Brian Orend on ‘War Ethics: Theory, Practice, and Memoir’

Wars keep erupting. Russia-Ukraine; Israel-Hamas; Israel-Hezbollah; targeted strikes against Houthis in Yemen, and between Israel and Iran; Syria; Myanmar; Sudan; and rising conflict in the Congo involving Rwandan factions and threatening to spiral throughout Central Africa. Ours is not a peaceful time, to say nothing of the decline in global cooperation in general and the sharp rise in aggressive—even expansionist—nationalism, notably amongst the great powers of the US, China, India, and Russia. In short: conflict and war are grabbing headlines, altering the fate of people and countries forever, and crying out for fresh and thorough investigation.

           This anthology is comprehensive and up to date, yet still readily affordable. It is sizable and diverse, allowing one to craft a personalized reader on war and peace in our time—either for oneself or for one’s students. It offers one-stop shopping in that regard. I invite readers to explore the exciting table of contents, as well as the list of “topical clusters” which follows, to quickly identify everything this book has to offer.

           This volume examines military ethics through several lenses. It covers the big, familiar distinctions between theory and practice—between sweeping moral theories and concrete law and policy rules—as well as focused problems in current war practice, such as cyberwar, drones, terrorism, torture, environmental destruction, and hybrid warfare. But, in addition to the time-honoured theory-versus-practice distinction, this stimulating omnibus contains many selections from journalism and from various war memoirs. And while all of these memoir selections reflect tellingly on the morality of war and peace, they do so from immediate, visceral first-person perspectives not usually featured in collections on war ethics. I hope readers find such selections as riveting as I have; they add an “on-the-ground” dimension that is enormously important in considerations of the morality of conflict and its consequences.

           This volume includes, for example, an account of a newly minted American officer’s first night in Afghanistan, ending with an Afghan child dying in his arms and him wondering what the burdens of war leadership will mean. Or a panicked first-hand account of an Israeli civilian fleeing for her life from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, followed by a grim account of an aid worker devoted to helping Palestinian children in Gaza after Israel’s retaliatory campaign, and the widespread death and devastation produced. One remarkable piece details the experiences of Soviet women participating in World War II—including a sniper registering seventy-five enemy kills—alongside one American officer’s salty memories of being “young and female” in the US Army during the occupation of Iraq.

           There are a number of well-edited volumes on the ethics of war already, and it’s a prime task of this one not to repeat what they’ve achieved. The first big difference precisely concerns the book’s robust inclusion of first-person journalistic and memoir-based accounts from war participants. These items have been selected with an eye toward representation of diverse perspectives—soldiers, civilians, men, women, winners, losers, and individuals of different races and from communities in diverse regions of the world. These accounts range from memories of being a child soldier in Sierra Leone to being a volunteer in today’s Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s 2022 invasion, and from harrowing stories of Japanese participants in World War II to heroic accounts of American soldiers displaying the courage required to be awarded a Purple Heart.

           Other quality volumes—such as The Ethics of War (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006) compiled by Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby—are overwhelmingly historical in nature. Only nine of the fifty-eight items in that collection are post–World War II, and none are more recent than the 1990s. War Ethics, by contrast, has the reverse orientation: only a few selections are pre–World War II (with those items serving mainly as a reminder that many of these subjects have a deep history), and the majority of readings are post-2000. A great number are very recent, referring for instance to Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine, or else to the latest in battlefield technology (including Israel’s 2024 pager attack in Lebanon), the looming use of AI within cyberwar, or evolving measures to ensure everyone serving in the armed forces can do so with respect along with proper protection and equipment. Almost every major conflict from World War II onward gets substantial reference in this volume, with perhaps special attention more recently to: a) America’s most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the still-ongoing Global War on Terrorism, and b) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

           High technology and the latest weapons advances also form a key area of focus: this includes a fascinating piece by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as accounts of cyberwar from strategy guru John Arquilla and MIT engineer Susan Landau. In addition, I’ve written for this volume a robust concluding essay about specific new weaponry and tactics as well as the general future of war and conflict.

           Other volumes on this topic often focus only on one perspective on the ethics of war and peace. For example, only on realism’s perspective, or only on pacifism’s, or only on that of just war theory or international law. This volume has, by contrast, substantial and satisfying selections representing each of those crucial and venerable traditions of thought on this subject. There are classic selections from Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes (realism) as well as from Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. (pacifism), alongside selections by or about current experts in those fields, such as John Mearsheimer and Andrew Fiala. In terms of just war theory, there are historical pieces from Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and Immanuel Kant, as well as contemporary pieces by Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan. I’ve also written an updated substantial essay about postwar justice. A number of primary sources on international law are also included; they range from the United Nations Charter to Lieber’s Code, and from the Hague and Geneva Conventions to the Nuremberg judgment against Hermann Goering and the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court. Also included are such recent “soft law” contributions as the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, the Tallinn Manual on cyberwar, as well as a forthcoming United Nations draft convention regarding environmental destruction in wartime. War Ethics’ theory section also includes a vital collection of feminist perspectives on war and peace, with authors ranging from Virginia Woolf to Amina Mama.

           This volume further includes a large and unique section on religious and cross-cultural perspectives on the ethics of war and peace. There are a number of important collections on religious and cross-cultural interpretations of military ethics. These include:

• T. Nardin, ed. The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton University Press, 1996);
• P. Robinson, ed. Just War in Comparative Perspective (Ashgate, 2003);
• J.T. Johnson & E.D. Patterson, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics (Ashgate, 2015); and
• L. Cordeiro-Rodrigues & D. Singh, eds., Comparative Just War Theory: An Introduction to International Perspectives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

           But these collections are all of meticulous, enlightening—and lengthy!—secondary sources written by established experts in each of the various cultures and religions included. There was no point replicating that approach in War Ethics; what I’ve done instead is stick with small, pithy, direct primary source quotations and selections. I believe that the primary source quotation approach—from the various canonical religious and cultural texts themselves—is more consistent with the multiple-source and multiple-perspective approach of this volume. By and large I let the quotations speak for themselves, reminding the reader that such quotations are open to interpretation, and have attracted much debate. Apart from the expected sources—Old and New Testament, the Quran, the Mahabharata, etc.—I’m very happy to have located compelling sources from African and North American Indigenous cultural groups which I believe enhance the offering nicely.

           I would like to make few final remarks about my method and approach. I have written brief introductions to each of the large sections (Theory, Practice, Memoir). The first two large sections—Theory and Practice—are broken down into subsections that contain the actual edited items or content. Before each item, I include short introductory remarks that introduce the author and provide some helpful context for the reader’s reflections. Finally, I include some reflection questions throughout, alongside some gripping photos both historical and contemporary.

            I suppose it goes without saying that some may find the contents of the selections disturbing or upsetting. This is perhaps especially true of the first-hand accounts, which are raw and real. But it’s important to note that disturbing and upsetting ideas are intrinsic to the subject matter of war and peace. Failure to include such things would result in incomplete—or even skewed, sanitized, naive—comprehension. The subject matter, and certainly the real thing, require courage, engagement, and sympathy. I invite you to explore War Ethics: Theory, Practice, and Memoir.