Ethics and War: A Critical Intervention
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829818802350 |
| Author | Thomas Gregory |
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818802350
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2019, Vol. 47(2) 309 –320
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829818802350
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Ethics and War: A Critical
Intervention
Thomas Gregory
University of Auckland, New Zealand
James Eastwood, Ethics as a Weapon of War: Militarism and Morality in Israel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017, 298 pp., £75.00, hbk).
Adil Ahmad Haque, Law and Morality at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, 304
pp., £50.00, hbk).
Maja Zehfuss, War and the Politics of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 256 pp.,
£60.00, hbk).
Abstract
There has been renewed interest in the relationship between ethics and war. Traditionally, it
has been thought that a robust set of principles could reduce the overall destructiveness of
war but a growing body of more critical scholarship argues that it may actually enhance it. This
article reviews three recent books on the ethics of war by Adil Ahmad Haque, Maja Zehfuss and
James Eastwood. Defending more conventional accounts, Haque sets out to develop a normative
framework that can be used to assess, clarify and refine the existing rules. Zehfuss and Eastwood,
by contrast, argue that the invocation of ethics may work to legitimise, normalise and obscure the
effects of this violence. This article suggests ways in which these texts might help to reinvigorate
debates about ethics and war, opening up lines of inquiry that were previously foreclosed.
Keywords
Ethics, violence, war
Ética y guerra: una intervención crítica
Resumen
Se ha percibido un renovado interés en la relación entre la ética y la guerra. Tradicionalmente se
ha pensado que un sólido compendio de principios podría disminuir la destructividad global de la
guerra, pero un creciente grupo de académicos más críticos argumenta que, en realidad, podría
intensificarla. Este artículo analiza tres libros recientes sobre la ética de la guerra escritos por Adil
Corresponding author:
Thomas Gregory, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Victoria Street West Auckland, 1142, New Zealand.
Email: t.gregory@auckland.ac.nz
802350MIL0010.1177/0305829818802350Millennium: Journal of International StudiesGregory
review-article2018
Review Article
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