Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Paul Vicars

#Reviewing Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force

#Reviewing Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force

Just and Unjust Uses of Limited Force by Daniel Brunstetter offers an insightful look into the permissions and limits of international force short of war. Brunstetter proposes a theory of justice for limited force (or vim in Latin). The need for such a study is indicated by the fact that most of the terminology used to describe morality in war does not adequately capture contemporary uses of force, which warrants additional vocabulary. This is what Brunstetter provides. Full of contemporary examples and counterfactuals, Brunstetter's work offers a relevant heuristic to aid in understanding the fights of today.

#Reviewing Asymmetric Killing

#Reviewing Asymmetric Killing

Neil C. Renic’s Asymmetric Killing is a thoughtful, if imperfect, assessment of the morality of riskless war. Within the skeptical academic discourse surrounding unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), authors either deflate the virtue of the men/women who employ such weapons, inflate the influence of technology on the operator or decision-maker, or conflate asymmetry and moral wrongness. Renic grapples, to some degree, with each of these aspects of the topic using a systematic, historical, and balanced method.

In Defense of the Just War Tradition: A Critique of the Just War Revisionism of Jeff McMahan

In Defense of the Just War Tradition: A Critique of the Just War Revisionism of Jeff McMahan

Without doubt, recent expressions of international violence, such as targeted assassinations, wartime actions in undeclared war zones, or the use contract mercenaries,  force philosophers of just war to pause and consider some, perhaps under-explored, nuances. However, contrary to Professor Jeff McMahan's beliefs, this does not require significant modification of the just war tradition.