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270The Evolution of the US-Australia Strategic RelationshipIn Scott D. McDonald & Andrew T. H. Tan (eds.), The Future of the United States-Australia Alliance, Taylor & Francis. pp. 103-121. 2021.The US-Australia strategic relationship has evolved from more or less an adversarial position in the 19th century to an Australia largely dependent on the US during the Cold War to the interdependent partnership we see today. Strategic interdependence means that the US-Australia relationship is not merely a one-sided affair; that Australia has something of substance to offer the strategic relationship. Part of the reason that the relationship is strong is because of a shared language, similar so…Read more
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193The State of Intelligence Studies: Australia in International ContextIn Daniel Baldino & Rhys Crawley (eds.), Intelligence and the Function of Government, Melbourne University Press. 2018.This chapter takes a longitudinal approach to the survey of intelligence research published in Australia, or by Australian authors overseas, in the decade 2007–2017, analyses it, and compares these findings with trends overseas. It then undertakes a quantitative and qualitative survey of intelligence education programs at Australian and Western tertiary institutions in order to show how Australia fares in an international context. It concludes by offering some suggestions on the way ahead for In…Read more
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355I, Spy Robot: The Ethics of Robots in National Intelligence ActivitiesIn Jai Galliott & Warren Reed (eds.), Ethics and the Future of Spying: Technology, National Security and Intelligence Collection, Routledge. pp. 145-157. 2016.In this chapter, we examine the key moral issues for the intelligence community with regard to the use of robots for intelligence collection. First, we survey the diverse range of spy robots that currently exist or are emerging, and examine their value for national security. This includes describing a number of plausible scenarios in which they have been (or could be) used, including: surveillance, attack, sentry, information collection, delivery, extraction, detention, interrogation and as Troj…Read more
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214Military Ethics and Strategy: Senior Commanders, Moral Values and Cultural PerspectivesIn George R. Jr Lucas (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, Routledge. 2015.In this chapter, I explore the importance of ethics education for senior military officers with responsibilities at the strategic level of government. One problem, as I see it, is that senior commanders might demand “ethics” from their soldiers but then they are themselves primarily informed by a “morally skeptical viewpoint” (in the form of political realism). I argue that ethics are more than a matter of personal behavior alone: the ethical position of an armed service is a matter of the colle…Read more
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Hunters, Warriors, MonstersIn Galen A. Foresman & William Irwin (eds.), Supernatural and Philosophy: Metaphysics and Monsters... For Idjits, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.
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29Moral Exceptionalism and the Just War Tradition: Walzer’s Instrumentalist Approach and an Institutionalist Response to McMahan’s “Nazi Military” ProblemJournal of Military Ethics 21 (3): 210-227. 2022.The conventional view of Just War thinking holds that militaries operate under “special” moral rules in war. Conventional Just War thinking establishes a principled approach to such moral exceptionalism in order to prevent arbitrary or capricious uses of military force. It relies on the notion that soldiers are instruments of the state, which is a view that has been critiqued by the Revisionist movement. The Revisionist critique rightly puts greater emphasis on the moral agency of individual sol…Read more
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2313Rights-based Justifications for Self-DefenseInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 36 (1): 49-65. 2022.I defend a modified rights-based unjust threat account for morally justified killing in self-defense. Rights-based moral justifications for killing in self-defense presume that human beings have a right to defend themselves from unjust threats. An unjust threat account of self-defense says that this right is derived from an agent’s moral obligation to not pose a deadly threat to the defender. The failure to keep this moral obligation creates the moral asymmetry necessary to justify a defender ki…Read more
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405Weaponising social mediaIn Thomas R. Frame & Albert Palazzo (eds.), Ethics under fire: challenges for the Australian Army, University of New South Wales Press. 2017.
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398Security Institutions, Use of Force and the State: A Moral FrameworkDissertation, Australian National University. 2016.This thesis examines the key moral principles that should govern decision-making by police and military when using lethal force. To this end, it provides an ethical analysis of the following question: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally justified for the agents of state-sanctioned security institutions to use lethal force, in particular the police and the military? Recent literature in this area suggests that modern conflicts involve new and unique features that render conventional w…Read more
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306Cybersecurity, Trustworthiness and Resilient Systems: Guiding Values for PolicyJournal of Cyber Policy 1 (2). 2017.Cyberspace relies on information technologies to mediate relations between different people, across different communication networks and is reliant on the supporting technology. These interactions typically occur without physical proximity and those working depending on cybersystems must be able to trust the overall human–technical systems that support cyberspace. As such, detailed discussion of cybersecurity policy would be improved by including trust as a key value to help guide policy discuss…Read more
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20The Asia-Pacific Chapter of the International Society for Military EthicsJournal of Military Ethics 16 (1-2): 118-120. 2017.
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829Restraining Police Use of Lethal Force and the Moral Problem of MilitarizationCriminal Justice Ethics 41 (1): 1-20. 2022.I defend the view that a significant ethical distinction can be made between justified killing in self-defense and police use of lethal force. I start by opposing the belief that police use of lethal force is morally justified on the basis of self-defense. Then I demonstrate that the state’s monopoly on the use of force within a given jurisdiction invests police officers with responsibilities that go beyond what morality requires of the average person. I argue that the police should primarily be…Read more
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390Jus ad Vim and the Just Use of Lethal Force Short of WarIn Fritz Allhoff, Nicholas G. Evans & Adam Henschke (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century, Routledge. pp. 63--75. 2013.In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on his more narrow u…Read more
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13Just use of lethal force—short—of—war1In Fritz Allhoff, Nicholas G. Evans & Adam Henschke (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century, Routledge. pp. 63. 2013.
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Curtin University, Western AustraliaSenior Lecturer
Bentley, Western Australia, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Other Academic Areas |
Philosophy, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |