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Recent decades have seen an increasing reliance on private military
contractors (PMCs) to provide logistical services, training,
maintenance, and combat troops. In Outsourcing War, Amy E. Eckert
examines the ethical implications involved in the widespread use of
PMCs, and in particular questions whether they can fit within
customary ways of understanding the ethical prosecution of warfare.
Her concern is with the ius in bello (right conduct in war) strand
of just war theory.Just war theorizing is generally built on the
assumption that states, and states alone, wield a monopoly on the
legitimate use of force. Who holds responsibility for the actions
of PMCs? What ethical standards might they be required to observe?
How might deviations from such standards be punished? The
privatization of warfare poses significant challenges because of
its reliance on a statist view of the world. Eckert argues that the
tradition of just war theory-which predates the international
system of states-can evolve to apply to this changing world order.
With an eye toward the practical problems of military command,
Eckert delves into particular cases where PMCs have played an
active role in armed conflict and derives from those cases the
modifications necessary to apply just principles to new agents in
the landscape of war.
Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and
situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and
conversation--a method and means of pushing its thinking forward.
Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This
concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is
proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional
conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert
argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate
actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military
companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of
conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy
makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria
legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from
and adjust to its contemporaneous setting.
The essays in "The Future of Just War" seek to reorient the
tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of
force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable
populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these
challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War
principles from those who would push it toward greater
permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of
Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of
robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a
commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous
application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a
checklist of criteria to be met before waging "just" war in the
service of national interest.
Just War scholarship has adapted to contemporary crises and
situations. But its adaptation has spurned debate and
conversation--a method and means of pushing its thinking forward.
Now the Just War tradition risks becoming marginalized. This
concern may seem out of place as Just War literature is
proliferating, yet this literature remains welded to traditional
conceptualizations of Just War. Caron E. Gentry and Amy E. Eckert
argue that the tradition needs to be updated to deal with substate
actors within the realm of legitimate authority, private military
companies, and the questionable moral difference between the use of
conventional and nuclear weapons. Additionally, as recent policy
makers and scholars have tried to make the Just War criteria
legalistic, they have weakened the tradition's ability to draw from
and adjust to its contemporaneous setting.
The essays in "The Future of Just War" seek to reorient the
tradition around its core concerns of preventing the unjust use of
force by states and limiting the harm inflicted on vulnerable
populations such as civilian noncombatants. The pursuit of these
challenges involves both a reclaiming of traditional Just War
principles from those who would push it toward greater
permissiveness with respect to war, as well as the application of
Just War principles to emerging issues, such as the growing use of
robotics in war or the privatization of force. These essays share a
commitment to the idea that the tradition is more about a rigorous
application of Just War principles than the satisfaction of a
checklist of criteria to be met before waging "just" war in the
service of national interest.
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