Child soldiers, who often appear to be both victims and perpetrators, present a vexing moral and legal challenge: how can we protect the rights of children while seeking justice for the victims of war crimes? There has been little stomach, either in domestic or international courts, for prosecuting child soldiers—but neither has this challenge been systematically addressed in international law. Establishing a uniform minimum age of criminal responsibility would be a major step in the right direction; we argue (...) that such a standard ought to be guided by the best evidence from neuropsychology about the development, during childhood and adolescence, of the executive functions that give rise to morally and legally responsible agents. In light of that evidence, which suggests that the brain’s executive functions are still maturing into early adulthood, we recommend a graded structure of culpability for child soldiers. (shrink)

As the world’s population grows and urbanization continues, the global waste crisis is becoming more severe, especially in developing countries. Without proper waste management, they may encounter various environmental and health risks. Biological technologies are regarded as promising waste management and recycling approaches in developing countries due to their cost-effectiveness and capability to handle diverse waste categories. One prominent technology in this aspect is the vermicomposting of organic waste utilizing the black soldier fly larvae. Nevertheless, significant financial resources are still (...) necessary to advance and expand biological waste treatment, which requires the participation of businesses. By examining waste management companies listed on the Vietnamese stock market, we highlight two challenges that hinder the adoption and scaling of the waste treatment system using black soldier flies and potentially other biological technologies in Vietnam. Specifically, the business regards the environmental services they offer primarily as a means to generate profit rather than as a genuine commitment to environmental preservation, and the values of companies operating in the environmental sector, particularly in waste management, have been significantly undervalued by the Vietnamese investing public. Therefore, we advocate for societal shifts toward the eco-surplus culture and apply the semiconducting principle of monetary and environmental values exchange to address the problem. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow (among others) claims that if an autonomous weapon were to commit a war crime, it would cause harm for which no one could reasonably be blamed. Since no one would bear responsibility for the soldier’s share of killing in such cases, he argues that they would necessarily violate the requirements of jus in bello, and should be prohibited by international law. I argue this view is mistaken and that our moral understanding of war is sufficient to determine blame (...) for any wrongful killing done by autonomous weapons. Analyzing moral responsibility for autonomous weapons starts by recognizing that although they are capable of causing moral consequences, they are neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy in the moral sense. As such, their military role is that of a tool, albeit a rather sophisticated one, and responsibility for their use is roughly analogous to that of existing “smart” weapons. There will likely be some difficulty in managing these systems as they become more intelligent and more prone to unpredicted behavior, but the moral notion of shared responsibility and the legal notion of command responsibility are sufficient to locate responsibility for their use. (shrink)

In his recent JME article Daniel Restrepo argues that both legal and ethical rules should protect the so-called Naked Soldiers, combatants engaged in activity unrelated to military operations and unaware of the imminent danger threatening them. I criticize this position from several angles. I deny the existence of any link between vulnerability and innocence, and claim ignorance of deadly threats does not give rise to a morally distinguished type of vulnerability. I argue that actions not contributing to the war (...) effort are nevertheless an inherent part of fighting a war, and that combatants do not signal intention to abandon their commitment to the war effort by undertaking these. I show that by granting hors de combat status to Naked Soldiers, we would unjustly disadvantage their opponents and engender significant and manifold practical difficulties that the proponents of the view fail to solve or even anticipate. Finally, I demonstrate that Restrepo’s general project of “making killing in war difficult to legitimately justify” regardless of why, how and by whom the killing is done is incompatible with just war theory’s basic assumptions. That project is in fact pacifist in nature and as such redundant in light of pacifism’s broader and stronger implications. (shrink)

(2011). CHILD SOLDIERS AND KILLING IN SELF-DEFENCE: CHALLENGING THE ‘MORAL VIEW’ ON KILLING IN WAR. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 36-51. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2011.561639.

The authors argue that an urgent leadership issue has arisen which is strongly, but not favorably, influencing our professional culture--a hostility toward religion and its correct expressions within the military. Setting aside the role of Chaplains as a separate issue, the focus here is on the role religion may play in the moral character of individual soldiers--especially leaders--and how their personal morality, faith-based or not, is to be integrated with their profession's ethic so they can serve in all cases (...) "without reservation" as their oath requires. Related products: Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Latvia can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01225-3 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Turkey can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01223-7 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Lithuania is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01224-5 Expeditionary Culture Field Guide: Chad is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01226-1 Aspects of Leadership: Ethics, Law and Spirituality is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-055-00255-9 Faith and Hope in a War-Torn Land: The US Army Chaplaincy in the Balkans, 1995-2005 eBook available from Google Play eBookstore. Please use ISBN: 9780160872792 to search their platform for this product; Paperback format available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00440-2. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow (among others) claims that if an autonomous weapon were to commit a war crime, it would cause harm for which no one could reasonably be blamed. Since no one would bear responsibility for the soldier’s share of killing in such cases, he argues that they would necessarily violate the requirements of jus in bello, and should be prohibited by international law. I argue this view is mistaken and that our moral understanding of war is sufficient to determine blame (...) for any wrongful killing done by autonomous weapons. Analyzing moral responsibility for autonomous weapons starts by recognizing that although they are capable of causing moral consequences, they are neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy in the moral sense. As such, their military role is that of a tool, albeit a rather sophisticated one, and responsibility for their use is roughly analogous to that of existing “smart” weapons. There will likely be some difficulty in managing these systems as they become more intelligent and more prone to unpredicted behavior, but the moral notion of shared responsibility and the legal notion of command responsibility are sufficient to locate responsibility for their use. (shrink)

Over the past decade, interest in human enhancement has waxed and waned. The initial surge of interest and funding, driven by the US Army’s desire for a ‘Future Force Warrior’ has partly given way to the challenges of meeting operational demands abroad. However the ethical opportunities provided by soldier enhancement demand that investigation of its possibilities continue. Benefits include enhanced decision-making, improved force capability, reduced force size and lower casualty rates. These benefits — and enhancement itself — carry concomitant risks, (...) including morale issues due to tension between enhanced and unenhanced soldiers, the issues of enhanced veterans and ownership of enhanced bodies, challenges to the army’s core values and personal identity issues. A range of measures should be designed to highlight the opportunities offered by enhancement while also minimising the potential risks. This includes providing advice on which areas the army ought to demonstrate restraint in research for ethical reasons. (shrink)

Lucas, Brian Review of: Soldier of Christ: The life of pope Pius XII, by Robert A. Ventresca, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 405, hardback, US$35.00.

Throughout the 3-year war in Lebanon (1982-1985) and throughout the 7 years of the first Intifada (1987-1994), about 170 objecting reservists chose to adopt an unconventional mode of moral resolution for their dilemma about service in the conflict: they disobeyed the order to serve in the war zone when their unit was called up. They argued that such service would contradict the dictates of their conscience. At the outset, the intention of most of these reservists was to comply with orders (...) for general military service. They asked to serve within the Green Line. When their request was overruled and they continued to disregard their call-up, they were charged with a disciplinary offense (Israel has no legal provision for selective conscientious objection). They subsequently were tried by court-martial and were sentenced to 14-35 days in military prison, some of them more than once when they refused additional drafts. Their major conscientious claims revolve around two major constraints: resisting the unfair physical load of military reserve service and resisting the obligation to face morally no-win situations. I would further argue that even though most of the public and the senior army echelons were familiar with these two types of moral voices, they preferred to remove the conscientious soldiers from their posts, or to ignore the claims themselves. (shrink)

It is a truism that, due to human weaknesses, human soldiers have yet to have sufficiently ethical warfare. It is arguable that the likelihood of human soldiers to breach the Principle of Non-Combatant Immunity, for example, is higher in contrast tosmart soldierswho are emotionally inept. Hence, this paper examines the possibility that the integration of ethics into smart soldiers will help address moral challenges in modern warfare. The approach is to develop and employ smart soldiers that (...) are enhanced with ethical capabilities. Advocates of this approach think that it is more realistic to make competent entities (i.e., smart soldiers) become morally responsible than to enforce moral responsibility on human soldiers with inherent (moral) limitations. This view somewhat seeks a radical transition from the usual anthropocentric warfare to arobocentricwarfare with the belief that the transition has moral advantages. However, the paper defends the claim that despite human limitations, the capacity ofethically enhanced smart soldiersfor moral sensitivity is artificial and unauthentic. There are significant problems with the three models of programming ethics into smart soldiers. Also, there are further challenges from the absence of emotion as a moral gauge, and the problems of apportioning responsibility in case of mishap from the actions or omissions of smart soldiers. Among other reasons, the paper takes the replacement of human soldiers as an extreme approach towards an ethical warfare. This replacement predicates ethical complications that outweigh the benefits from the exclusive use of smart soldiers. (shrink)

Today, with the advent of unmanned systems, military hopes are attached to the idea that battles can be fought with soldiers pressing buttons in distant command centres. However, soldiers must now be highly trained, super strong and have the intelligence and mental capacity to handle the highly complex and dynamic military operating environment. This book provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis of the moral, legal and social questions concerning military human enhancement, with a view toward developing guidance (...) and policy that may influence real-world decision making. (shrink)

ISBN-13: 978-1934074480
Plot Summary from the book:
"An aristocratic young man, fed up with his studies, contemplates military service. His teacher is unable by any reasoning to call him back him from the path he has embarked upon. The young man enlists another youth who commits himself to the journey, dressed in military garb, and he happens upon two deserting soldiers, unsightly and ill-used both in their dress and in their hygiene. Both young men are so moved by the (...) deserters’ remarks deploring and reviling their lot in life that they return to their studies. One of the deserters, however, hopes to be welcomed back by the wife and small children he had deserted and left penniless and bereft of friends. She gives him a nasty reception, with verbal and corporal abuse, and he barely manages to have his sin forgiven and to return to her good graces."
From the Table of Contents:
Introduction
How to Use this Book
Jacobus Pontanus: Biography
Jesuit Comedy – Seriously?
The Stratocles as a Spiritual Exercise
Just War and the Morality of Military Service
A Play about War and the Real Wars of Pontanus' Time
The Characters and Their Names
Pontanus’ Use of Classical Sources
The History of the Text of Stratocles
Performance
Stratocles or War
Endnotes
Appendices
Pontanus on Humanist Studies
Pontanus on Writing Comedy
Renaissance School Hazing, called “Deposition”
Anonymous: Instructions for Deposition
Dialogue on Hazing (Progymnasma 100)
. (shrink)

The modern soldier is faced with a complex moral and psychological landscape. As Nancy Sherman puts it in The Untold War: Inside the Hearts and Minds of our Soldiers, ‘soldiers go to war to fight external enemies… but most fight inner wars as well.’ The modern soldier is no longer simply a warrior: he is at once a peacekeeper, diplomat, leader, sibling and friend. In the face of such challenges, some responsible for the teaching of soldiers have (...) endeavoured to incorporate a character-based training programme, designed to develop virtues that will assist soldiers in fulfilling the multiple roles required of them. However, these training programmes are stymied by the dearth of virtue-based discussion within the most influential guide to the moral conduct of soldiers: just war theory . JWT remains a primarily deontic system in which rights, duties and law are generally perceived as the most important considerations. Aretaic ethics has a great deal to offer both JWT and military education progra.. (shrink)

A riddle in the ethics of war concerns whether lethal defensive force may be justifiably used against aggressing soldiers who are morally innocent.

The centrality of human-machine weapon systems is a key aspect of postmodern war. Since 1939 such systems have proliferated while improved interfaces have led to several types of actual cyborg soldiers. As the crisis of postmodern war deepens it is producing a series of quite different militarized bodies. Cyborgs proliferate in type so it is no surprise that we have pilot-cyborgs and teleoperators, info-cyborgs (from political operatives to clerks and including all the servants of the computers and weapons systems), (...) and various fighting cyborg soldiers and sailors. There has also been a resurgence of a type of irregular warrior that many commentators describe as bestial. It is not a coincidence that while humanity is on the verge of producing real posthumans (quite possibly for military applications) so-called ‘prehuman’ types of war have broken out across the globe. War is based on bodies and its skewed logics have driven many cyborgian developments. Now, both war and our cyborg society are involved in a linked crisis fuelled by the relentless march of technoscience that has made modern war impossible and posthumans probable. The future of the human, and of a multitude of potential posthumanities, will largely be determined by how this crisis is resolved. (shrink)

Intuition has increasingly been considered as a legitimate foundation for decision-making, and the concept has started to find its way into military doctrines as a supplement to traditional decision-making procedures, primarily in time-constrained situations. Yet, absent inside the military realm is a critical and level-headed discussion of the ethical implications of intuitive behaviour, understood as an immediate and situational response with no recourse to thoughtful or deliberate activity. In this article the author turns to phenomenological philosophy, and in particular to (...) the works of Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, to elaborate on the ethical implications and consequences of intuitive behaviour. Dreyfus and Dreyfus understand moral behaviour as a skill, and as such they claim that it is possible to develop this capability through practice. They even claim that intuitive behaviour is the hallmark of the way experts respond to situations. The article seeks to investigate if the prerequisites for development of experience-based intuition are fulfilled inside the frames of military operations. The possible implications and consequences of utilizing such a capability are also emphasized. The article's empirical materials are qualitative and build mainly upon extracted information from interviews and informal conversations with Norwegian soldiers and officers serving in Afghanistan under ISAF's Regional Command North in 2007 and 2008. (shrink)

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.

Robert Graves's First World War story in his autobiography Goodbye to All That, narrating his refusal to kill an enemy soldier bathing naked on the battlefield, has been made famous in the field of military ethics by Michael Walzer in his Just and Unjust Wars. The story raises the issue of whether soldiers should be granted immunity when behaving in an ‘un-warlike’ manner. It also relates to the growing understanding in military ethics that only soldiers who pose a (...) direct threat should be attacked and killed. This paper concludes that the traditional legal understanding that all soldiers are liable to be attacked and to be killed is the stronger argument. (shrink)

Because wars are fought by human beings and not merely machines, a strong virtue ethic is an essential prerequisite for those engaged in combat. From a philosophical perspective, war has historically been seen as separate and outside of the commonly accepted forms of morality. Yet there remains a general, though not well-thought out, sense that those human beings who fight wars should act ethically. Since warfighters are often called upon to contemplate and complete tasks during war that are not normally (...) required of non-warfighters (civilians), and it is believed these warfighters should act ethically, it becomes necessary to ask: What does soldierly virtue look like? In order to answer this question, I will examine essential elements of moral responsibility and military authority. Once complete, I will propose an Aristotelian-based virtue ethics system, one that is equally valuable to warfighter and civilian. To do this, I will examine the conversation in academia regarding virtue ethics and the foundations of virtue. I will provide both a cursory and deep reading of elements of Aristotle’s conception of virtue, but ultimately I will provide a slightly more rigorous reading and reinterpretation of an Aristotelian-based virtue ethic, with a definitive final recommendation for this interpretation being best for everyone, in war or walking down the street. Upon completing a study of this work, one will walk away with a next-generation interpretation of Aristotelian-based Virtue Ethics that denies eudaimonia as the central principle, relying instead on phronesis as its central theme. Phronesis, when properly developed in the warfighter will lead to moral responsibility, better decision-making, and a seamless re-integration into civilian life once has returned from the horrors of war. (shrink)

The use of child soldiers in armed conflict is an increasing global concern. Although philosophers have examined whether child soldiers can be considered combatants in war, much less attention has been paid to their moral responsibility. While it is tempting to think of them as having diminished or limited responsibility, child soldiers often report feeling guilt for the wrongs they commit. Here I argue that their feelings of guilt are both intelligible and morally appropriate. The feelings of (...) guilt that child soldiers experience are not self-censure; rather their guilt arises from their attempts to come to terms with what they see as their own morally ambiguous motives. Their guilt is appropriate because it reaffirms their commitment to morality and facilitates their self-forgiveness. (shrink)

This article contends that in crucial respects effective soldiers are ethical soldiers, that good soldiers in the military sense are good soldiers in the moral sense, and that this is so for quite traditional reasons. The thesis is defended by identifying and then resolving basic paradoxes regarding what soldiers must be trained to do or be, e.g.: be trained to kill but also not to be brutal; be trained to react in combat situations almost automatically (...) but also to deliberate and decide if a command is unlawful; as peacekeepers, be trained to be impartial but also to know right from wrong and be firmly committed to upholding the former and opposing the latter. It is shown that contradictory things are not really thus being called for. With the aid of a blend of deontology and virtue theory, it is argued that certain standard qualities of effective soldiers have an associated moral dimension. For example, true military courage implies an unwillingness to engage in cruelty; the self‐control on which success of missions depends implies eschewing motives of personal vengeance; and the capacity for comprehending complex equipment and data implies a mentality for assessing the validity of orders. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that emerging soldier enhancement technologies have the potential to transform the ethical character of the relationship between combatants, in conflicts between ‘Superpower’ militaries, with the ability to deploy such technologies, and technologically disadvantaged ‘Underdog’ militaries. The reasons for this relate to Paul Kahn’s claims about the paradox of riskless warfare. When an Underdog poses no threat to a Superpower, the standard just war theoretic justifications for the Superpower’s combatants using lethal violence against their opponents breaks (...) down. Therefore, Kahn argues, combatants in that position must approach their opponents in an ethical guise relevantly similar to ‘policing’. I argue that the kind of disparities in risk and threat between opposing combatants that Kahn’s analysis posits, don’t obtain in the context of face-to-face combat, in the way they would need to in order to support his ethical conclusions about policing. But then I argue that soldier enhancement technologies have the potential to change this, in a way that reactivates the force of those conclusions. (shrink)

How can we make moral sense of the international humanitarian law doctrine of combatant immunity? The doctrine is morally shocking to many: It holds soldiers on both sides of a war immune from criminal prosecution for their otherwise criminal acts of killing, maiming, destroying property, etc., carried out as part of their country's war effort. That is, soldiers who kill as part of an attack benefit from the immunity just as much as those defending their country. Traditionally, just (...) war theorists have tried to provide situation‐specific arguments to show that soldiers on both sides had a good moral justification for their actions. Recently, self‐styled “revisionist just war theorists” have suggested that the doctrine of combatant immunity is just a convention designed to minimize harm. In this article, I suggest that the moral foundation of the doctrine lies in the status of soldiers as public officials in the service of their country. The reason why we hold them immune from prosecution for their war‐making acts is that such acts are properly thought of as acts of a state, rather than as acts of a particular individual. And the reason why states are immune from prosecution for their acts is one of moral standing: No other state has the moral standing to tell another how to carry out the matters that define its jurisdiction. So as long as a country deems (however implausibly) that it must use force to defend itself from aggression, then it may do what is required to defend itself. No other state has the standing to prohibit such acts or to punish those who carry them out. This argument is rooted in an understanding of how individuals may interact as free and equal under law. It does not aim at the perfection of human action, but it does serve to eliminate the worst forms of tyranny. (shrink)

In tribute to the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, this article draws upon her Arendtian analysis of fascism to explore recent dynamics of ethnic nationalism in the US. Whereas Bar On analyzed the problem of citizen-soldiers, this study extends analysis toward the citizen culture-soldier, suggesting that recent dynamics in the US are suggestive of a Cultural Revolution that threatens the inclusive practice of citizenship required of democracy. Bar On’s work motivates philosophers to not be lulled into acceptance of anti-democratic (...) practices of citizenship. The values of respect, equality, and equity suggest that another form of citizenship should be practically pursued. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Soldiers of the Invisible Front: How Ukrainian Therapists Are Fighting for the Mental Health of the Nation Under FireIrina Deyneka and Eva RegelIrina DeynekaWhen the Russian army attacked my country, I became a volunteer for a hotline offering psychological support to those in crisis; refugees, those who were under the shelling, those who were hiding in bomb shelters, and who were directly in the zone of fighting. People (...) were lost and disoriented by constant bombing, by the fact that their country was under attack. Once, I had a woman who lived in Mariupol on one of these calls. I was living then in another city, Odessa, but was experiencing the same horrors of war that my client was—the shelling, uncertainty, and despair. We were processing my client’s feelings of grief and anxiety when I heard the sirens on her end. I offered to stop our session so she could seek shelter. She told me she would not have time to find shelter and wanted to continue our meeting. And so, we continued... But soon, Odessa’s sirens broke the silence, and it was my turn to decide what to do; should I continue our session or try to find a bomb shelter for myself? I decided to stay because I thought that was the right thing to do morally, professionally, and personally.I eventually left Odessa, but only after a bomb destroyed a house next to mine, and I saw a family, my neighbors, perish in the destruction. I am now a member of one of Slovakia’s Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and work in a mobile brigade providing medical and psychological support to refugees. I can remember every one of my clients. Children, adults... I can remember their stories, their traumas, their memories of the horrors of war and devastation. Sometimes I meet with them only once, and they move on to another refugee center or are on their way to a Western part of Ukraine, trying to escape the war. And frequently, I do not know how many sessions I will be able to have with clients. Sometimes it is only one time, and sometimes we can meet for many months. Initially, I thought, What can I do in one therapy session? Now, I know that I can do a lot. I can provide people who survived the most inhuman conditions and witnessed death and destruction around them with a space and time to talk through and process their experiences. I am their support, and they lean on me as they try to make sense of what has happened to them and their country. I always tell my clients that my goal as a psychotherapist is to help them withstand, survive, and hold on while still being able to continue to function in a country at war. All I can do is treat each of the therapy sessions as our last one and try to provide as many strategies and skills as possible to cope with anxiety and depression, to be able to function, and to live in the present.Every session is about installing hope, moving slowly forward, and away from traumatic events. One of my clients, a 14-year-old boy, was diagnosed with a neurological condition, involuntary facial muscle spasm, or tics. He was barely talking when I first saw him, and I decided to use art therapy as a trauma-processing tool during one of the therapy sessions. He was drawing an explosion, fire, and destruction of his neighbor’s house. He blacked out the horrors of his experience to preserve his strength. Yet, he began slowly remembering his experiences, re-creating the story of his trauma, and making memories. I was fortunate to work with [End Page E4] him for many months, carefully and thoughtfully helping him re-create the sorry of his trauma, helping to become its witness. Ultimately, it was great to see that he could control his memories and his emotional stress; he felt empowered and in control.Eva RegelThis is the story of Irina Deyneka, one of many Ukrainian psychotherapists working in Ukraine, providing mental health support to a nation ravaged by... (shrink)

A hallmark of the war on terror is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, to kill terrorists abroad. I argue that the justification for targeted killing is based on the same logic as the justification for killing the Naked Soldier in traditional wars. Since many drone strikes are personal strikes—the targeted killing of known individuals—this seems like a more justifiable attack than one against anonymous soldiers. Yet, I propose there are three problems to this analogy (...) that makes killing the Naked Terrorist—one unaware of the danger he is in—worse than killing the Naked Soldier: First, there is the epistemological problem regarding knowing with some certainty that the targets are indeed terrorists. Second, terrorists do not seem to pose a great enough danger for the necessity claim. Lastly, drones may not be as precise as the US claims they are. (shrink)

If called upon would you fight in a war you thought unjust? This article attempts to explain why the majority of military officers and soldiers when faced with this question do fight despite moral misgivings they may have. I will explain why on one hand officers are morally obligated to refuse unjust orders in jus in bello cases, but on the other hand it can be argued that they are also obligated to follow orders they believe to be unjust (...) concerning jus ad bellum. The war in Iraq has and continues to presents military officers and their soldiers with a particularly difficult moral dilemma. As citizens of a democratic government it is important that we understand why our military officers act in ways that may seem counter to what we believe is right. (shrink)

This article reviews and also compares developments within international humanitarian law and human rights law in regard to matters relating to child soldiers. Beginning with the Geneva Conventions and early twentieth century legal developments for children in general, this article identifies the legal and conceptual discrepancies in the child soldiers issue and how they relate to and affect each other. It also includes an overview of the child soldiers issue, followed by summary discussions of the respective strengths (...) and weaknesses of international humanitarian law and human rights law in regard to child soldiers. Following from that, conceptual problems in the field that are problematic in regard to law are also considered, and some concluding observations are then offered. Among them is how the patch-work developments of the past still prevail, as evidenced by the ongoing two-tiered age division that exists within the under-18 category. (shrink)

The author looks for ideological reasons for which the Poles joined the military organizations. On the basis of his own experience, he attempts to establish a relation between the political attitudes of the Poles and their decision to join respective military units that fought during the war. He states that in many cases the main factor in the decision to defend the country was the heart and not the reason. Political preferences of the young and politically inexperienced soldiers were (...) of little importance in the process of deciding under which banner to fight. (shrink)

I shall argue that in some wars both sides are (as a collective) justified, that is, they can both satisfy valid jus ad bellum requirements. Moreover, in some wars – but not in all – the individual soldiers on the unjustified side (that is, on the side without jus ad bellum) may nevertheless kill soldiers (and also civilians as a side-effect) on the justified side, even if the enemy soldiers always abide by jus in bello constraints. Traditional (...) just war theory and self-proclaimed “revisionist” just war theory think otherwise since the former focuses on the law enforcement or public authority justification for inflicting harm and the latter on the self-defense justification. These are both intrinsically asymmetrical justifications: there is no justified self-defense (properly understood) against justified self-defense, nor is there justified law-enforcement against justified law-enforcement. However, there can, as I will show, be justified self-defense against force that is justified by a necessity justification, and there can be force justified by a necessity justification being used against force that is also justified by a necessity justification. The necessity justification is not intrinsically asymmetrical, and it is an indispensable justification in the context of war. Moreover, with regard to some forms of inflicting harm on others one may give special weight to one’s own interests and the interests of those to whom one has special responsibilities when assessing the proportionality of those acts. That is, the proportionality calculation may be agent-relative. This is in particular so in the case of foreseeably preventing innocent and non-threatening people from being saved (for instance, by shooting down a tactical bomber who would have saved them by destroying an ammunitions factory) but less so in the case of the intentional or foreseeable direct harming of innocent and non-threatening people (dropping bombs on people standing near an ammunitions factory). In the light of these considerations, I will then answer the question as to when soldiers may justifiably participate in war (and when not). (shrink)

This paper discusses the meaning of ‘respect’ in complex conflicts and aims to be a contribution to thinking about ethics in war along with the Just War tradition. The point of departure is the increased focus on soldiers as moral decision-makers in war, illustrated by the introduction of core values in the Norwegian Armed Forces. ‘Respect’ is one of these core values. However, it is not clear how we should understand ‘respect’ in this kind of context. I use a (...) case where a group of Norwegian soldiers in the International Security Assistance Force sought the cooperation of a group of mujahedeen to solve the military mission of establishing security. As confidence between the parties grew, the soldiers became horrified witnesses to a practice of bacha bazi, where a young boy is dressed up for entertainment and sexually abused. My discussion of different perspectives of ‘respect’ in this specific context shows the importance of acknowledging the multitude of moral stakes in a moral decision-process instead of closing the eyes for a moral problem. (shrink)

Bringing together contributors from philosophy, international relations, security studies, and strategic studies, New Wars and New Soldiers offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis reflective of the nature of modern warfare. This comprehensive approach allows the reader to see the broad scope of modern military ethics, and to understand the numerous questions about modern conflict that require critical scrutiny. Aimed at both military and academic audiences, this paperback will be of significant interest to researchers and students in philosophy, sociology, military and (...) strategic studies, international relations, politics, and security studies, acting as an ideal course text or as supplementary reading. (shrink)

Dealing with soldier enhancement can be challenging for military physicians. As research on the ethics of soldier enhancement is mostly theoretical, this study aims to gain insights into the actual moral issues military physicians encounter, or expect to encounter. To that end, we carried out a qualitative study involving six focus groups of Dutch military physicians (n = 28) in operational roles. The participants voiced their concerns about moral issues concerning soldier enhancement. Based on the group discussions, and using inductive (...) thematic analysis, we ascertained three major themes: (1) Doing no harm in soldier enhancement: uncertainty and high stakes; (2) Dependency relationships and conflicting moral responsibilities; and (3) The risk of ethical slippery slopes. Our findings illustrate that dealing with these moral responsibilities requires considerable skill and acuity to weigh up for all the situated complexities and dependency relationships that go beyond abstract rules or moral principles. A care-ethical approach that acknowledges the contextual and relational aspects of moral complexities along with peer consultation and joint reflective dialogue on moral issues can help military physicians deal with soldier enhancement responsibly. (shrink)

Jonathan Ebel has long been interested in how religion helps individuals and communities render meaningful the traumatic experiences of violence and war. In this new work, he examines cases from the Great War to the present day and argues that our notions of what it means to be an American soldier are not just strongly religious, but strongly Christian. Drawing on a vast array of sources, he further reveals the effects of soldier veneration on the men and women so often (...) cast as heroes. Imagined as the embodiments of American ideals, described as redeemers of the nation, adored as the ones willing to suffer and die that we, the nation, may live—soldiers have often lived in subtle but significant tension with civil religious expectations of them. With chapters on prominent soldiers past and present, Ebel recovers and re-narrates the stories of the common American men and women that live and die at both the center and edges of public consciousness. (shrink)

The presented article is an attempt to describe in a synthetic way an own vision of a German front-line soldier of the First World War. It also tries to show an image of some enemies – the French, the British and the Russians. The attempt was made on the basis of recollection material and literary forms created either during or soon after the war. The conclusion is unequivocal – the more contact the authors of the texts had with the opponent, (...) the more balanced image of the enemy they presented in their texts and the less were they prone to overestimate the German soldier. Yet the press material contained a lot of exaggeration. The authors created a haughty and sometimes even superhuman image of the German soldier. At the same time the image of the enemy was inhuman and deserving contempt. (shrink)