Tag: Mike Corgan

New technologies, new moral questions (Drone warfare, Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

Since the first attempts to develop moral or legal standards for warfare and the consequent killing and destroying of war, technological developments have invariably come along.

Drone missile launched from aircraft carrier
Drone missile launched from aircraft carrier. Image in public domain.

These technologies confound painstakingly agreed-upon attempts to limit and contain the lethality of an essentially lethal activity.

Anomalies abound. Why is tear gas a chemical weapon in the laws of war but napalm is not? Who, exactly, is a lawful target of warfare?

These questions have arisen most recently and most strikingly in regard to missile-carrying drone aircraft.

A debate of sorts is now underway about the morality of drone attacks, especially as used by the Obama administration.  A New York Times July 15 op-ed piece cites the judgment of Bradley J. Strawser of the Naval Postgraduate School that there is a moral case for these kinds of attacks.

Essentially it is that the amount of collateral damage (to civilians) is far less than it has been for any other kind of attack. This principle conforms to both legal and moral norms of proportionality.

In a very long and detailed article in the August Esquire, “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,” Tom Junod argues that these attacks are definitely not moral, certainly not legal and have opened a Pandora’s box that invites havoc.

Junod accuses Obama and his aides of inventing moral distinctions rather than observing them in order to justify the attacks. These attacks:

  • Take place in many countries with which we are not at war
  • Kill American citizens without anything remotely resembling due process, and
  • Do indeed kill the innocent.

Case in point: American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted and killed while in Yemen on the sole authority of the President. In a later follow-on attack, his 16 year-old son was also among those killed.

This from a president Junod claims to have admired. What happens, he concludes, if a “cruel or bloodthirsty” president gets this capability? One might further ask, what happens when others bent on destruction acquire this capability, as they surely will?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Proportionality in recourse to war (Just war, part 8)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we again welcome another in our series on just war, by guest author Dr. Michael Corgan.]

Proportionality with respect to just war principles is a broad idea. It refers both to the decision to go to war and  to conduct during a war, even a just one. Here we deal with jus ad bellum or the level at which war can be fought.

Falklands war, ship sinking
Argentine ship sinking after British submarine attack (Image in public domain)

The U.N. Charter in Articles 41 and 42 suggests that a range of actions can be contemplated against an aggressor state, with war (military action) as the last resort. Clearly any concept of just war means that all other means must be attempted before resorting to war.

The historical record on this point is not reassuring.

But if this last resort–the use of actual war–is called for, the scale of the war must still be appropriate to a frustration or undoing of the aggressor’s actions. It must not be used as a  pretext for a major effort to “teach a lesson” to the aggressor or to reduce his future
capacities for waging war. Two recent examples may illustrate.

In 1982 the Argentinian government of General Galtieri invaded the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands and captured the small British garrison there. When the British counterattacked to retake the islands, they made it clear that their actions would be confined to a war zone around the Falklands and no action would be taken against the Argentine mainland. Nor was any.

Ten years later the U.N. Security Council authorized the first war against Iraq. Fighting was ended after 100 hours in which the Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait. Some military action was taken in Iraq itself but there was no drive to Baghdad.

Contrast this relative restraint with the “shock and awe” introducing the second Iraq war in 2002 and its lingering on for nearly ten years.

In both the Falklands and the first Iraq war there were some excesses, but the wars were, relatively speaking, constrained to undoing the effects of the aggressions. Yet another test for a just war is that its employment of force and its duration be only what is required to undo a specific aggression and no more.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of International Relations, Boston University