The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics

This Companion provides scholars and graduates, serving and retired military professionals, members of the diplomatic and policy communities concerned with security affairs and legal professionals who deal with military law and with international law on armed conflicts, with a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in the area of military ethics. Topics in this volume reflect both perennial and pressing contemporary issues in the ethics of the use of military force and are written by established professionals and respected commentators. Subjects are organized by three major perspectives on the use of military force: the decision whether to use military force in a given context, the matter of right conduct in the use of such force, and ethical responsibilities beyond the end of an armed conflict. Treatment of issues in each of these sections takes account of both present-day moral challenges and new approaches to these and the historical tradition of just war. Military ethics, as it has developed, has been a particularly Western concern and this volume reflects that reality. However, in a globalized world, awareness of similarities and differences between Western approaches and those of other major cultures is essential. For this reason the volume concludes with chapters on ethics and war in the Islamic, Chinese, and Indian traditions, with the aim of integrating reflection on these approaches into the broad consideration of military ethics provided by this volume.

James Turner Johnson is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at Rutgers University-The State University of New Jersey (USA). Johnson is a former Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and also served for nine years as founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Military Ethics. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Princeton University in 1968. Eric D. Patterson is Dean and Professor of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University (Virginia Beach, Virginia) and Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs, where he previously served as Associate Director for four years. He has served as a White House Fellow, at the U.S. State Department, and 17 years as an Air National Guard officer.