.... It is simply to make use of other possible sources of intelligibility" (ibid.).Jullien begins by showing that Western thought regards human action as something that imposes itself on the world in order to bring about a predetermined goal. This is a natural consequence of the belief that the world is created: belief in creation implies something existing outside that creation, thus an intention behind that creation, and thus a transcendent norm toward which things within that creation aim. This two-leveled ontology of creator and creation yields a distinction between theory and practice, wherein practice always aims-and ultimately fails-at implementing an ideal that is established by theory. This worldview has led to demonstrable success in the sciences but meets with frequent frustration in the arena of human interaction. This limitation has been recognized by strategists in the West but has never been successfully resolved.Aristotle was the first to identify and try to resolve this problem. He posited phronesis as the skill that enables an individual to apply a model to the world successfully. For Aristotle such successful action consists of first identifying one's desired end and then reasoning back to one's present situation in order to establish the best means to achieve that end. Jullien's analysis shows that Clausewitz was working with the same model more than two thousand years later. Clausewitz believed that earlier attempts at creating a general theory of warfare had failed to achieve their goal-namely, to provide a model of warfare that a general could use to ensure victory-because the opponent's actions are unpredictable. The system that the military strategist is dealing with, then, is not mechanistic, and consequently plans are easily frustrated by ever-changing circumstances. But Clausewitz was unable to conceive of strategy as based on anything other than plans.For Clausewitz, warfare is composed of distinct engagements, separate moments in time where an army seeks to impose a plan on the world. Seeing warfare as composed of distinct moments means that time is an opponent, for time brings with it change and uncertainty and thus a greater chance that one's plans will be frustrated. Opportunity, then, is something unexpected-a chance happening at a specific moment that can be taken advantage of only... (shrink)

Mercenaries are the target of moral condemnation far more often than they are subject of moral concern. One attempt at morally condemning mercenaries proceeds by analogy with prostitutes; mercenaries are ?the whores of war?. This analogy is unconvincing as a way of condemning mercenaries. However, careful comparison of mercenarism and prostitution suggests that, like many prostitutes, some mercenaries may be vulnerable individuals. If apt, this comparison imposes a consistency requirement: if one thinks certain prostitutes are appropriate subjects of moral concern (...) in light of their vulnerability, then one must think that mercenaries who are likewise vulnerable are also appropriate subjects of moral concern. In this paper I elucidate the relevant, morally significant sense of ?vulnerability?, and present evidence suggesting that at least some mercenaries are vulnerable in this sense. (shrink)

Contemporary Nigerian society is in its doldrums as regards the culture of violence and distrust among peoples from various ethnic groups that make-up this nation. To an extent, religio-political reasons are fueling this culture of violence and distrust. The thrust of this paper is that: Christian military chaplains are stakeholders as promoters of peace and mutual co-existence in Nigeria with regard to controlling the culture of violence and disunity. The core of this thesis remains Jesus’ convictions concerning non-resistance to (...) the evil one as documented in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: 38-42, and His life as the Peace-Builder. Therefore, contemporary Nigerian context calls for Christian military chaplains to be more conscious that being messengers of peace and promoters of peaceful coexistence in our country, they have ethical responsibility to build bridges to harmony. Since Christ (God) is love, the chaplains should rediscover the poetics of testimony as a principle for building and reconstructing paths that lead to mutual co-existence in view of encouraging the reign of justice, unity, and peace in Nigeria. (shrink)

This book examines the role of military virtues in today's armed forces. -/- Although long-established military virtues, such as honor, courage and loyalty, are what most armed forces today still use as guiding principles in an effort to enhance the moral behavior of soldiers, much depends on whether the military virtues adhered to by these militaries suit a particular mission or military operation. Clearly, the beneficiaries of these military virtues are the soldiers themselves, fellow-soldiers, and (...) military organizations, yet there is little that regulates the behavior of soldiers towards civilian populations. As a result, troops trained for combat in today's missions sometimes experience difficulty in adjusting to the less aggressive ways of working needed to win the hearts and minds of local populations after major combat is over. It can be argued that today's missions call for virtues that are more inclusive than the traditional ones, which are mainly about enhancing military effectiveness, but a convincing case can be made that a lot can already be won by interpreting these traditional virtues in different ways. -/- This volume offers an integrated approach to the main traditional virtues, exploring their possible relevance and proposing new ways of interpretation that are more in line with the military tasks of the 21st century. -/- The book will be of much interest to students of military ethics, philosophy, and war and conflict in general. (shrink)

Contemporary international law separates the international justice of war from the domestic justice of society, but empirically, there is a correlation between democratic governance and military effectiveness, which could have a number of causes. A contemporary reconstruction from _The Seven Military Classics_ of Chinese military philosophy offers potential lessons for how domestic virtues may yield military and geopolitical victory. This chapter reconstructs arguments from the seven treatises into a collective an amalgamated conception of “good governance” that (...) weaves together military strategy and virtue ethics and maintains that good governance at home actually wins wars abroad. A reconstructed classical Chinese conception of “good governance” presents theoretical and ethical challenges, but also offers viable justicial content for contemporary jus ad bellum considerations beyond sovereign self-defense or human rights. It presents a way of instantiating the sprawling conception of human rights that falls short in contemporary discourse. (shrink)

Most books and articles still treat leadership and ethics as related though separate phenomena. This edited volume is an exception to that rule, and explicitly treats leadership and ethics as a single domain. Clearly, ethics is an aspect of leadership, and not a distinct approach that exists alongside other approaches to leadership. This holds especially true for the for the military, as it is one of the few organizations that can legitimately use violence. Military leaders have to deal (...) with personnel who have either used or experienced violence. This intertwinement of leadership and violence separates military leadership from leadership in other professions. Even in a time that leadership is increasingly questioned, it is still good leadership that keeps soldiers from crossing the thin line between legitimate force and excessive violence. (shrink)

US military intervention and covert action is a significant contributor to global injustice. Discussion of this contributor to global injustice is relatively common in social justice movements. Yet it has been ignored by the global justice literature in political philosophy. This paper aims to fill this gap by introducing the topic into the global justice debate. While the global justice debate has focused on inter-national and supra-national institutions, I argue that an adequate analysis of US military and covert (...) action must focus on domestic institutions of the US. I describe many such institutions including industry lobbying, the ubiquity of US military bases abroad, US programs for training foreign militaries, secrecy of the intelligence and military agencies, pliant news media and government propaganda.<br>. (shrink)

How can military personnel be prevented from using force unlawfully? A critical examination of typical methods and the suitability of virtue ethics for this task starts with the inadequacies of a purely rules-based approach, and the fact that many armed forces increasingly rely on character development training. The three investigated complexes also raise further questions which require serious consideration – such as about the general teachability of virtues. First, the changing roles and responsibilities of modern armed forces are used (...) to refute the notion that timeless, “classic” military virtues exist, for example physical courage. With regard to today’s missions, virtues of restraint seem more necessary. Reflecting on the four interrelated and less military-specific cardinal virtues of courage, wisdom, temperance and justice could bring the military and civil society closer together. At the same time, this would be a logical step towards promoting personality development. Respect is one example of such a “contemporary” inclusive virtue that some armed forces have adopted into their canon of values. Apparently, however, it often refers only to members of one’s own organization. And it is no less inappropriate to use it to justify moral relativism or excuse immoral practices, such as the widespread sexual abuse of Afghan boys by men in positions of power (“boy play”). Finally, the essay asks about the general suitability of a virtue-based approach in ethical education, since social psychological research has shown that situational factors strongly influence behavior. The research findings do not render such an approach worthless, but they should be integrated into military personality training. (shrink)

The military-industrial complex, military operations, and wars are major contributors to exacerbating both climate change and biodiversity crises. However, their environmental impacts are often shadowed due to national security reasons. The current paper aims to go through the devastating impacts of military operations and wars on climate change and biodiversity loss and challenges that hinder the inclusion of military-related activities into environmental crisis mitigation efforts. The information blind spot induced by concerns about national security reasons jeopardizes (...) the efforts to involve the military-industrial complex and military operations in the global climate and biodiversity agendas. Besides that, many military-related challenges, such as specificity of operational requirements and lifecycles, dependence on fossil fuels, complex supply change, inadequate civilian technologies and innovations, and requirements of structural changes, can hinder emission reduction. Meanwhile, wars and conflicts not only threaten to drain all human and material resources available to tackle environmental problems but also inflict long-lasting destructions, pains, and trauma that can lead to hatred and distrust among nations and parties. With the rising hatred and distrust, global agreement and commitment to address climate change and biodiversity will hardly be achieved. Thus, promoting peace is the humanistic and planetary conscience. (shrink)

Suppose that state A attacks state D without warrant. The ensuing military conflict threatens international peace and security. State D (I assume) has a justification for defending itself by means of military force. Do third parties have a justification for intervening in that conflict by such means? To international public lawyers, the well-rehearsed and obvious answer is “yes.” Threats to international peace and security provide one of two exceptions to the legal and moral prohibition (as set out in (...) Article 2[4] of the UN Charter) on using force as a means for resolving interstate disputes. Just war theorists are not as verdictive. Compared to the ethics of humanitarian intervention and the ethics of national self-defense, the ethics of third-party military involvement in interstate conflicts remains underdeveloped in contemporary just war theory. This essay begins to fill that gap. I argue that to defend such interventions is tantamount to defending preventive military force, deterrent military force, and the resort to force in more cases than standardly thought. I then provide an account and limited defense of the deterrence argument. I show that deterrence is morally justified in relatively few cases and examine two problems with the argument: deterrence failures and the level of uncertainty under which leaders who use deterrent force operate. I conclude that we should take seriously the possibility that nonintervention, construed as the rejection of the direct use of military force, is the morally correct response to the most serious threats to international peace and security. (shrink)

Leadership and ethics are habitually treated as related to separate spheres. It would be better, perhaps, if leadership and ethics were treated as belonging to a single domain. Ethics is an aspect of leadership and not a separate approach that exists alongside other approaches to leadership such as the trait approach, the situational approach, etc. This holds especially true for the military, one of the few organizations that can legitimately use violence. Today, most militaries opt for a character-based approach (...) for the ethics education of their leaders and espouse leadership theories that want leaders to be strong and visionary. Both the role of character and leadership are increasingly questioned, however, on the basis that situational factors are more influential than leadership and character. A closer look suggests that an interactionist perspective, with leadership, character, and the situation interplaying, is more accurate. It is still good leadership that keeps soldiers from crossing the line between the lawful use of force and excessive violence. (shrink)

Starting from the notion of the Ideal Feminine, this paper discusses the representation of trauma and the portrayal of women as open wounds in the designs of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Particularly, I explore how the McQueen’s Deadly Woman and Galliano’s Doll question the boundaries between mortality, sexuality and decay. By examining the relationship between fear, desire and disgust in the aesthetic representation of the wounded fashioned body, I argue that in their works disgust functions as an empowering emotion, (...) contributing to the perception of the aversive fashioned body as a feministic act. (shrink)

Business ethicists should examine not only business practices but whether a particular type of business is even prima facie ethical. To illustrate how this might be done I here examine the contemporary U.S. defense industry. In the past the U.S. military has engaged in missions that arguably satisfied the just war self-defense rationale, thereby implying that its suppliers of equipment and services were ethical as well. Some recent U.S. military missions, however, arguably fail the self-defense rationale. At issue, (...) then, is whether a business supporting these latter missions may not be circumstantially unethical. No it is not, say defense industry advocates, for two principal reasons. For one, this business benefits society at large in numerous ways. And, for another, the organizer of these military missions is a superpower which by its very nature is not subject to the ethical constraints of the self-defense rationale. I dispute both reasons, argue against the second, and conclude that the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) is circumstantially unethical. (shrink)

The military-industrial complex (MIC) refers to a self-sustaining politico-economic system that perpetuates profitability in military supplies industries, de facto in multiple countries but primarily in the USA. It is made up of competing and/or collaborating entities -- the maintenance of which is on the whole financially advantageous to all concerned. The complex business objectives sought by participants are fostered in part by exalting technical possibilities but also in part by spreading fear as to dangers that are imminent and (...) can be countered only by maintaining the highest feasible level of military preparedness. (shrink)

Better instruments to predict the future evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) are needed, as the destiny of our civilization depends on it. One of the ways to such prediction is the analysis of the convergent drives of any future AI, started by Omohundro. We show that one of the convergent drives of AI is a militarization drive, arising from AI’s need to wage a war against its potential rivals by either physical or software means, or to increase its bargaining power. (...) This militarization trend increases global catastrophic risk or even existential risk during AI takeoff, which includes the use of nuclear weapons against rival AIs, blackmail by the threat of creating a global catastrophe, and the consequences of a war between two AIs. As a result, even benevolent AI may evolve into potentially dangerous military AI. The type and intensity of militarization drive depend on the relative speed of the AI takeoff and the number of potential rivals. We show that AI militarization drive and evolution of national defense will merge, as a superintelligence created in the defense environment will have quicker takeoff speeds, but a distorted value system. We conclude with peaceful alternatives. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom about advance care planning holds that the normative force of my prior wishes is simply that they are mine. It is their connection to me that matters. This paper challenges conventional thinking. I propose that the normative force of prior wishes does not depend exclusively on personal identity. Instead, it sometimes depends on a special relationship that exists between a prior, capacitated person and a now incapacitated person. I consider what normative guidance governs persons who stand (...) in a special relationship, and contrast these with the standard model of respect for autonomy. My conclusion is that advance care planning for individuals who have lost decision-making capacity should incorporate the virtues of prudence and integrity, even when one and the same person ceases to exist, and respect for personal autonomy is no longer relevant. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore the importance of ethics education for senior military officers with responsibilities at the strategic level of government. One problem, as I see it, is that senior commanders might demand “ethics” from their soldiers but then they are themselves primarily informed by a “morally skeptical viewpoint” (in the form of political realism). I argue that ethics are more than a matter of personal behavior alone: the ethical position of an armed service is a matter of (...) the collective responsibility of the people who constitute it, and senior military officers, having authority to give the orders, have a particularly important role. First, I discuss the continued prominence of a neorealist mindset in strategic thinking. Neorealist theory assumes that ethics is a largely irrelevant concern for strategic decision-makers. In contrast, I argue that consideration of moral values should be at the center of strategic theory and practice. Then, in the second section, I explore the “professional ethics” of senior military officers in order to develop an appreciation of the shared values and expectations regarding required conduct within any professional military service. I argue that senior military leaders should be concerned with what it means to be “good” and that this concept of the good can, and should, be applied across cultures and national boundaries. In the final section, I examine armed conflict and briefly discuss the moral reasoning involved to justify deliberate killing and destruction. I conclude that senior military officers require an understanding of sound moral reasoning to implement effective strategy. (shrink)

Professional Military Ethics Education (PMEE) must transmit and promote military professionalism, so it must continuously.

Seventy-seven years have elapsed since the Sylhet referendum (July 6 & 7, 1947). The part of Sylhet that was scissored during the partition and the Bengalis who came from the other side are still carrying the deep wound of the curse of that partition, compromising with the marginalization. Moreover, the Bengalis of the state are facing a special identity crisis as a result of the nationwide skepticism about the status of Bengalis in Assam. Following the Sylhet referendum, the curse (...) of the Sylhet bifurcation, that is, the second partition of Sylhet is still haunting them. The article attempts to illustrate a chronological analysis of the context and consequences of this century-long language tussle leading to persistent racial conflict and the other consequences relating to identity and citizenship. (shrink)

The notion of the “deep state” or a “state within a state” is creepy, to say the least. It indicates the existence of a shadowy group of unelected bureaucrats deeply embedded in the military-intelligence establishment secretly manipulating government policy. International relations scholars and public administration experts associate deep states with authoritarian regimes, such as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and pre-civil-war Syria. However, as we’re finding out, the U.S. has its own deep state. While some media outlets portray deep state talk (...) as tantamount to conspiracy theory, the deep state is quite real. (shrink)

Although most unmanned systems that militaries use today are still unarmed and predominantly used for surveillance, it is especially the proliferation of armed military robots that raises some serious ethical questions. One of the most pressing concerns the moral responsibility in case a military robot uses violence in a way that would normally qualify as a war crime. In this chapter, the authors critically assess the chain of responsibility with respect to the deployment of both semi-autonomous and (learning) (...) autonomous lethal military robots. They start by looking at military commanders because they are the ones with whom responsibility normally lies. The authors argue that this is typically still the case when lethal robots kill wrongly – even if these robots act autonomously. Nonetheless, they next look into the possible moral responsibility of the actors at the beginning and the end of the causal chain: those who design and manufacture armed military robots, and those who, far from the battlefield, remotely control them. (shrink)

Mehlman and Li offer a framework for approaching the bioethical issues raised by the military use of genomics that is compellingly grounded in both the contemporary civilian and military ethics of medical research, arguing that military commanders must be bound by the two principles of paternal- ism and proportionality. I agree fully. But I argue here that this is a much higher bar than we may fully realize. Just as the principle of proportionality relies upon a thorough (...) assessment of harms caused and military advantage gained, the use of genomic research, on Mehlman and Li’s view, will require an accurate understanding of the connection between genotypes and phenotypes – accurate enough to ameliorate the risk undertaken by our armed forces in being subject to such research. Recent conceptual work in evolutionary theory and the philosophy of biology, however, renders it doubtful that such knowledge is forthcoming. The complexity of the relationship between genotypic factors and realized traits (the so-called ‘G→P map’) makes the estimation of potential military advantage, as well as potential harm to our troops, incredibly challenging. Such fundamental conceptual challenges call into question our ability to ever satisfactorily satisfy the demands of a sufficiently rigorous ethical standard. (shrink)

Being aware of social injustices can cause existential and mental pain; comes with a burden; and may impede a flourishing life. However, I shall argue that this is not a reason to despair or to choose to be willfully ignorant. Rather, it’s a reason to conclude that being conscious is not enough. Rather, during times of oppression, resisters must also prioritize well-being. One way to do this is by extending what I refer to as solidarity care. I begin by (...) providing an account of solidarity care. I then offer pragmatic ways in which one can extend solidarity care to others. I conclude by responding to two possible worries. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to identify some ethical concerns evoked by military engagement in healthcare reconstruction. By bringing empirical evidence to the ongoing debate in military and development communities we aim to shed some light on the central question if and how, from a military ethical point of view, military should be involved in healthcare reconstruction during stabilization and reconstruction operations in Uruzgan.

There are few institutions that talk about virtues as much as military organizations. These military virtues are not, however, possessed by individuals in isolation; they are inculcated and influenced by the countless ways in which values are shared, both among military members and between individuals and the military itself. Unfortunately, a normative framework that is extremely well-suited to capture this significant link between individual virtue and shared valuing, namely Confucian virtue theory, is too often underappreciated in (...) militaries in general and in military moral education in particular. Focusing on the normative significance of ritual and decorum, I analyze this shortcoming and consider how more explicitly incorporating Confucian virtue theory into military education could provide a sturdier foundation for the essential link between individual virtue and collective valuing. -/- Analyzing the Confucian the virtue of princispled ritual etiquette (li 禮), I demonstrate that while such attention to ritual might seem questionable when considering the classic rituals often used as examples, once the pervasive presence of military rituals becomes apparent, such attention to principled ritual etiquette begins to seem far less anachronistic. Analyzing principled ritual etiquette in relationship to righteousness (yi 義) and benevolence (ren 仁), I argue that Confucian virtue theory provides a significant and distinct way to analyze modern military virtues, concluding with an analysis of how that framework can highlight the significance of ritualistic behavior on virtue development without promoting excessive and corrosive subservience. -/- . (shrink)

As the world population is rapidly aging, stakeholders must address the care of the elderly with great concern. Also, loss of dignity is often associated with aging due to dementia, mobility problems and diminished functional autonomy. However, dignity is a polysemic term that is deemed useless by some ethicists. To counter this claim, we propose four concepts to define it better and make use accurately of this notion. These are human dignity, dignity of identity, dignities of excellence and attributed (...) dignities. Finally, we explain the importance of solicitude and human dignity in the care of the elderly. This will ensure the respect, friendship and dignity of the elderly in providing geriatric ethical care. (shrink)