This 1993 book is the first post-Cold War assessment of nuclear deterrence, -providing a comprehensive normative understanding of nuclear deterrence policy.

Abolition of Nuclear Weapons as a Moral Imperative argues that the use of nuclear weapons as a threat in policies of nuclear deterrence violate basic principles of morality and consequently the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world is a moral imperative nations that have them. The focus is on the United States since it will have to take the lead in any program of abolition. The argument is formulated in terms accessible to theorists in different disciplines and activists in a large range of causes. It appeals to principles that are widely shared but whose application to national policies, especially to deterrence by threats of mass destruction, has been debated ever since nuclear weapons were developed. The book explains what is meant by the "immorality" of a national policy, the stake which citizens have in their agents acting morally and the role of their opinions in seeing that they do. The argument of the book is couched in terms of consequences. The effects of the U.S.'s nuclear deterrent on the probability of nuclear war are difficult to calculate; but the harms for the country and others across the globe caused by the immense apparatus necessary to make U.S. threats credible are sufficient to condemn the policy. The last part of the book is devoted to way the U.S. can take the lead in safe and effective steps necessary to abolish the weapons and prevent their reintroduction into the world.

Offers an original and timely contribution to the nuclear ethics debate Examines the moral dilemmas of state and non-state actor nuclear proliferation Will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, ethics, international relations and international security

Public anger at perceived ethical and legal failures in recent wars has reinforced the importance of understanding military ethics. Ethics, Law and Military Operations is one of the first texts to examine both the ethical and the legal considerations of contemporary military conflict. It adopts a practical approach to explore the ways in which legal and normative issues combine to affect the entire spectrum of military operations, from high-intensity conflict to peacekeeping activities and the provision of humanitarian aid. With an operational perspective in mind, this text delivers accessible frameworks for evaluating and applying fundamental legal and ethical concepts. Written by an international team of military practitioners and academics, this book provides interdisciplinary insights into the major issues facing military decision-makers. The first half of the book explores the ethical and legal underpinnings of warfare. Later chapters use case studies to examine specific issues in the contemporary operating environment.

Publisher Description

This second edition of Moral Constraints on War offers a principle-by-principle presentation of the trans-cultural roots of the ethics of war in an age defined by the increasingly international nature of military intervention. Parts one and two trace the evolution of Just War Theory, analyzing the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello: the principles that determine under what conditions a war may be started and then conducted. Each chapter provides a historical background of the principle under discussion, an explanation of the principle, and numerous historical examples of its application. In Part three, case studies apply the theories discussed to NATO's humanitarian mission in Kosovo, terrorism and the Iraq War. Bringing together an international coterie of philosophers and political scientists, this accessible and practical guide offers students of military ethics and international relations rich, up-to-the-minute insight into the pluralistic character of Just War Theory.

This book relates a complex ethical (re)assessment of the continued reliance by some states on nuclear weapons as instruments of state power. This (re)assessment is more urgent considering the relatively recent intensification of great power conflict dynamics and the nuclear-weapon states’ recommitments to modernizing, augmenting, or tailoring their nuclear forces to address vital state and alliance interests. And, especially since the beginning of the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, these recommitments have accelerated the degree to which the political and moral dilemmas of (the threat of) nuclear use define and intensify existential risks for specific states and the international community at large. To execute this (re)assessment, this book details how strategic, political, legal, and moral reasoning are deeply intertwined on the questions of vital state and global values. Its ontological assumptions are taken from a broadly construed IR Constructivist stance, and its epistemological approach applies non-ideal moral principles informed by Kantian thought to selected problems of nuclear-armed security competition as they evolved since President Barack Obama’s 2009 Prague Declaration. This non-ideal moral approach employed is committed to the view that the dual imperatives of humanity’s survival and the common security of states requires an international order which privileges considerations of justice over power-political considerations. This non-ideal moral approach is a necessary element of theorizing a set of practices to effectively address the challenges and dilemmas of reordering international politics in terms of justice.

Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality. As researchers such as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Richard Thaler have shown, people often depart in systematic ways from the predictions of the rational actor model of classic economic thought because of the influence of emotions, cognitive biases, an aversion to loss, and other strong motivations and values. These findings about the limits of rationality have formed the basis of behavioral economics, an approach that has attracted enormous attention in recent years. This collection of essays applies the insights of behavioral economics to the study of nuclear weapons policy. Behavioral economics gives us a more accurate picture of how people think and, as a consequence, of how they make decisions about whether to acquire or use nuclear arms. Such decisions are made in real-world circumstances in which rational calculations about cost and benefit are intertwined with complicated emotions and subject to human limitations. Strategies for pursuing nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation should therefore, argue the contributors, account for these dynamics in a systematic way. The contributors to this collection examine how a behavioral approach might inform our understanding of topics such as deterrence, economic sanctions, the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and U.S. domestic debates about ballistic missile defense. The essays also take note of the limitations of a behavioral approach for dealing with situations in which even a single deviation from the predictions of any model can have dire consequences.

An account of war ethics sensitive to the historical just war theory, informed by the contemporary concerns of war.

The possibility of a nuclear war that could destroy civilization has influenced the course of international affairs since 1945, suspended like a sword of Damocles above the heads of the world's leaders. The fact that we have escaped a third world war involving strategic nuclear weapons—indeed, that no atomic weapon of limited power has yet been used under battlefield conditions—seems nothing short of a miracle. Revisiting debates on the effectiveness and ethics of nuclear deterrence, Jean-Pierre Dupuy is led to reformulate some of the most difficult questions in philosophy. He develops a counterintuitive but powerful theory of apocalyptic prophecy: once a major catastrophe appears to be possible, one must assume that it will in fact occur. Dupuy shows that the contradictions and paradoxes riddling discussions of deterrence arise from the tension between two opposite conceptions of time: one in which the future depends on decisions and strategy, and another in which every occurring event is one that could not have failed to occur. Considering the immense destructive power of nuclear warheads and the almost unimaginable ruin they are bound to cause, Dupuy reaches a provocative conclusion: whether they bring about good or evil does not depend on the present or future intentions of those who are in a position to use them. The mere possession of nuclear weapons is a moral abomination.