ABSTRACT
This volume is organized, as the Table of Contents shows, around three major perspectives on the use of military force: that of the decision whether to use military force in a given context, that of the matter of right conduct in the use of such force, and that of ethical responsibilities beyond the end of an armed conflict. This corresponds to the familiar structure of just war thought, where these three perspectives appear as the categories of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and the new category of the jus post bellum, respectively. The choice to organize this volume in this way reflects the influence and use of various forms of the just war idea in the development of thinking on military ethics, which have been pervasive if not universal. The aim in defining the particular chapters in each of these sections, though, is not to follow the internal criteria employed in just war reasoning but rather to respond to present-day moral challenges connected to the use of military force. Thus Part I includes chapters on the impact of international law on the decision to use military force, the role of the military in such a decision, and particular issues including preemptive use of military force, the challenges of asymmetric warfare involving non-state actors, the implications of the responsibility to protect doctrine, and military ethics in thinking about nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, though it also looks back at historical just war tradition and at recent moral argument on the decision to use military force. Similarly, Part II includes chapters exploring a variety of moral and legal frames applied to conduct in the use of military force and then turns to pressing issues raised in contemporary armed conflicts: terrorism again, this time in terms of right conduct in dealing with it, the ethical implications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other new military technologies, bombing of socalled dual-use targets, cyber warfare, targeted killing as a means of war, and the proper treatment of prisoners and detainees, as well as chapters dealing with ethics in contemporary
warfare in terms of familiar just war categories: the relation between the justice of a war and right conduct in war plus chapters on noncombatant immunity and proportionality in contemporary armed conflict.
