War and the politics of ethics /Maja Zehfuss.
- First edition.
- Oxford : Oxford University Press, (c)2018.
- 1 online resource.
This edition previously issued in print: 2018.
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover; War and the Politics of Ethics; Copyright; Preface and Acknowledgements; Contents; List of Abbreviations; 1: Introduction; 1.1 The Rise of Ethical War; 1.2 Plan of the Book; 2: The Paradox of Ethical War and the Politics of Ethics; 2.1 The Paradox of Ethical War; 2.2 Negotiating the Paradox: Just War Thinking; 2.3 The Legitimation of War; 2.4 The Tragedy of Death and the Aporia of Responsibility; 2.5 War and the Politics of Ethics; 2.6 Conclusion; 3: Targeting: Precision Bombing and the Production of Ethics; 3.1 In Praise of Precision; 3.2 Precision in Practice 3.3 Precision and Protection3.4 Precision and the Production of Ethics; 3.5 Drone Warfare and the Promise of Precision; 3.6 Conclusion; 4: Culture: Knowledge of the People as Technology of Ethics; 4.1 The Rise of Culture: Towards a Battle for the People; 4.2 Culture in Practice: The Counterinsurgency Manual; 4.3 Social Scientists into War: The Human Terrain System; 4.4 The People as the Battlefield; 4.5 Social Science: Objective Knowledge as Technology of Ethics; 4.6 Conclusion; 5: Ethics Education: Ethics as Ethos and the Impossibly Good Soldier; 5.1 Forces for Good; 5.2 Making Good Soldiers 5.3 Good Soldiers, Good War?5.4 Virtue Ethics and the Impossibly Good Soldier; 5.5 Conclusion; 6: The Politics of War at the Limits of Ethics; 6.1 The Seduction of Ethics; 6.2 Responding within Ethics; 6.3 Responding at the Limits of Ethics; 6.4 Conclusion; References; Index
Contemporary Western war is represented as enacting the West's ability and responsibility to help make the world a better place for others, in particular to protect them from oppression and serious human rights abuses. That is, war has become permissible again, indeed even required, as ethical war. At the same time, however, Western war kills and destroys. This creates a paradox: Western war risks killing those it proposes to protect. This book examines how we have responded to this dilemma and challenges the vision of ethical war itself. That is, it explores how the commitment to ethics shapes the practice of war and indeed how practices come, in turn, to shape what is considered ethical in war. The book closely examines particular practices of warfare, such as targeting, the use of cultural knowledge, and ethics training for soldiers. What emerges is that instead of constraining violence, the commitment to ethics enables and enhances it. The book argues that the production of ethical war relies on an impossible but obscured separation between ethics and politics, that is, a problematic politics of ethics, and reflects on the need to make decisions at the limit of ethics.