In recent years, the question of war and sacrifice has been a major topic of political debate and controversy. If our country goes to war for reasons we endorse, what is our responsibility to share in its sacrifices? Does supporting a war mean serving in it? Does it mean encouraging our children to do so? Such questions have been posed by the so-called "chickenhawk" phenomenon: pro-war leaders and their pro-war children who call on Americans to assume the burden of war and its sacrifices, but avoid those sacrifices themselves. President Bush and other architects of the Iraq conflict were the most prominent chickenhawks. Cheyney C. Ryan argues that the chickenhawk issue is not just a matter of personalities—it will remain with us for a long time even though the Bush administration has left office. Ryan poses fundamental questions of war and personal sacrifice, pointing to the basic disconnection in American politics generally between the support for war and the willingness to assume its costs, which he calls "Alienated War." Calling for the reinvigoration of civic involvement, this illuminating and insightful book offers both a philosophical and historical exploration of America's citizen-soldier tradition and the consequences involved in separating the citizenry from the armed forces.

Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have constituted a perennial feature of the security landscape. Yet, it is their involvement in and conduct during the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have transformed the outsourcing of security services into such a pressing public policy and world-order issue. The PMSCs’ ubiquitous presence in armed conflict situations, as well as in post-conflict reconstruction, their diverse list of clients (governments in the developed and developing world, non-state armed groups, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and international corporations) and, in the context of armed conflict situations, involvement in instances of gross misconduct, have raised serious accountability issues. The prominence of PMSCs in conflict zones has generated critical questions concerning the very concept of security and the role of private force, a rethinking of "essential governmental functions," a rearticulation of the distinction between public/private and global/local in the context of the creation of new forms of "security governance," and a consideration of the relevance, as well as limitations, of existing regulatory frameworks that include domestic and international law (in particular international human rights law and international humanitarian law). This book critically examines the growing role of PMSCs in conflict and post-conflict situations, as part of a broader trend towards the outsourcing of security functions. Particular emphasis is placed on key moral, legal, and political considerations involved in the privatization of such functions, on the impact of outsourcing on security governance, and on the main challenges confronting efforts to hold PMSCs accountable through a combination of formal and informal, domestic as well as international, regulatory mechanisms and processes. It will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, practitioners and advocates for a more transparent and humane security order. This book was published as a special issue of Criminal Justice Ethics.

The nine short stories in this collection by distinguished Osage author John Joseph Mathews are sure to be recognized as classics of twentieth-century nature writing and the wildlife conservation movement. The characters in Old Three Toes and Other Tales of Survival and Extinction are coyotes, mountain lions, deer, owls, sandhill cranes, prairie chickens—and human beings, who sometimes kill their prey but are often outsmarted by the largest and smallest animals. Mathews shows us the world through the animals’ eyes and ears and noses. His convincing portrayals of their intelligence recall the fiction of Jack London and Ernest Thompson Seton. Like these literary ancestors, Mathews originally intended his nature stories for boys, but the stories transcend boundaries of age, gender, and geography. Mathews writes not just to inspire his readers with nature’s beauty but also to demonstrate the interrelatedness of humans, animals, and the landscapes in which they interact. Timely and relevant to discussions of ecology and the environment, his stories will reach a wide audience today, more than fifty years after they were written. These stories show Mathews’s ability to write precise descriptions—of a coyote catching a field mouse, a crane eating a frog, a mountain lion playing. A hunter himself, Mathews understood both the animals’ readiness to fight and man’s instinct to survive. And he let readers share the dignity of the animal characters and their refusal to acquiesce to their own extinction, particularly in the face of human ignorance and carelessness. Susan Kalter’s afterword provides a poignant portrait of Mathews and traces the inspirations for the short stories in this collection. Thoughtfully annotated, these stories are the only published examples of Mathews’s hitherto unknown short fiction and will add to his stature as an important American Indian writer.

Responding to the unprecedented violence of our times, and the corresponding interest in nonviolent solutions, this book takes up the heart of pacifism: its critique of what pacifists have termed the war system. Pacifism as War Abolitionism provides an account of the war system that draws on contemporary sociology, history, and political philosophy. The core of its critique of that system is that war begets war, and hence war will not be ended—or even constrained—by finding more principled ways to fight war, as many imagine. War can only be ended by ending the war system, which can only be done nonviolently. This has been the message of pacifism's great voices like Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. It is the principal message of this book. Key Features Draws extensively on the sociological and historical research on war to expand the usual philosophical discussion beyond hypothetical accounts Expands the dialogues on the ethics of war beyond just war theory to its principal alternative: pacifism Engages discussion of empire and imperialism in relation to the logic and development of the war system Presents pacifism’s response to the reality of war today, including the idea of "never-ending war"

This book is amongst the first academic treatments of the emerging debate on autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons are capable, once programmed, of searching for and engaging a target without direct intervention by a human operator. Critics of these weapons claim that ‘taking the human out-of-the-loop’ represents a further step towards the de-humanisation of warfare, while advocates of this type of technology contend that the power of machine autonomy can potentially be harnessed in order to prevent war crimes. This book provides a thorough and critical assessment of these two positions. Written by a political philosopher at the forefront of the autonomous weapons debate, the book clearly assesses the ethical and legal ramifications of autonomous weapons, and presents a novel ethical argument against fully autonomous weapons.

This book addresses the question of when (if ever) and why (if at all) it is justifiable for a polity to prepare for war by militarizing. In doing so it highlights the ways in which a civilian population compromises its own security in maintaining a permanent military establishment, and explores the moral and social costs of militarization.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with service women and men, Nancy Sherman weaves narrative with a philosophical and psychological analysis of the moral and emotional attitudes at the heart of the afterwars. Afterwar offers no easy answers for reintegration. It insists that we widen the scope of veteran outreach to engaged, one-on-one relationships with veterans.

EXPERT ANALYSIS OF AN ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL PRACTICE The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected terrorists; the Obama administration assassinates them. Assassination, or targeted killing, off the battlefield not only causes more resentment against the United States, it is also illegal. In this interdisciplinary collection, human rights and political activists, policy analysts, lawyers and legal scholars, a philosopher, a journalist and a sociologist examine different aspects of the U.S. policy of targeted killing with drones and other methods. It explores the legality, morality and geopolitical considerations of targeted killing and resulting civilian casualties, and evaluates the impact on relations between the United States and affected countries. The book includes the documentation of civilian casualties by the leading non-governmental organization in this area; stories of civilians victimized by drones; an analysis of the first U.S. targeted killing lawsuit by the lawyer who brought the case; a discussion of the targeted killing cases in Israel by the director of PCATI which filed one of the lawsuits; the domestic use of drones; and the immorality of drones using Just War principles. Contributors include: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Phyllis Bennis, Medea Benjamin, Marjorie Cohn, Richard Falk, Tom Hayden, Pardiss Kebriaei, Jane Mayer, Ishai Menuchin, Jeanne Mirer, John Quigley, Dr. Tom Reifer, Alice Ross, Jay Stanley, and Harry Van der Linden.

Post-heroism is often perceived as one of the main aspects of change in the character of war, a phenomenon prevalent in western societies. According to this view, demographic and cultural changes in the west have severely decreased the tolerance for casualties in war. This edited volume provides a critical examination of this idea.

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Few moral principles have been more widely and viscerally affirmed. But in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Seth Lazar aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law. He develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in the debate.