Steven Lee

With the passing of the Cold War, a chapter in the history of nuclear deterrence has come to an end. Nuclear weapons remain, however, and nuclear deterrence will again be practiced. Rather than simply assume that the policy of deterrence has worked we need to learn the proper lessons from history in order to ensure that its mistakes are not repeated. Professor Lee furnishes us with the kind of analysis that will enable us to learn those lessons. This 1993 book is the first post-Cold War assessment of nuclear deterrence. It provides a comprehensive normative understanding of nuclear deterrence policy, examining both its ethical and strategic dimensions. The book poses the question: What kind of nuclear policy, if any, deserves both moral and prudential endorsement?

The subject of this paper is the ethics of the use of attack drones by a state. My concern is not the moral acceptability of drones as such, but rather that of current drone policy insofar as it involves the targeted killing of individuals in the “war on terror.” I seek to clarify and extend some of the arguments offered regarding the policy. Though this will involve some appeal to just war theory, my moral argument is broader than this. I conclude that there is a reasonably strong case that current drone policy is morally unacceptable.

Modern warfare cannot be conducted without civilians being killed. In order to reconcile this fact with the principle of discrimination in just war theory, the principle is applied through the doctrine of double effect. But this doctrine is morally inadequate because it is too permissive regarding the risk to civilians. For this reason, Michael Walzer has suggested that the doctrine be supplemented with what he calls the idea of double intention: combatants are not only to refrain from intending to harm civilians; they are also to take precautions to reduce risk to civilians, even at the expense of increasing risk to themselves. The article develops the idea of double intention by addressing two questions: What does it mean to intend to reduce civilian risk, and how much should civilian risk be reduced? The results of this discussion are then used to consider a moral issue that arises in technologically asymmetric warfare, namely, the extent to which the use of precision-guided munitions, which allow more accurate targeting, can by itself bear the moral burden imposed by the principle of discrimination