Ethics, Technology & War

Abstract

“All's fair in love and war,” so the saying goes. But, of course, we know that it's not true. For we commonly judge and sometimes punish individuals, in the arena of love, for infidelity, deceit, and crimes of passion; and we commonly judge and sometimes punish individuals, in the arena of combat, for acts of aggression, rape and pillage in war, and crimes against humanity. The intense pressure of competition, in both affairs of the heart and the crucible of war, can help explain why unfair, even inhumane, behavior is common, but it does not excuse it.Several technological innovations and political developments are changing the nature of warfare today in ways that pose complex challenges to the traditional standards that we use, under the influence of international law and just war doctrine, to judge governments' and individuals' actions in war. New technologies – including the use of drones, precision-guided weapons, cyber weapons, and autonomous robots – have led both to optimism about the possibility of reducing collateral damage in war and to concerns about whether some states find it too easy to use force today. New technologies also have been developed, however, that can provide early warning of civil conflict and promote more effective peacekeeping operations. On the political front, the growth of terrorism by nonstate actors, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and changing doctrines in the United Nations about the responsibility to protect civilians pose new questions about the appropriate legal rules and ethical norms governing decisions to use military force. Professional military lawyers play an increasingly important role in reviewing targeting policies and rules of engagement, at least in the United States, to ensure that military plans and operations are compliant with the laws of armed conflict. War crimes tribunals have grown in use, but raise new questions about whether they encourage ruthless leaders to fight to the finish rather than accept resignation and exile. New knowledge about post-conflict medical system failures raises questions about both the best practices to end wars and sustain peace accords and about whether political leaders systematically underestimate the costs of going to war before they make decisions about military interventions.These are just a few of the emerging dilemmas that caused the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to create a new initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War in 2014. Intellectual inquiry on the relation between ethics and war is certainly not new. The seminal work of Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), remains the classic investigation into just war doctrine applied within the context of interstate conflict during the Cold War, but it is striking that there is no volume that has successfully become the successor to Walzer's book.1 This failure is certainly not due to lack of research and writing about ethics and war. Indeed, there are lively and ongoing debates concerning just war doctrine in a number of academic disciplines and also among policy-makers and policy analysts. But these groups rarely speak to each other and there is a growing gap between strong scholarship regarding ethics and war and policy-relevant work that can influence government decisions and public debates. Trends in universities prioritizing analytic philosophy in philosophy departments, formal models and game theory in political science departments, and social history over military history in history departments have all contributed to the relative neglect of the study of the evolution of just war doctrine, international law, and applications to real world security problems.The Academy project therefore gathered together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners – including political scientists, philosophers, ethicists, lawyers, physicians, historians, soldiers, and statesmen – for a series of small workshops to discuss these issues and review