Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-282
Author(s):  
Michael L. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Novel Weapons ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Military Medical Ethics

Rounding out Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict, the conclusion first highlights the signposts that lead the reader to understand how the ethics of war is inseparable from the ethics of military medicine. Military medicine must serve just war. Historically, just wars are defensive or humanitarian. But things may change. So next, we look to the future. Past wars do not necessarily predict coming conflicts. Future wars will see novel weapons and new adversaries drawing from nation-states, nonstates, criminals, and unknown assailants. Nevertheless, the experience of recent wars, particularly those in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers important lessons to guide military medicine as war evolves into ways we can anticipate and in ways we cannot.

Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Medical Attention ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Manage Health Care ◽  
Military Medical Ethics

Beleaguered countries struggling against aggression or powerful nations defending others from brutal regimes mobilize medicine to wage just war. As states funnel medical resources to maintain unit readiness and conserve military capabilities, numerous ethical challenges foreign to peacetime medicine ensue. Force conservation drives combat hospitals to prioritize warfighter care over all others. Civilians find themselves bereft of medical attention; prison officials force feed hunger-striking detainees; policymakers manage health care to win the hearts and minds of local nationals; and scientists develop neuro-technologies or nanosurgery to create super soldiers. When the fighting ends, intractable moral dilemmas rebound. Postwar justice demands enormous investments of time, resources, and personnel. But losing interest and no longer zealous, war-weary nations forget their duties to rebuild ravaged countries abroad and rehabilitate their war-torn veterans at home. Addressing these incendiary issues, Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict integrates the ethics of medicine and the ethics of war. Medical ethics in times of war is not identical to medical ethics in times of peace but a unique discipline. Without war, there is no military medicine, and without just war, there is no military medical ethics. Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict revises, defends, and rebuts wartime medical practices, just as it lays the moral foundation for casualty care in future conflicts.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Michael L. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Abu Ghraib ◽  
Medical Experimentation ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
Force Feeding ◽  
Military Medical Ethics

“Can military medicine be ethical?” is one question that may puzzle readers whose knowledge of medical ethics since 9/11 is colored by the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. To address these and other challenges, Military Medical Ethics in Contemporary Armed Conflict explores controversial topics that include preferential care for compatriot warfighters, force feeding detainees, weaponizing medicine to wage war, medical experimentation, and neural enhancement for warfighters. Less controversial but no less compelling concerns direct our attention to postwar justice: the duty to rebuild war-torn nations and the obligation to care for war-torn veterans.

scholarly journals Just War, Pacifism, Just Peace, and Peacebuilding

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-185
Author(s):  
Lisa Sowle Cahill
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Global South ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Just Peace

While Roman Catholic ethics of war and peace develops more restrictive criteria of just war and reprioritizes nonviolence, an important strand of Protestant theology defends war as a God-given instrument of government’s multiple ends. A newer ethics of just peace and peacebuilding emerges from Christian initiatives to transform armed conflict at intra-state and cross-border levels. This essay assesses these approaches and pacifism, concluding with a perspective from the Global South.

scholarly journals Dilemmas in Military Medical Ethics: A Call for Conceptual Clarity

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Rochon
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Codes Of Ethics ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Ethical Conflicts ◽  
Military Medical Ethics ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Physicians

Despite the increase in and evolving nature of armed conflicts, the ethical issues faced by military physicians working in such contexts are still rarely examined in the bioethics literature. Military physicians are members of the military, even if they are non-combatants; and their role is one of healer but also sometimes humanitarian. Some scholars wonder about the moral compatibility of being both a physician and soldier. The ethical conflicts raised in the literature regarding military physicians can be organized into three main perspectives: 1) moral problems in military medicine are particular because of the difficulty of meeting the requirements of traditional bioethical principles; 2) medical codes of ethics and international laws are not well adapted to or are too restrictive for a military context; and 3) physicians are social actors who should either be pacifists, defenders of human rights, politically neutral or promoters of peace. A review of the diverse dilemmas faced by military physicians shows that these differ substantially by level (micro, meso, macro), context and the actors involved, and that they go beyond issues of patient interests. Like medicine in general, military medicine is complex and touches on potentially contested views of the roles and obligations of the physician. Greater conceptual clarity is thus needed in discussions about military medical ethics.

Military Medical Ethics and Just War

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-34
Author(s):  
Michael L. Gross
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Military Medicine ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Medical Necessity ◽  
Medical Needs ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Human Rights Abuse ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
Military Medical Ethics

The goal of military medicine is to conserve the fighting force necessary to prosecute just wars. Just wars are defensive or humanitarian. A defensive war protects one’s people or nation. A humanitarian war rescues a foreign, persecuted people or nation from grave human rights abuse. To provide medical care during armed conflict, military medical ethics supplements civilian medical ethics with two principles: military-medical necessity and broad beneficence. Military-medical necessity designates the medical means required to pursue national self-defense or humanitarian intervention. While clinical-medical necessity directs care to satisfy urgent medical needs, military-medical necessity utilizes medical care to satisfy the just aims of war. Military medicine may, therefore, attend the lightly wounded before the critically wounded or use medical care to win hearts and minds. The underlying principle is broad, not narrow, beneficence. The latter addresses private interests, while broad beneficence responds to the collective welfare of the political community.

scholarly journals Legitimate Authority and the Ethics of War: A Map of the Terrain

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Parry
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Moral Claims

Despite a recent explosion of interest in the ethics of armed conflict, the traditional just war criterion that war be waged by a “legitimate authority” has received relatively little attention. Moreover, of those theorists who have addressed the criterion, many are deeply skeptical about its moral significance. This article aims to add some clarity and precision to the authority criterion and the debates surrounding it, and to suggest that this skepticism may be too quick. The first section analyzes the authority criterion and reveals that there are at least two distinct moral claims associated with it, each requiring separate evaluation. The second section outlines an increasingly influential “reductivist” approach to just war theory, explaining how this approach grounds powerful objections to the authority criterion. The third section sketches the most promising strategies for providing a qualified defense of authority, while acknowledging the further questions and complications these strategies raise. Importantly, the article aims to rehabilitate the authority criterion from within a broadly reductivist view.

Proxy Battles in Just War Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lazar ◽  
Laura Valentini
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Jus In Bello ◽  
First Order ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Feasibility Constraints

Orthodox just war theorists argue that the principles governing conduct in war—jus in bello—broadly track the current laws of armed conflict. Revisionists deny this. This chapter argues that these first-order disagreements are traceable to second-order disputes about (i) the appropriate site of principles of jus in bello and (ii) the feasibility constraints that theorizing about jus in bello should take into account. Regarding (i), orthodox theorists focus on the institutions that govern armed conflict, revisionists on individuals’ conduct. The chapter shows that, holding a given site constant, the substantive disagreement between the camps shrinks. Regarding (ii), orthodox theorists factor likely non-compliance into the design of the jus in bello, revisionists resist this move. It is argued that, relative to the site for which each is theorizing, both stances are defensible. Attention to second-order disputes in the ethics of war helps us better diagnose and adjudicate first-order ones.

Shakespeare and the ‘Military Revolution’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pugliatti
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Ethics Of War ◽  
Technical Advances ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Military

This chapter recounts how developments in the technology of battle had by Shakespeare’s time caught up with even the relatively resistant, cavalry-oriented English nobility. Outlining these technical advances, it discovers numerous moments in Shakespeare indicative of popular responsiveness to war and its new face. Alone among English writers, it was Shakespeare who (repeatedly) termed cannon-fire ‘devilish’; and the chapter demonstrates how different characters in 1Henry IV are on the turn in the long evolution from (equestrian) medieval chivalry, through (treacherous, infantry-deployed) gunpowder weapons, to the perfumed post-militarist courtier. It notes Shakespeare’s staged presentation of conscription as farcically at odds with the official theory of a voluntarism for able-bodied adults. Two soldiers miserably questioning the ethics of war the night before Agincourt prove well apprised of the Christian just war theory—yet Williams shrewdly contests its exculpation of royal leaders from responsibility for their subjects’ deaths.

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