Bradley J. Strawser

David Whetham

Following the humanitarian horrors of the 1990s, the international community began to seek consensus on a new norm to help address the tension between upholding the sovereign right of states to administer their own internal affairs, and the pressing need for civilian populations to be protected from their own government in certain situations. The result was the responsibility to protect initiative from the UN, accepted as an emerging norm and based on existing legal structures although not itself necessarily accepted as law. This volume looks not only at the humanitarian-inspired interventions of the past 15 years, such as those that took place under the Force for Good banner of the UK Government under New Labour, but also looks at what this has meant for the people actually involved in doing them. What responsibilities do states have towards their own soldiers when sending them to protect ‘other’ people? Should that protections extend to moral and psychological protection as well as physical protection, and if so, how? How far does the duty go when considering the protection of one’s own citizens who have deliberately placed themselves in harm’s way, such as journalists who have chosen to leave the safety of a protected area? What happens when institutions are faced with the choice of protecting their people or their reputation? What does it feel like for the inhabitants of a state who become ‘protected’ by the international community?

Perspectives in Theory and Practice

Responsibilities to Protect

Timothy J. Demy

George R. Lucas Jr.

This volume looks at current and emerging technologies of war and some of the ethical issues surrounding their use. Although the nature and politics of war never change, the weapons and technologies used in war do change and are always undergoing development. Because of that, the arsenal of weapons for twenty-first century conflict is different from previous centuries. Weapons in today’s world include an array of instruments of war that include, robotics, cyber war capabilities, human performance enhancement for warriors, and the proliferation of an entire spectrum of unmanned weapons systems and platforms. Tactical weapons now have the potential of strategic results and have changed the understanding of the battle space creating ethical, legal, and political issues unknown in the pre-9/11 world. What do these technologies mean for things such as contemporary international relations, the just-war tradition, and civil-military relations? Directed at readers in the academic, scientific, military, and public policy communities, this volume offers current thought on ethics and emerging technologies from internationally-recognized scholars addressing the full spectrum of issues in present warfare technology. It includes current and ongoing topics of multi-discipline and international interest, such as ethics, law, international relations, war studies, public policy, science and technology. This book was originally published in various issues and volumes of the Journal of Military Ethics.

Bradley J. Strawser

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