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 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.

The ethical value of intelligence lies in its crucial role in safeguarding individuals from harm by detecting, locating, and preventing threats. As part of this undertaking, intelligence can include protecting the economic well-being of the political community and its people. Intelligence, however, also entails causing people harm when it violates their vital interests through its operations. The challenge, therefore, is how to reconcile this tension, which Cécile Fabre's recent book Spying through a Glass Darkly does by arguing for the “ongoing and preemptive imposition of defensive harm.” Fabre applies this underlying argument to the specifics of economic espionage to argue that while states, businesses, and individuals do have a general right over their information that prevents others from accessing it, such protections can be forfeited or overridden when there is a potential threat to the fundamental rights of third parties. This essay argues, however, that Fabre's discussion on economic espionage overlooks important additional proportionality and discrimination concerns that need to be accounted for. In addition to the privacy violations it causes, economic espionage can cause harms to people's other vital interests, including their physical and mental well-being and autonomy. Given the complex way in which the economy interlinks with people's lives and society, harms to one economic actor will have repercussions on those secondary economic entities dependent on them, such as workers, buyers, and investors. This, in turn, can produce further harms on other economic actors, causing damages to ripple outward across society.

Rapid technological change is resulting in the development of ever increasingly capable autonomous weapon systems. As they become more sophisticated, the calls for developing restrictions on their use, up to and including their complete prohibition, are growing. Not unlike the call for restrictions on the sale and use of drones, most proposed restrictions are well-intentioned but are often ill-informed, with a high likelihood of degrading national security and putting additional lives at risk. Employed by experienced operators well-versed in the laws of armed conflict, autonomous weapons can advance the objectives of those who would prohibit their use. This essay takes an operational perspective to examine the role that autonomous weapon systems can play while complying with the laws of armed conflict. With responsible design and incorporation of applicable control measures, autonomous weapons will be able not just to comply but also to enhance the ethical use of force. This essay contends that efforts by the international community to use international legal means and/or institutions to over-regulate or even ban lethal autonomous weapons are counterproductive. It considers and describes the end-game results of the use of autonomous weapons in enhancing the application of both international law and human ethical values.

Events in recent years have underscored the dependence of the liberal international order (LIO) on the domestic fate of liberalism in countries like the United States—where, according to critics such as Mark Lilla and Francis Fukuyama, liberals have imperiled themselves through an unwise embrace of identity politics. These critics argue that identity politics undermines solidarity and empowers the illiberal right, and that it should be rejected in favor of a unifying creedal nationalism based on common liberal values. This analysis, I argue, overlooks the fact that “common” creedal values have expanded in American history when their meanings were being controversially reinterpreted from identity-based perspectives. If American liberalism is to emerge from its current crisis, it will need to incorporate the claims of identity into a sense of national belonging that can resist the authoritarian, ethnoracial nationalism promoted by the LIO's enemies. The likelihood that such a process will be controversial is reason for liberal critics of identity politics to consider how the claims of identity might be an asset, not an obstacle, to revitalizing liberal democracy against its challengers.

Scott Sagan asked me to revisit Nuclear Ethics, a book I published in 1986, in light of current developments in world affairs. In doing so, I found that much had changed but the basic usability paradox of nuclear deterrence remains the same. As do the ethical dilemmas. To deter, there must be some prospect of use, but easy usability could produce highly immoral consequences. Some risk is unavoidable and the moral task is how best to lower it. Nuclear weapons pose moral problems but nuclear use is the greater evil. Abolition may be a worthy long-term goal, but it is unlikely in the short-term relations among the nine states now possessing nuclear weapons. Drawing on just war theory, I examine the three dimensions of intentions, means, and consequences to outline a ten-point agenda for just deterrence that seeks to lower risks of nuclear war. The world has changed since the book was published but the basic moral dilemmas remain the same.

In this essay, I propose five principles to make U.S. nuclear deterrence policy more just and effective in the future: sever the link between the mass killing of innocent civilians and nuclear deterrence by focusing targeting on adversaries’ military power and senior political leadership, not their population; never use or plan to use a nuclear weapon against any target that could be destroyed or neutralized by conventional weapons; reject “belligerent reprisal” threats against civilians even in response to enemy attacks on one's own or allied civilians; replace nuclear “calculated ambiguity” threats against biological or cyberattacks with “deterrence by denial” strategies; and work in good faith toward eventual nuclear disarmament.

This essay starts by accepting Cécile Fabre's argument in her book Spying through a Glass Darkly that intelligence work, including using incentives and pressures to encourage betrayal and treason, can be morally justified based on the criteria of necessity, effectiveness, and proportionality. However, while assessments of spying tend to be based on Cold War notions, I explore it here in the messier reality of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and “new wars.” In addition, I suggest a methodological expansion: adding a sociological perspective to the ethical discussion by exploring the wider effects on society, over longer periods, of the operation of informers. Based on these shifts in perspective and context, I identify additional social harms generated by espionage that should lead to a more restrictive view of ethical espionage than the one emerging from Fabre's work. I argue that many of these social harms are created by the mass recruitment of informers, in asymmetrical conflicts where governments have leverage over suspected communities, and given the (often mistaken) belief that everyone recruited to act as informer is an “asset,” primarily providing advantages. I argue, therefore, that the decisive issue is one of scale: many of the ethical problems created by espionage in these contexts result from the widespread systematic recruitment of informers, while small-scale, targeted, ad-hoc recruitment can more easily avoid such problems.

The concept of voluntariness permeates the ethics and politics of migration and is commonly used to distinguish refugees from migrants. Yet, neither the precise nature and conditions of voluntariness nor its ethical significance for migrant rights and state obligations has received enough attention. The articles in this collection move the debate forward by demonstrating the complex ethical judgments involved in delineating voluntary from forced migration and in drawing out its political and institutional implications. In addition to highlighting the interplay between the voluntary and nonvoluntary elements of migration over time and across different sites of the migration journey, they provide a nuanced account of the various conditions of voluntariness and they challenge common ideas about its normative political consequences.

The development of new technologies that enable autonomous weapon systems poses a challenge to policymakers and technologists trying to balance military requirements with international obligations and ethical norms. Some have called for new international agreements to restrict or ban lethal autonomous weapon systems. Given the tactical and strategic value of the technologies and the proliferation of threats, the military continues to explore the development of new autonomous technologies to execute national security missions. The rapid global diffusion and dual-use nature of autonomous systems necessitate a proactive approach and a shared understanding of the technical realities, threats, military relevance, and strategic implications of these technologies from these communities. Ultimately, developing AI-enabled defense systems that adhere to global norms and relevant treaty obligations, leverage emerging technologies, and provide operational advantages is possible. The development of a workable and realistic regulatory framework governing the use of lethal autonomous weapons and the artificial intelligence that underpins autonomy will be best supported through a coordinated effort of the regulatory community, technologists, and military to create requirements that reflect the global proliferation and rapidly evolving threat of autonomous weapon systems. This essay seeks to demonstrate that: (1) the lack of coherent dialogue between the technical and policy communities can create security, ethical, and legal dilemmas; and (2) bridging the military, technical, and policy communities can lead to technology with constraints that balance the needs of military, technical, and policy communities. It uses case studies to show why mechanisms are needed to enable early and continuous engagement across the technical, policymaking, and operational communities. The essay then uses twelve interviews with AI and autonomy experts, which provide insight into what the technical and policymaking communities consider fundamental to the progression of responsible autonomous development. It also recommends practical steps for connecting the relevant stakeholders. The goal is to provide the Department of Defense with concrete steps for building organizational structures or processes that create incentives for engagement across communities.

Any threat to use nuclear weapons inherently carries the possibility of escalation to a level such that both parties in a conflict, and likely many others, would be destroyed. Yet nuclear weapons are also seen as necessary for securing the very things that would be destroyed if the weapons were ever used. The fix for this nuclear dilemma relies on the strategy of deterrence. Deterrence provides a rationale for why nuclear weapons are necessary, even though they may seem dangerous. But the practice of deterrence involves less intentionality and agency than is usually assumed. The success of deterrence relies partially on luck as well as unrealistic assumptions about human behavior. Rather than a strategic necessity, deterrence may be an institutionalized behavior, accepted because it has always been practiced rather than because it makes sense. Assessing the ethics of deterrence and nuclear weapons requires engaging with these issues.

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.

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.

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.