The enduring problem of ‘grey’ drone violence

This article addresses the problem of drone violence that is ‘grey’ in the sense of being hard to categorise. It focuses on circumstances, such as arose in Pakistan, in which a foreign government's armed drones are a constant presence. A lesson from US experience there is that the persistent threat of drone strikes is intended to suppress activities that endanger the drone-using state's security. However, this threat inevitably affects innocent people living within potential strike zones. To judge such drone use by reference to military ethics principles is to assume that ‘war’ is going on, but indefinite drone deployments are difficult to conceptualise as war, so traditional Just War thinking does not suffice as a basis for moral judgement. In assessing the US government's commitment to drone-based containment of risks emerging along its ‘terror frontier’, the article considers three alternative conceptualisations of drone violence arising in non-war contexts: vim (‘force short of war’), terrorism, and imperialism. It then rejects all three and proposes that such violence is better conceptualised as being merely ‘quasi-imperialistic’. On this basis, however, the sustaining of a drone strike campaign against a series of suspected terrorists can still be condemned as violating the right to life.

Military Ethics Education and the Changing Nature of Warfare

This article analyzes two traditional approaches to teaching military ethics, aspirational and functionalist approach, in light of the existing technological development in the military. Introduction of new technological solutions to waging warfare that involve dehumanization, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as employment of different technological tools to enhance humans participating in war and to improve military efficiency (such as built-in AI algorithms), not only bring to the surfaces the obviously existing weakness and inadequacies of the two traditional approaches to military ethics education, which have been rendered suboptimal, but also raise new challenges. The paper argues that teaching military ethics solely from the two perspective does not meet the demands of the upcoming (perhaps even already ongoing) military technological revolution and that the future will demand a more profound and conceptual moral education of military personnel that will reassess the role of martial virtues, increase responsibility for killing in war (making war more “real” and riskless killing more “difficult”) and result in military professionals that resemble “a Renaissance man” in their philosophical outlook. Only by ensuring that all military professionals (in particular high-ranking officers) have been properly and adequately ethically educated, future armies, as well as entire societies, can actively aspire toward optimal armed forces structure, a more professional and efficient approach to military profession, and ultimately better and more responsible military personnel in total.

Arab-Muslim Military Ethics in the Arab-Muslim Dynastical Chronicles (Based on the Data Base of the Themes and Narrative Motiffs of the Arab-Muslim Dynastic Chronicles of the 9th–10th Centuries)

A considerable part of materials, comprising the texts of the Arab-Muslim Dynastical chronicles of the 9th–10th centuries (works, where the Muslim history is narrated according to the reigns of the caliphs) deals with war ethics. The works on history under consideration reveal, that the Arab-Muslims, while at war, were proclaiming certain ethical principles and were to a certain extent fulfilling them. They were aware, that war causes misfortunes and while taking part in it one should rely upon Allah’s will and face death without hesitation. As far as the overwhelmed adversary is concerned, one should treat him mercifully. To mutilate the dead body of a slain enemy is a mean deed. Furthermore, a woman, who finds herself at a military theatre, deserves protection and indulgence. The passages under analysis present not only a rich frame of events, concerning the move of hostilities, but also give mental pabulum for the contemplation over social psychology of the participants of the historical process in the Arab-Muslim world.