{"title":"The Soldier’s Share: Considering Narrow Responsibility for Lethal Autonomous Weapons","authors":"Kevin Schieman","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2023.2166448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2023.2166448","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 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.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"228 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48811703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Need for a Commander","authors":"Henrik Syse","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2023.2180184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2023.2180184","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"197 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49186441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Just Coups: A Reconsideration of Domestic Military Action","authors":"E. S. Kehlenbach","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2023.2176983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2023.2176983","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Are there situations where military coups can be considered justified, such as the overthrow of a collapsing, genocidal dictatorship? I argue that under certain circumstances there is an opening for “just coups.” I propose a theoretical assessment of coups based on an adaptation of just war theory. I bring the comparative literature surrounding civil–military relations into conversation with the literature on just war theory in order to develop a theory of just coups. By adapting the categories of just war theory into jus ad coup, jus in coup, and jus post coup, I show that these categories create a framework for understanding the ethical status of coups. Doing this gives us a more subtle understanding of the problem of coups and lets us understand how a hypothetical just coup may be possible.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"320 - 336"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42050992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Organisational Psychology of Ethical Military Leadership during Times of Crisis: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"M. Metwally, P. Ruiz‐Palomino","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2023.2177419","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2023.2177419","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article sheds light on the positive impact of ethical leaders on their subordinates’ behaviours during times of crisis. The article focuses on the turbulent and abrupt changes taking place in military external operating environments which could negatively affect military personnel’s mental health and psychological wellbeing. Pandemics and humanitarian crises are an example of such external environmental turbulences. These environmental turbulences are explored from an organisational perspective, under which they are viewed as a form of organisational change associated with a psychological uncertainty that has a negative impact on individuals. This uncertainty must be treated wisely by military leaders in all sectors of the armed forces in order to manage resistance to change and to prevent the negative psychological consequences that could be generated by such uncertainty. This article thus analyses ethical military leadership as a means to addressing the negative psychological consequences caused by change uncertainty in difficult times. It explores the terms change, change uncertainty, and ethical leadership. Various recommendations are made in the discussion section to facilitate the organisational process of implementing ethical leadership across all organisational levels of the armed forces.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"55 47","pages":"337 - 346"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41245879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eva M. van Baarle, C. Damsté, Sanne A. J. de Bruijn, Gwendolyn C. H. Bakx
{"title":"Moral Issues in Soldier Enhancement: Military Physicians’ Perspectives","authors":"Eva M. van Baarle, C. Damsté, Sanne A. J. de Bruijn, Gwendolyn C. H. Bakx","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2023.2175861","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2023.2175861","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"198 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49555305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moral Exceptionalism and the Just War Tradition: Walzer’s Instrumentalist Approach and an Institutionalist Response to McMahan’s “Nazi Military” Problem","authors":"S. Ford","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2022.2156062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2022.2156062","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The conventional view of Just War thinking holds that militaries operate under “special” moral rules in war. Conventional Just War thinking establishes a principled approach to such moral exceptionalism in order to prevent arbitrary or capricious uses of military force. It relies on the notion that soldiers are instruments of the state, which is a view that has been critiqued by the Revisionist movement. The Revisionist critique rightly puts greater emphasis on the moral agency of individual soldiers: they are not mere instruments of the state. Although Revisionism has something particularly important to contribute when applied to cases that are short-of-war, where an individual agent’s moral culpability plays a greater role, soldiers fighting wars are not wholly autonomous moral agents. An Institutionalist approach that responds to Revisionist criticisms is a plausible alternative to the conventional Just War account for grounding the moral exceptionalism of war. For the Institutionalist, soldiers are moral agents with state-imposed obligations whose fundamental responsibility is the performance of the proper moral ends of the military institution they serve. If this is true, then soldiers have a moral obligation to be attentive to the moral corruption of the military institution of which they are a part.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"210 - 227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49059448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Worth More Than Life Itself”: Military Honour and the Birth of Its Courts in Spain (1810–1870)","authors":"Alberto Cañas de Pablos","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2022.2160288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2022.2160288","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article deals with military honour in nineteenth-century Spain, after first examining how the meaning of this term evolved from the revolutionary Napoleonic wars onwards. This highly important moral value was learnt from the moment someone joined the army, and even before then, through education and common public military demonstrations. It related to individual behaviour, while also maintaining a high collective and corporative aspect, and it varied depending on gender or class and on the identity of the social group. It was part of the political thought of most relevant Spanish generals, and consequently it influenced the political dynamics of Spain. The Court of Honour, an institution in Spain that was not regulated until 1811, controlled honour compliance. The last section of this article focuses on how and why these institutions were born and explains their early legislative evolution. Spanish political and military development are inevitably bound together to the extent that an understanding of the nature of honour and its effects on the army and civilian ethics provides us with a deep socio-political and ethical analysis of the country during the nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"304 - 319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49042116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Approaches to maintenance dosing during oral immunotherapy.","authors":"S Rubina Inamdar, Binita Mandal","doi":"10.2500/jfa.2022.4.220030","DOIUrl":"10.2500/jfa.2022.4.220030","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Long term daily dosing for patients and families may be challenging due to food aversions, dosing protocols, and age of the patient. The few long term studies suggest that low quantity daily dosing is associated with passing higher dose challenges over the long term, whereas high dose maintenance may protect for longer avoidance intervals. We review the data for peanut and suggest several strategies for your patients.</p>","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"9 1","pages":"98-101"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11250446/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82002345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is Remote Warfare Moral? Weighing Issues of Life + Death from 7,000 Miles","authors":"Paul Lushenko","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2022.2131699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2022.2131699","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"183 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48510978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Moral Case for the Development and Use of Autonomous Weapon Systems","authors":"Erich Riesen","doi":"10.1080/15027570.2022.2124022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2022.2124022","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) are artificial intelligence systems that can make and act on decisions concerning the termination of enemy soldiers and installations without direct intervention from a human being. In this article, I provide the positive moral case for the development and use of supervised and fully autonomous weapons that can reliably adhere to the laws of war. Two strong, prima facie obligations make up the positive case. First, we have a strong moral reason to deploy AWS (in an otherwise just war) because such systems decrease the psychological and moral risk of soldiers and would-be soldiers. Drones protect against lethal risk, AWS protect against psychological and moral risk in addition to lethal risk. Second, we have a prima facie obligation to develop such technologies because, once developed, we could employ forms of non-lethal warfare that would substantially reduce the risk of suffering and death for enemy combatants and civilians alike. These two arguments, covering both sides of a conflict, represent the normative hill that those in favor of a ban on autonomous weapons must overcome. Finally, I demonstrate that two recent objections to AWS fail because they misconstrue the way in which technology is used and conceptualized in modern warfare.","PeriodicalId":39180,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Military Ethics","volume":"21 1","pages":"132 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49519525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}