If the United States were subject to a terrorist nuclear attack, its president would face overwhelming political pressure to respond decisively. A well-prepared response could help both to prevent additional attacks and to bring the perpetrators to justice. An instinctive response could be cataclysmically ineffective, inflicting enormous collateral damage without achieving either deterrence or justice. An international security doctrine of Mutually Assured Support can make the response to such attacks more effective as well as less likely—by requiring preparations that (...) reduce the threat. The doctrine requires all subscribing nations to mobilize fully in support of the attacked nation, in return for a promise of nonretaliation. It provides a vehicle for domestic and international leadership, allowing the president to engage the American people, from a position of strength, around an issue that has had little public discussion. The authors describe its rationale, implications, and implementation. (shrink)

Communities of nuclear workers have evolved in distinctive contexts. During the Manhattan Project the UK, USA and Canada collectively developed the first reactors, isotope separation plants and atomic bombs and, in the process, nurtured distinct cadres of specialist workers. Their later workplaces were often inherited from wartime facilities, or built anew at isolated locations. For a decade, nuclear specialists were segregated and cossetted to gestate practical expertise. At Oak Ridge Tennessee, for example, the informal ‘Clinch College of (...) class='Hi'>Nuclear Knowledge’ aimed to industrialise the use of radioactive materials. ‘We were like children in a toy factory’, said its Director: ‘everyone could play the game of designing new nuclear power piles’. His counterpart at Chalk River, Ontario headed a project ‘completely Canadian in every respect’, while the head of the British project chose the remote Dounreay site in northern Scotland because of design uncertainties in the experimental breeder reactor. With the decline of secrecy during the mid-1950s, the hidden specialists lauded as ‘atomic scientists’ gradually became visible as new breeds of engineers, technologists and technicians responsible for nuclear reactors and power plants. Mutated by their different political contexts, occupational categories, labour affiliations, professional representations and popular depictions, their activities were disputed by distinct audiences. This chapter examines the changing identities of nuclear specialists and the significance of their secure sites. Shaped successively by Cold War secrecy, commercial competition and terrorist threats, nuclear energy remained out of site for wider publics and most nuclear specialists alike. The distinctive episodes reveal the changing working experiences of technical workers in late-twentieth and early twenty-first century environments. (shrink)

In its reaction on the terroristic attacks of September 9th, 2001, the US-government threatened Afghanistan's Taleban with war in order to force them to extradite terrorist leader Bin Laden; the Taleban said that they would not surrender to this kind of blackmail – and so, they were removed from Kabul by means of military force. The rivalling versions of this story depend crucially on notions such as "terrorism" and "blackmail". Obviously you'll gain public support for your preferrend version of (...) the story if you are able to determine how those notions are to be used. So we had better reflect about their very meaning and about the moral implications of their proper usage. To gain a deeper understanding of our notions of "blackmail" and "terrorism" I shall propose an extreme thought experiment: Cassandra's plan. Cassandra foresees that sooner or later one of the nuclear powers might take the liberty to use atomic bombs. From fright she founds an NGO for blackmailing the statesmen who are in charge of nuclear weapons; she announces in public that all ministers and leaders of any government shall be hunted down, and executed, whose soldiers drop but one atomic bomb. (Cassandra's NGO keeps killer teams in constant training so as to increase the effect of the threat; this is being financiated from private donations). In my paper I shall raise two questions (without claiming to provide definite answers). First, would we have to say that Cassandra's NGO was a terrorist organisation? Second, would it be morally wrong if Cassandra blackmailed statesmen in the way indicated? (shrink)

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of (...) world risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created. (shrink)

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of (...) world risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created. (shrink)

Vietnam is a vibrant and emerging South East Asian economy. However, the country faces a challenging task in meeting rising energy demand and the need to securitize energy while addressing the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel utilization. Growing concerns about sustainable development have led Vietnam to develop civilian nuclear energy for electricity generation. Nuclear power is widely recognized as a clean, mature and reliable energy source. Its inclusion in Vietnam’s energy mix by 2030 is expected to supplement (...) other energy sources from fossil fuel, hydropower plants, renewable resources and energy imports. Despite strong reservations in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, Vietnam has pursued its national nuclearization program. Civilian nuclear energy development has been widely regarded as a controversial issue, although it is intended for peaceful purposes and as a solution for long-term energy security. Anxiety over nuclear safety measures, inadequate nuclear regulatory mechanisms, lack of institutionalized radioactive waste management, the threat of nuclear accident, theft and terrorism, and nuclear proliferation have marred public perception. The apprehension towards nuclear energy development has raised serious questions on the ethics and risks of the technology. Using a qualitative approach of reviewing published scholarly research, we investigated the ethical and risk issues that manifest in civilian nuclear energy development in Vietnam. Our findings reveal that the conundrum of civilian nuclear energy revolves around balancing energy security, environment preservation and societal well-being with ethical and risk predicaments of nuclear energy. (shrink)

John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Pp. xviii+310. ISBN 0-299-16854-9. £19.50.Septimus H. Paul, Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations 1941–1952. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000. Pp. ix+266. ISBN 0-8142-0852-5. £31.95.Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Pp. 448. ISBN 0-252-02296-3. £22.00.A decade after the end of the Cold War, the culture and technology of nuclear (...) weapons had lost much of the overt sense of dread they once inspired. The decline in international tension following the end of the communist regimes of the Soviet bloc produced a massive shift in the ideology of the nuclear in the 1990s. The de-targeting and dismantling of large numbers of nuclear weapons and the demise of the threat of nuclear annihilation created new conditions both for international security and for the writing of nuclear history. With the declassification and release of large quantities of official documentation from the former adversaries, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, a burst of histories of various aspects of the nuclear age have appeared over the last ten years, exploring not just the technopolitics, strategy and operational logistics of the Cold War and the arms race, but the cultural history of the nuclear age, its imagery, its architecture, its oppositional politics and its effects on the landscape, national and regional economies and cultures and indeed everyday life. At a time of global economic and political uncertainty and the emergent threat of capricious international terrorism and new nuclear proliferation, the apparent certainties of the Cold War now even evoke a certain nostalgia, and its artefacts and structures are being recast as ‘heritage’. (shrink)

This paper critically examines John Mark Mattox's view of the nature of the moral appropriateness of particular response options. By so doing, I aim to engage the wider readership in a debate, which I hope leads to greater clarity and precision of thinking on these topics. After summarizing Mattox's view, I argue first that in order for Mattox's ultimate conclusion to hold in moral terms, he must abandon the argument on the permissibility of nuclear reprisal to re-establish nuclear (...) deterrence and instead anchor this response solely on the moral grounds of retributive justice. Secondly, I argue that the morally superior and politically efficacious counter-nuclear terrorist response is to hunt down the nuclear terrorists and hold them accountable for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. This response is consistent with just war theoretic principles, and it also affirms the moral virtues of honor, dignity, and humane treatment in contexts where they are needed the most? the holocausts of nuclear terrorist attacks. (shrink)

September 11, 2001, may have marked the end of the nuclear power era. Although there are still a large numbe of reactors operating worldwide, the idea that there will be a vast new generation of nuclear reactors is no longer valid given the new world reality. Nuclear power will now be dominated by questions of decommissioning, waste storage, cleanup, and the threat reactors pose to our national security because each is a virtual nuclear weapon, offering (...) a myriad of opportunities for potential terrorism. Despite the obvious security risks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently began a program to let the utilities essentially judge their own security capabilities—a form of self-regulation designed to achieve reassuring public relations results, not actual security improvements. Significant and realistic alternatives to nuclear power, including transitional options such as natural gas and large-scale wind, as well as longer term, noncentral station systems, are explored. (shrink)

After a brief sketch of kinds of threat typical of pre-modern and modern societies, an attempt is made to describe and understand the kinds of threat which are typical of postmodern societies in a globalized world. Terrorism, the postmodern threat par excellence, depends on the deep but at the same time paradoxical hostility of certain traditional groups vis-à-vis a postmodern society they can no longer escape, and against which they are willing and able to use its (...) own high-tech weaponry. (shrink)

Motherland under attack! Nationalism, terrorist threat, and support for the restriction of civil liberties The paper addresses the role which national attitudes play in terrorist threat perception and in the choice of specific counterterrorism strategies. Study 1 shows that participants higher on nationalism tend to perceive the threat of terrorism as more serious than participants lower on nationalism. Moreover, we found that nationalism mediated the relationship between the perceived terrorist threat and the support for tough (...) domestic policies, even at the expense of considerable limitation of civil liberties. Study 2 confirms the link between the perceived terrorism threat and the support for suspension of civil liberties. Nevertheless, when terrorism was seen in terms of crime rather than in terms of war, the mediating role of nationalism disappeared. The results contribute to a better understanding of the process whereby the perception of one's own national group and the perception of one's own nation-state translate into specific reactions triggered by external threats. (shrink)

This article responds to issues raised in Ethics, Nuclear Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorist Nuclear Reprisals? A Response to John Mark Mattox's?Nuclear Terrorism: The Other Extreme of Irregular Warfare? by Thomas E. Doyle II, also appearing in the pages of this issue.

We conducted an online study of projected behavioral and emotional responses to escalating terrorist threat. The study employed scenarios in which terrorists targeted commercial airliners with missiles at an international airport. An important feature of attacks on commercial flights is that unlike many other terrorist threats, exposure to the risk can be controlled simply be refusing to fly. Nine scenarios were constructed by crossing two between-subjects factors, each with three levels: (1) planned government protective actions and (2) social norm, (...) expressed as variation in airline ticket sales. Scenarios also incorporated descriptions of three increasingly severe attacks; this was a within-subjects factor. After each description, we asked respondents to imagine they had planned a vacation to a destination 2,500 km away, and we examined their projected fear and behavior. Fear increased and more trips were canceled as the attacks escalated. Government protective actions and social norm had little impact on either fear or planned flying. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on the practice of war stands in a long tradition in Western philosophy and theology, a tradition which begins with the writings of Plato and Augustine and encompasses accounts of justified warfare offered by writers from the Medieval period to the present. Ethical reflection on nuclear war is of necessity a more recent theme. The past few years have seen an enormous increase in popular as well as scholarly concern with nuclear issues, and philosophers have joined (...) theologians in exploring the moral issues surrounding the harnessing of atomic forces in the service of war. (shrink)

Terrorism is a global phenomenon that constantly challenges human survival. Based on the social structure, human beings adopt different strategies to overcome its negative consequences on their mind and behavior. Coping strategies and those processes essential for adjustment and survival illustrate how individuals perceive, consider, deal with, and realize a stressful situation in the era of terrorism. The study focuses on exploring coping strategies and avoidance of terrorism impacts. This research study was qualitatively designed to explore the (...) coping strategies adaptation and their influence on the former FATA individuals during the wave of terrorism in the region. The study was undertaken in five districts of erstwhile FATA, including Dara Adam Khel, Orakzai Agency, Khyber Agency, and North and South Waziristan agency. A sample size of twenty-five (25) participants was purposively selected and interviewed, ten (10) focused group discussions (FGDs) were done from each district, and the other 50 participants were chosen for ten (10) FGDs. The collected data were analyzed via the thematic analysis technique. The findings revealed that coping strategies included four different phases: the welcome, resistance, acceptance, surrender, and flee phases for overcoming threats of terrorism. Furthermore, it was also found that fear of terrorism had strongly influenced the individuals’ physical, socio-economic, psychological, emotional stress and fear, education, and social integration. The study recommended that social integration and solidarity among the people, as well as their cooperation with the government, can eliminate the threat of terrorism. (shrink)

In contemporary academic, political, and media discourse, terrorism is typically portrayed as an existential threat to lives and states, a threat driven by religious extremists who seek the destruction of Western civilization and who are immune to reason and negotiation. In many countries, including the US, the UK, and Australia, this existential threat narrative of terrorism has been used to justify sweeping counterterrorism legislation, as well as military operations and even the use of tactics such (...) as torture and indefinite detention. In this chapter I outline the components of the existential threat narrative, and explain how critical terrorism scholars have critiqued this narrative on two main grounds: that it is based on false empirical claims about the nature, scale, and motivations of modern non-state terrorism, and that counterterrorism policies and practices based on this narrative have had extremely destructive consequences for individuals, communities, and states—in some cases, causing far more destruction than terrorism itself. In the final section I offer some suggestions for the direction of future terrorism research in light of these critiques of the existential threat narrative. (shrink)

This essay will examine the polemic and poetic means through which three Indigenous Australian writers discuss the repercussions and risks associated with nuclear power, waste and weaponry as an existential and material threat to the mythopoeic creation stories, totemic systems and landforms which sustain Indigenous Australian belief. This essay will follow the establishment of a media ecology through which discourses of technological harm in Oodgeroo Noonuccal's “No More Boomerang” lay the foundation for Australian Indigenous anti-nuclear activist poetics (...) and highlights the relationship between language, belief and technology. Oodgeroo's [Kath Walker] “No More Boomerang” will be read as a precursor to the experimental expression of Lionel Fogarty's “Foot Walking and Talking – Atomic Confusion” as well as the procedural methodologies behind Natalie Harkin's “Zero Tolerance.” It will be argued that Indigenous-led representations of nuclear weaponry as an ontologic-existential threat can only be properly critiqued when framed through the constructs of race, nationhood and the history of colonization in Australia. (shrink)

This book focuses on terrorism which is usually described as violence or the perception or threat of imminent violence. Terrorism has been used by a broad array of political organisations in furthering their objectives; both right-wing and left-wing political parties, nationalistic, and religious groups, revolutionaries and ruling governments. Those labelled 'terrorists' rarely identify themselves as such, and typically use other generic terms or terms specific to their situation, such as: separatist, freedom fighter, liberator, revolutionary, vigilante, militant, paramilitary, (...) guerrilla, rebel, jihadi or mujaheddin, or fedayeen, or any similar-meaning word in other languages. Sadly is has become a global profession which has come to colour all aspects of life from travel, to office locations to pervasive fear. (shrink)

The latest discussions about civil society have been reconsidering the globalization processes, and the theoretical discourse has been broadened to include the notion of the global civil society. The notion and the practice of a civil society are being globalized in a way that reflects the empirical processes of inter-connecting societies and of shaping a world society. From the normative-mobilizing perspective, civil society activists and theoreticians stress the need to defend the world society from the global threat of a (...) nuclear war, environmental catastrophes, crime and violence, domination of world powers over the fate of individual countries and societies, i.e. the need to oppose the tendency of “power policy” on the world level, and to defend the autonomy of the society as one compatible primarily with the expansion of policies based on the rule of law worldwide, and incompatible with the policy of force, state reasons, and domination of world power-centers. The globalization processes result in a conflicting and/or assimilative crossing of civilizations and cultures, as well as controversial tendencies of, on one hand, attempts for the introduction of international political institutions and the adoption of international conventions for human rights’ protection, for the defense of democratic values, for combating terrorism and segregation on various grounds, thus leading to a global standardization of the human-rights culture and of democratic political and legal order, and on the other, of rising xenophobia, particularization and ethno nationalism, civil wars, ecological threats, global terrorism, threat of hunger problem, nuclear war, new disease, etc. Contemporary victory of liberal and democratic values is the positive reach, but followed by the contested issue of sovereignty, urban decay, racism, ethnic cleansing, xenophobia, failing political legitimacy , and followed at the world scale by: global injustice, poverty, environmental dangers, mass and deadly diseases, oppression of minority groups, relentless growth of population, political and economic power great asymmetries, terrorism at the global scale, threat of a nuclear disaster, etc. Global civil society has three dimensions: 1) empirical phenomena of globalized social relations, interconnections, 2) mobilizing, formative force of the project/vision, and 3) social actors at the global/transnational level. The anti-globalization movement is an effort to counter perceive negative aspects of the current process of globalization. Although adherents of the movement often work in concert, the movement itself is heterogeneous and includes diverse, sometimes opposing, understandings of this process, alternative visions, strategies and tactics. Thus, more nuanced terms include anti-capitalist/anti-corporate alternative globalization. Participants may use the positive terms such as ‘global justice’ or ‘fair trade movement’; or ‘Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’; or ‘Movement of Movements’; or simply ‘The Movement’; or ‘anticorporatist capitalism movement’. Generally speaking, anti-globalization movement is not so much an opposition to globalization as such than an opposition to the particular way it is taking place – like neoliberal process of globalization. In that sense, many representatives of the Movement prefer to be called altermondialism. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have found nuclear deterrence morally objectionable due to its violating a cluster of very attractive nonconsequentialist moral principles. And some philosophers who find deterrence morally acceptable are nonetheless deeply troubled by the conflict—or apparent conflict—between nuclear deterrence and these nonconsequentialist moral principles. In this essay I argue that neither set of philosophers has correctly understood the role of these nonconsequentialist principles in the issue of nuclear weapons policies. I shall argue that the “understanding” (...) of the role of these principles in making moral judgements is incorrect, and that the approach to issues of public policy taken by both camps is methodologically defective. In the end, I do not prove that nuclear deterrence is morally acceptable; to establish that, more must be done than is doable in a paper of this length. What I do show, however, is how that matter ought to be decided. I also show that the moral rejections of nuclear deterrence that have been proposed to date are fatally flawed. (shrink)

A global ethic for the twenty-first century will be different from that of the twentieth century. While themes of normative and political continuity will exist, humankind's main moral challenges have changed. Between the two centuries lie the end of the cold war, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the global financial crisis, and the double transformation of the structure of power in world politics and the norms of sovereignty and intervention. Nuclear weapons will remain high on the agenda (...) of a global ethic, but they will not hold as dominant a place as they did in the past century. This essay, focused on the continuing moral challenge of nuclear weapons, recalls the intellectual and moral lessons of the last century and identifies three leading issues in nuclear ethics today: post–cold war challenges to nonproliferation and deterrence, the new challenges posed by the terrorist threat, and recent proposals for Going to Zero. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to examine the nature of individual and social responses to the nuclear threat from psychological and sociological perspectives on ignorance. It is argued that a constructed and managed ignorance concerning the nuclear threat serves many functions, structuring an individual and social reality which is reassuring, meaningful, and both individually and collectively self-serving. A sociology of ignorance framework is employed to articulate the possible benefits of “not knowing about” and collaboratively “not (...) dealing with” the nuclear threat, as well as to define the longer-term costs of ignoring this threat. The distinctive roles played by various kinds of ignorance regarding this important issue are investigated, and the conventional wisdom that knowledge of the consequences of a nuclear war is the only way to prevent its occurrence is challenged. (shrink)

The International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons in 1996 was a landmark case because, for the first time in history, the legal aspect of nuclear weapons was addressed. The decision has evoked controversies regarding the Court’s conclusion, the legal status of international humanitarian law in relation to nuclear weapons, and a newly introduced concept of state survival. While much legal scholarship discusses and criticizes the legal (...) significance of the opinion, there has not been enough scholarship examining the Court’s specific choice of words and concepts that sustain its wider ideological and political position in the opinion. The paper argues that the Court’s vague and controversial logic is attributed to its confrontation with two international orders/codes: the legal order and the political order. The paper engages in legal semiotics as methodology to decode legal text and discover a deep structure that sustains networks of codes, according to which text is interpreted. Through the semiotic examination of three sets of key concepts “permitted” and “prohibited,” “threat of use” and “possession of the weapon,” and “state survival,” the paper shows the ICJ’s confrontation with two orders/codes and eventual prioritization of the political order over the international legal order. The analysis of the opinion based on legal semiotics indicates an intimate and inseparable relationship between state practice and international law, which must be disentangled for the sake of the rule of law. (shrink)

The general idea of this investigation is to emphasize the elusiveness of the concept of terrorism and the pitfalls of the so-called “War on Terror” by way of confronting, roughly, the reflections made in the immediate following of 9/11 by Habermas and Derrida on the legacy of Enlightenment, globalization and tolerance, with Foucault’s concept of biopolitics seen as the modern political paradigm and Agamben’s understanding of “the state of exception” in the context of liberal democratic governments. The main argument (...) will state that the modern Western individual and the modern terrorist are in a way linked together as products of the same biopolitical network. So I shall argue that religious fundamentalism and international terrorism are not external factors to the Western civilization, nor even some radical late forms of ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ threatening the Western ‘way of life,’ but phenomena revealing what we could call, borrowing J. Derrida’s biological metaphor, a “crisis of autoimmunization” of Western neo-liberal democracies. The only long-term solution to the threat of global terrorism would have to involve the “deconstruction” of our common notion of tolerance and the experience of an unconditional hospitality that is actually the inversion of the terrorist action that is threatening us “from within,” according to Derrida. But we cannot reasonably hope for this radical change in our relationship to others unless we aren’t really trying to modify the relationship to the self that is prevalent in contemporary Western societies: a vision of us as self-encapsulated monads or ‘nuclear’ selves, for whom genuine community life is, at the most, only a nostalgic evocation of a past long gone, and the respect for the others, a strategic name for moral indifference. (shrink)

The terrorist threat remains a disturbing issue for the early 1990s. This book explores whether terrorism can ever be morally justifiable and if so under what circumstances. Professor Burleigh Taylor Wilkins suggests that the popular characterisation of terrorists as criminals fails to acknowledge the reasons why terrorists resort to violence. It is argued that terrorism cannot be adequately understood unless the collective responsibility of organised groups, such as political states, for wrongs allegedly done against the groups which (...) the terrorists represent is taken into account. Terrorism and Collective Responsibility provides an analysis of various models of collective responsibility, and it takes into account recent discussions of military responsibility and business ethics. The book also explores the problems that terrorism poses for the just war tradition. The arguments of prominent philosophers against terrorism are critically examined and the claim that terrorism necessarily violates the rights of innocent persons is considered. Wilkins sets forth an original definition of terrorism that is sure to provoke controversy. (shrink)

The terrorist threat remains a disturbing issue for the early 1990s. This book explores whether terrorism can ever be morally justifiable and if so under what circumstances. Professor Burleigh Taylor Wilkins suggests that the popular characterisation of terrorists as criminals fails to acknowledge the reasons why terrorists resort to violence. It is argued that terrorism cannot be adequately understood unless the collective responsibility of organised groups, such as political states, for wrongs allegedly done against the groups which (...) the terrorists represent is taken into account. _Terrorism and Collective Responsibility_ provides an analysis of various models of collective responsibility, and it takes into account recent discussions of military responsibility and business ethics. The book also explores the problems that terrorism poses for the just war tradition. The arguments of prominent philosophers against terrorism are critically examined and the claim that terrorism necessarily violates the rights of innocent persons is considered. Wilkins sets forth an original definition of terrorism that is sure to provoke controversy. (shrink)

Nuclear deterrence requires objective ethical analysis. In providing it, the authors face realities - the Soviet threat, possible nuclear holocaust, strategic imperatives - but they also unmask moral evasions - deterrence cannot be bluff, pure counterforce, the lesser evil, or a step towards disarmament. They conclude that the deterrent is unjustifiable and examine the new question of conscience that this raises for everyone.

Radical environmental groups engaged in ecotage—or economic sabotage of inanimate objects thought to be complicit in environmental destruction—have been identified as the leading domestic terrorist threat in the post-9/11 “war on terror.” This article examines the case for extending the conventional definition of terrorism to include attacks not only against noncombatants, but also against inanimate objects, and surveys proposed moral limits suggested by proponents of ecotage. Rejecting the mistaken association between genuine acts of terrorism and ecotage, it (...) considers the proper moral constraints upon ecotage through an examination of just war theory and nonviolent civil disobedience. (shrink)

“Terrorism”' is sometimes defined as a “form ofcoercion.” But there are important differences between ordinary coercion and terrorist intimidation. This paper explores some of those differences, particularly the relation between coercion, on the one hand, and terror and terrorization, on the other hand. The paper argues that while terrorism is not necessarily associated with terror in the literal sense, it does often seek to instill a mental state like terror in the populations that it targets. However, the point (...) of instilling this mental state is not necessarily coercive or intimidatory: one can try to instill terror as an act of punishment, or as an expressive or therapeutic act, or because one values the political consequences that might follow, or because one thinks terror is preferable, from an ethical point of view, to the inauthentic complacency that characterizes the targeted population at present. Though this paper asks questions about the definition of “terrorism,” these questions are not asked for their own sake. The quest for a canonical definition of “terrorism” is probably a waste of time. But asking questions which sound like questions of definition is sometimes a fruitful way of focusing our reflections on terrorism and organizing our response. (shrink)

Philosophical concerns about nuclear armaments raises questions about the logical and conceptual basis for deterrence theory as well as the effects of nuclear threats on our common humanity. Most philosophical concern centers around around the morality of nuclear deterrence. It is sometimes thought that the doctrine of just war can provide a moral justification for nuclear deterrence based on threats of massive retaliation. Ye attempts to apply the doctrine of just war lead to a moral dilemma: (...) although nuclear deterrence seems justified as self-defense, there are compelling reasons for concluding that threats of retaliation are immoral. Alternative deterrence policies might be thought to overcome the moral dilemma. However, counterforce strategy and anti-missile defense, as recently proposed by President reagan, must still depend upon immoral threats of retaliation. Proposals for a nonviolent national defense offer a possible solution, and serious attention should be given to claims that nonviolent defense is relevant in the nuclear age and would deter aggression. (shrink)

Since the end of the Cold War, international ethicists have focused largely on issues outside the traditional scope of security studies. The nuclear ethics literature needs to be revived and reoriented to address the new and evolving 21st century nuclear threats and policy responses.

On September 11, 2001, Americans were painfully reminded of a truth that for years had been easy to overlook, namely, that terrorism can affect every person in the world – regardless of location, nationality, political conviction, or occupation – and that, in principle, nobody is beyond terrorism’s reach. However, our renewed awareness of the ubiquity of the terrorist threat has been accompanied by wide disagreement and confusion about the moral status of terrorism and how terrorism (...) ought to be confronted. Much of the disagreement and confusion, I contend, is rooted in an inadequate understanding of just what it is that constitutes terrorism. In this paper, I offer the beginnings of a response to the challenge of terrorism by providing an account of what terrorism is and of some of the philosophical issues involved. My account is divided into two sections. In the first section I examine some of the difficulties involved in defining terrorism, and show that some of the most common “ordinary” understandings of terrorism are inadequate. In the second section I offer a working definition of terrorism that overcomes many of the difficulties outlined in the first section. I argue that terrorism consists in the use of “systematically unsystematic” violence (whether directed at combatants or noncombatants), and that the random or indiscriminate character of terroristic violence points us in the direction of seeing what is distinctively wrong with it. The fundamental problem is that terrorism is not committed to any rules of armed conflict or any principles that would facilitate the eventual containment or termination of the conflict. (shrink)

“Imaginationland” is an Emmy winning, three‐part story from South Park's eleventh season that was later reissued as a movie with all of the deleted scenes included. This chapter talks about the connection between imagination and something philosophers like to call critical thinking‐that is, being able to cut through the crap and see things clearly‐something that seems to be in short supply these days, especially when it comes to thinking about terrorist threats. The chapter deals with unimaginative leadership by discussing a (...) scene from South Park that cuts to a debriefing room at the Pentagon. In more recent times, the use of the term “Terrorism” has broadened. In Bruce Hoffman's book, Inside Terrorism, he has identified several elements common among terrorist acts, as they are thought of today. (shrink)