Since commencing its illegal invasion in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed numerous war crimes against the people of Ukraine. These include the mutilation and execution of combatants; the torture, kidnapping, forced expulsion, rape, and massacre of civilians; and indiscriminate attacks on densely populated areas. In this essay, I evaluate the strategic implications of this misconduct, focusing exclusively on Western responses. I argue that war crimes can and often do negatively impact the strategic goals of the perpetrator, but whether and how this occurs is rarely governed exclusively by the offending action. Western perceptions of battlefield atrocity, shaped as they are by identity, race, and politics, may radically shift from one context to another. In the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, the status of both the participants and the conflict itself has helped inculcate a particular sensitivity among Western actors to the battlefield criminality of Russia. Drawing on evidence from the 2022 Bucha massacre and the ongoing bombing of Ukrainian civilians, I argue that Russian misconduct has consolidated Western support for the Ukrainian military effort, politically, diplomatically, and materially.

Ukraine's war of self-defense against Russia is one of the clearest examples of a nation fighting a just war in recent history. Ukraine is clearly entitled to defend itself, and Russia is clearly obligated to cease hostilities, withdraw troops, and make repair. In light of this, some of the most salient moral questions related to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine involve the international community; namely, what moral duties it has toward Ukraine, especially in light of Russia's extreme and pervasive human rights abuses. The first section of the essay argues that there is a pro tanto moral duty to intervene militarily in Ukraine to stop Russian human rights abuses and ensure that Ukraine achieves a military victory. This duty is grounded in duties of rescue, promissory obligations, and reliance obligations, as well as duties to nations’ own citizens and to the international community. The second section of the essay argues that the most relevant consideration in determining whether there is an all-things-considered duty for the international community to intervene militarily in Ukraine is Russia's nuclear coercion and the associated risk of nuclear war. This section highlights the nuclear risks involved in compliance with Russian nuclear coercion, which I argue have been neglected in prominent discussions. The moral stakes involved in this determination are very high, and succumbing to Russian nuclear coercion in the face of massive human rights violations would set a dangerous precedent. Any course of action should be guided by a thorough analysis of all the risks involved, both nuclear and moral.

One of the most pronounced features of the war in Ukraine has been the heavy reliance of the Russian forces on convict-soldiers, most notably by the private military and security company (PMSC) the Wagner Group. In this essay, I explore the ethical problems with using convict-soldiers and assess how using them compares to other military arrangements, such as conscription or an all-volunteer force. Overall, I argue that the central issue with using prisoners to fight wars is their perceived expendability. To do this, I present three arguments. First, although many prisoners have been under major duress, using convict-soldiers may be somewhat preferable to using conscripts in this regard. Second, convict-soldiers are more likely to be subject to human rights abuses than other types of soldiers and this should be seen as the main problem with their use. Third, convict-soldiers’ liability to lethal force for fighting in an unjust war does not render it permissible to treat them as expendable.

The available choices of political responses to disruption in the global climatic system depend in part on how the problem is conceptualized. Researchers and policymakers often invoke a “climate crisis” or “climate emergency,” but such language fits poorly with current knowledge of the problem's physical causes and social impacts. This article argues that climate change is instead more like a political epic. It involves neither sudden onset, as in the concept of emergency, nor decisive resolution, as in the concept of crisis, but rather a protracted ordeal of (temporally) obscure origins and uncertain outcomes. This alternative ontology of climate change highlights its novel temporal properties, including unusually slow-moving or time-lagged causal dynamics, with unsettling implications for academic research on the climatic-institutional nexus. Normatively, it undermines arguments for democracies’ environmental superiority over autocracies that rely on the former's general superiority at resolving crises and responding to emergencies. At the same time, some new arguments for democratic distributions of power become possible within the epic frame. More broadly, embracing the assumption of epic climate change may redirect attention from Promethean, managerial, or technocratic solutions to questions about which values or identities deserve preservation amid presumptively interminable and imperfectly remediable sources of disorder.

This essay assesses the morality of Ukraine's use of drones to attack targets inside Russia. Following its invasion by Russian forces, Ukraine has had a just cause to wage a war of self-defense. However, its efforts to achieve that cause remain subject to moral limits. Even a state that has been unjustly attacked may not, for example, respond by deliberately targeting the attacking state's civilian population. To do so would violate the jus in bello principle of discrimination. The essay first describes how drone technology has frequently enabled long-range strikes against Russian military assets as well as other targets inside cities. It then explains why it would be morally wrong for Ukraine to attack its enemy's population centers. First, Russian civilians are not liable to attack, and this nonliability is undiminished by the injustice of Russia's invasion or by any in bello wrongs committed by the Russian military. Second, attacking Russian cities with drones would arguably achieve little or no self-defensive benefit for Ukraine, and it could even be counterproductive.

In recent years, there has been an upsurge in the number of civilian resistance movements (CRMs) within states to counter government repression and coups d’états through which civilians are on the frontlines of state brutality and mass atrocities. This article considers the implications of CRMs for atrocity prevention and the associated responsibility to protect norm by asking, Should the international community support CRMs as part of its wider commitment to ending mass atrocities? In this article, we evaluate both military and nonmilitary support to CRMs. We argue that in the context of coups and government repression, providing lethal military support to CRMs will often make things worse in terms of atrocity prevention. We however explain that the provision by the international community of nonlethal and nonmilitary support through political recognition, technical assistance, and accountability can yield positive results. We illustrate this argument with the case of Myanmar.

The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates the crucial role of technology in modern warfare. The use of digital networks, information infrastructure, space technology, and artificial intelligence has distinct military advantages, but raises challenges as well. This essay focuses on the way it exacerbates a rather familiar challenge: the “civilianization of warfare.” Today's high-technology warfare lowers the threshold for civilian participation in the war effort. A notable example is the widespread use of smartphone apps by Ukrainian civilians, who thereby help the armed forces defend against Russian aggression. Through the lenses of international humanitarian law, conventional just war theory, and revisionist just war theory, this essay evaluates the normative dimensions of such civilian participation. The analysis shows that civilians can lose their legal protections when they use these apps to directly participate in hostilities, and this loss of immunity can be justified by Michael Walzer's conventional just war theory. Revisionism, however, puts the justness of the war at the forefront, and so sheds doubt on the moral liability of Ukrainian civilians. Considering the broader implications, including the blurring combatant-civilian distinction, indicates that such civilianization of warfare should not be welcomed; the risks will often outweigh the benefits. At a minimum, states ought to exercise restraint in mobilizing civilians and inform them of the implications of their actions.

The trend toward the “humanization” of international law reflects a greater emphasis on individuals rather than simply states as objects of concern. The advance of human rights law (HRL) has been an important impetus for this trend. Some observers suggest that humanization can be furthered even more by applying HRL rather than international humanitarian law (IHL) to hostilities between states and nonstate armed groups, unless a state explicitly declares that it is engaged in an armed conflict. This essay argues, however, that a court should not defer to a state's characterization of hostilities, but should base its analysis on whether hostilities meet the criteria for an armed conflict. Applying HRL to hostilities that effectively are an armed conflict but not acknowledged as such risks diluting the legitimacy and normative force of HRL. On the one hand, if a court applies conventional stringent HRL standards, this body of law may be seen as unrealistic and is likely to be ignored. On the other hand, a court that adapts HRL standards to armed conflict may need to take a consequentialist approach at odds with HRL's deontological foundations. Clearly differentiating between HRL and IHL may thus best promote the humanization of warfare.

The claims of those who are compelled to migrate are, in general, taken to be more urgent and pressing than the claims of those who were not forced to do so. This article does not defend the moral relevance of voluntarism to the morality of migration, but instead seeks to demonstrate two complexities that must be included in any plausible account of that moral relevance. The first is that the decision to start the migration journey is distinct from the decision to stop that journey, through resettlement; the latter may involve voluntary choice, without that voluntarism impugning the involuntary nature of the former. The second is that the migration decision of the individual might be voluntary, even while that individual's family or social network might be compelled to insist upon some particular individual member's migration. That is, the fact that any particular person might be free to refuse migration does not contradict the fact that the group in question does not have the effective freedom to avoid the migration of some group members. Once these two complexities are understood, I argue, the moral relevance of voluntarism in the ethics of migration becomes more complex and nuanced than is generally understood.

This review essay contrasts two of the most notable recent contributions to literature on space and society: Daniel Deudney's Dark Skies (2020) and Brian Patrick Green's Space Ethics (2022). The Green volume is a course textbook, geared to giving students an overview of some of the key ethical issues concerning space and how the arguments on these matters are shaping up. Its aim is to provide an overview rather than a specific line of argument. Deudney's text, by contrast, is an example of a book proposing space skepticism. It argues that we should relinquish many of our current ambitions for space expansion on the grounds that they will increase the already significant degree of extinction-level risk that we face. The essay marks the distinction between these texts by contrasting normal- and special-domain approaches. Normal-domain approaches seek to extend familiar ethico-political issues into the discussion about space expansion without regarding space expansion as the road to utopia or extinction. Special-domain approaches hold to some such optimistic or pessimistic view. The essay goes on to highlight the way in which Green's text would benefit from more social critique, along the lines of Deudney. Ultimately, the normal-domain approach presupposed by Green and rejected by Deudney is upheld.

Climate change challenges the means of subsistence for many, particularly in the Global South. To respond to the challenges of climate change, countries increasingly resort to resettling those most affected by land erosion, heat, drought, floods, and the like. In this article, I investigate to what extent resettlement can compensate for the harm that climate-induced migration brings. The first harm I identify is that to individual autonomy. I argue that climate change changes the options of those affected by it to the point that the decision to migrate can no longer count as a voluntary one. In some cases, I argue, the conditions of climate change coerce individuals. Second, I suggest that climate-induced migration severs the ties to territory, explaining the constitutive nature of such ties for accounts of individual autonomy. Third, I argue that severing ties with a traditional and historical territory challenges the capacity to imagine a future for individuals. I conclude that resettlement, even if actively planned and chosen, possibly providing gains in individual well-being and human flourishing, nevertheless harms individual autonomy interests.

A key question in the theory of migration and in public debates on immigration policies is when migration can be said to be voluntary and when, conversely, it should be seen as nonvoluntary. In a previous article, we tried to answer this crucial question by providing a list of conditions we view as sufficient for migration to be considered nonvoluntary. According to our account, one condition that makes migration nonvoluntary is when people migrate because they lack acceptable alternatives to doing so. In this article, we take the opportunity to further explore and clarify this crucial condition. More specifically, we focus on two main sets of questions. First, we ask whether migration is always voluntary when it serves goals that are voluntarily chosen, and whether those who decide to migrate voluntarily but only have the option of choosing among a limited set of dangerous, harmful, or illegal means for doing so, can be said to be forced to choose those means. Second, we ask whether what counts as “nonacceptable” alternatives should also include cases in which people could have their needs and fundamental rights met, but at the cost of betraying their moral principles or conceptions of the good.

Accountability for developing, deploying, and using any emerging weapons system is affirmed as a guiding principle by the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. Yet advances in emerging technologies present accountability challenges throughout the life cycle of a weapons system. Mindful of a lack of progress at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons since 2019, this essay argues for a mechanism capable of imputing accountability when individual agent accountability is exceeded, forensic accountability unreliable, and aspects of political accountability fail.

Systematic killing has long been associated with some of the darkest episodes in human history. Increasingly, however, it is framed as a desirable outcome in war, particularly in the context of military AI and lethal autonomy. Autonomous weapons systems, defenders argue, will surpass humans not only militarily but also morally, enabling a more precise and dispassionate mode of violence, free of the emotion and uncertainty that too often weaken compliance with the rules and standards of war. We contest this framing. Drawing on the history of systematic killing, we argue that lethal autonomous weapons systems reproduce, and in some cases intensify, the moral challenges of the past. Autonomous violence incentivizes a moral devaluation of those targeted and erodes the moral agency of those who kill. Both outcomes imperil essential restraints on the use of military force.

Regulating war has long been a concern of the international community. From the Hague Conventions to the Geneva Conventions and the multiple treaties and related institutions that have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, efforts to mitigate the horrors of war have focused on regulating weapons, defining combatants, and ensuring access to the battlefield for humanitarians. But regulation and legal codes alone cannot be the end point of an engaged ethical response to new weapons developments. This short essay reviews some of the existing ethical works on lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), highlighting how rule- and consequence-based accounts fail to provide adequate guidance for how to deal with them. I propose a virtue-based account, which I link up with an Aristotelian framework, for how the international community might better address these weapons systems.

The urgency of climate change has never been greater, nor the moral case for responding to it more compelling. This review essay critically compares Darrel Moellendorf's Mobilizing Hope and Catriona McKinnon's Climate Change and Political Theory. Moellendorf's book defends the moral importance of poverty alleviation through sustainable economic growth and argues for a mass climate movement based on the promise of a more prosperous future. By contrast, McKinnon provides a political vocabulary to articulate the many faces of climate injustice, and to critically examine proposed policy solutions—notably including the indefinite pursuit of economic growth. While both find reasons to be hopeful, their wide-ranging accounts reflect different visions of what a just and sustainable future might look like. They reflect different understandings of sustainable development and the significance of environmental values; the scope of permissible climate activism; and the ethics of geoengineering. Building upon them, I argue in favor of a more pluralistic vision of a just climate future, one that is capable of speaking to the range of moral interests bearing upon the climate and biodiversity crises, and that supports sustainable development that is inclusive of diverse human-nature relationships.

ChatGPT launched in November 2022, triggering a global debate on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). A debate on AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) has been underway far longer. Two sides have emerged: one in favor and one opposed to an international law ban on LAWS. This essay explains the position of advocates of a ban without attempting to persuade opponents. Supporters of a ban believe LAWS are already unlawful and immoral to use without the need of a new treaty or protocol. They nevertheless seek an express prohibition to educate and publicize the threats these weapons pose. Foremost among their concerns is the “black box” problem. Programmers cannot know what a computer operating a weapons system empowered with AI will “learn” from the algorithm they use. They cannot know at the time of deployment if the system will comply with the prohibition on the use of force or the human right to life that applies in both war and peace. Even if they could, mechanized killing affronts human dignity. Ban supporters have long known that “AI models are not safe and no one knows how to reliably make them safe” or morally acceptable in taking human life.

The UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) can, on the one hand, be considered vital for the global governance process—in the sense of urging international cooperation on the ethical, developmental, and standards aspects of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). On the other hand, the CCW may also embody a global trend that does not augur well for international solidarity, namely the lack of credible and comprehensive collaboration to advance global objectives of peace and security. In 2022, a majority of the 125 nations that belong to the CCW requested limits on a specific type of lethal autonomous weapons: “killer robots.” Yet, most of the major global powers—namely the United States, Russia, and China—opposed not only a ban on LAWS but also on any restrictions on the development of these weapons, not least because the United States, Russia, and China are actively developing this weapons technology. While there is currently much focus on the technological evolution of LAWS, less has been written about how ethical values can exert influence on a growing global consciousness around factors such as power, technology, human judgment, accountability, autonomy, dehumanization, and the use of force. This introduction lays the groundwork for dealing with these issues. It does so by showing that all these factors warrant a pluralist approach to the global governance of LAWS, based on multiple grounds, including the military, tech, law, and distinctive theoretical-ethical orientations; the rationale being to combine this expertise into a collection for publication. Reflecting the contributing authors’ firsthand experiences of the ethics surrounding the management of LAWS to address decisive and critical questions at an expert level, it provides a framing for the collection, showing that the use of international legal mechanisms like the CCW are crucial to considering both the potential and the limits of LAWS, as well as what it can contribute to areas such as international law, human rights, and national security.

Intelligence operations overwhelmingly focus on obtaining secrets (espionage) and the unauthorized disclosure of secrets by a public official in one political community to another (treason). It is generally understood that the principal responsibility of spies is to successfully procure secrets about the enemy. Yet, in this essay, I ask: Are spies and traitors ethically justified in using cyber operations not merely to acquire secrets (cyber espionage) but also to covertly manipulate or falsify information (cyber manipulation) to prevent atrocities? I suggest that using cyber manipulation operations to parry atrocities is pro tanto morally permissible and, on occasion, required.

This essay contends that the ethics around the use of spy technology to gather intelligence (TECHINT) during espionage and counterintelligence operations is ambiguous. To build this argument, the essay critically scrutinizes Cécile Fabre's recent and excellent book Spying through a Glass Darkly, which argues that there are no ethical differences between the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) obtained from or by human assets and TECHINT in these operations. As the essay explains, Fabre arrives at this position by treating TECHINT as a like-for-like replacement for HUMINT. The essay argues instead that TECHINT is unlikely to act as a like-for-like replacement for HUMINT. As such, TECHINT might transform existing practices of espionage and counterintelligence, giving rise to new ethical challenges not captured in Fabre's analysis. To illustrate the point, the essay builds an analogy between TECHINT and recent armed conflicts in which precision weapons have been deployed. Although precision weapons seem ethically desirable, their availability has created new practices of waging war that are ethically problematic. By analogy, TECHINT, though not intrinsically undesirable, has the capacity to generate new practices of intelligence gathering that are ethically problematic—potentially more than HUMINT. Ultimately, recent negative experiences with the use of precision weaponry should caution against an overly positive assessment of TECHINT's ethical desirability.