Deane-Peter Baker

Deane-Peter Baker

Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW Canberra (at the Australian Defence Force Academy)

Location Canberra, Australia

Activity

  • Actually, I think if AQ had sent an expeditionary army to the US that would have been less objectionable than 9/11, mainly because most of those deliberately targeted on 9/11 were civilians, not combatants.

    I think you are right that perceptions of fairness or unfairness matter because they affect how populations and states respond - which of course has...

  • @StevenBrown , I'm not sure it goes as far as giving up any right to political affiliation (ADF members can correct me here), but there are constraints on public political statements and activities while in uniform, I think. I don't know what the situation is for states that have large-scale conscription (e.g. Israel) - harder to justify a blanket restriction...

  • Hi @PhilipStevenson - that's certainly true, but I think there is also an underlying assumption that we don't expect police to give the criminal a 'fair chance' to fight back. Instead we expect the police to subdue the criminal in whatever manner is safest to themselves and bystanders, constrained by the need to avoid unnecessary force.

  • Thanks Paul - yes, I took two sets of my on-screen 'uniform' on the trip with me, so I could wear one set while the other dried after washing! The clothes were selected for their quick-drying qualities, as I was generally only in one motel/hostel for a night or two.

  • Thanks for your suggestions John!

  • Hi @JohannaR I'm very pleased you found the course worthwhile, and that it's got you thinking about ethics as a field of study. Medical ethics/bioethics is a particularly big field, and a meaningful employer of full-time ethicists, though other professions are catching on and catching up. Big tech companies are increasingly turning to ethicists as they develop...

  • An important question Robert - what do you think? If a soldier suffers a debilitating injury to (say) a limb, and has it surgically replaced with an advanced and integrated mechanical limb, is there a fundamental difference to doing that for a soldier who did not suffer from an injury in the first place?

  • @ShaneC you've put your finger on what makes many uncomfortable with the DDE. One reason is it depends on perspective. If our perspective takes the rights of the individuals as the starting point it is very difficult to see how it is justifiable to carry out an act which one foresees will kill someone, even if that is not the goal or intention. If, however,...

  • @JohannaR , some deep questions here! Ethics is a constraint on war, but not necessarily the purpose of war. When a state fights a war of self defence, for example, so long as all the jus ad bellum principles are met we deem that war to be just/ethical (self defence being a just cause) - but the purpose of fighting the war is not to be ethical but rather to...

  • @JohannaR you are right that war should be pursued to rectify injustice. But remember that the traditional view of just war theory keeps jus ad bellum apart from jus in bello . The principles of jus in bello apply whether or not your side is engaged in a just war, and at least one side will not be (and quite often neither side is engaged in a just war). So we...

  • It's the nature of the topic that there are many rabbit holes one could go down - you stuck with the main issues pretty well, considering!

  • Glad you found it worthwhile Darren!

  • That's a really good point @IlonaH

  • Glad you're not finding it boring Darren! Would you be able to tease out your distinction between 'morally ethical' and 'militarily ethical'?

  • That would be a great book title!

  • Hi @darrenm - can you expand on your view that autonomous weapons can be used ethically? The thrust in the discussions to ban 'killer robots' is that using them would be inherently unethical.

  • Hi @BenD , there is in fact an effort to get autonomous weapons banned or regulated under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (UN CCW)

  • I don't think it's likely that we'll every get humans out of the firing line Paul!

  • Hi @DavidHollywood - can I push you on that? Would you make a similar argument about policing? If police could do their job in a way that would impose no risk of harm to them by criminals, would that be unethical? If not, can you pinpoint why it is different for military personnel?

  • @BA , that comes up in the final week of the course

  • @BA , hopefully the later steps in the course will help answer this for you!

  • Thanks for the tip Paul!

  • @NeilC , it's a tricky question what level of violation of jus in bello would render a side's participation unjust overall (even if the jus ad bellum criteria were met), but it's certainly in principle something that can happen.

  • High praise indeed! Glad you enjoyed it Quinn!

  • Thanks Cameron, glad you enjoyed the course.

  • I'm afraid we're stuck with the Latin terms Mick! I agree that the contributions in the discussions have been great - thank's for your part in that too.

  • Indeed!

  • Glad you enjoyed is Stephen!

  • Hi @JohannaR - can I push you a little on this? Isn't (part of) the reason we don't allow athletes to enhance their bodies because of fairness? But there is no expectation of fairness in war. One side is not bound to use (say) 3rd Generation Fighter Aircraft because that's all the other side has - if you have 5th Gen Fighters and can overmatch the enemy, then...

  • That's a good point @CW , and both terms are used. The difference is whether you are focusing on the intent or the effect. 'Non-Lethal' weapons are intended not to cause lethal harm. 'Less Lethal' weapons (same weapons!) sometimes have lethal effects, because humans are frail and Murphy's Law reigns.

  • Hi @CameronW , good link to the moral equality of combatants (MEC). The MEC is about one's status on the battlefield - that one may be killed by the enemy without them in so doing violating the ethics of war or morality more broadly. So one is vulnerable in a moral sense - but this doesn't necessarily mean one is required to be vulnerable in a physical sense....

  • Not my words @JoW , my colleague CDR Richard Adams, RAN (PhD)!

  • Hi @JohannaR - you share a reservation that many feel about drones, that it seems unfair. But as @JesseN points out, war is not a duel, and as long as it is fought within the laws and ethics of war there is no requirement that any side should give the other a 'fair' chance to fight. Since the first caveman threw a spear rather than fighting with a club...

  • Conscription is back in fashion it seems, in Europe anyway: https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2018/10/military-draft-making-comeback-europe/

  • True, though an Israeli academic I know made the interesting claim that, in her experience, conscription is a significant engine driving startup's in Israel - young men and women thrown together in conscription, particularly those who get trained for technical roles, often band together and leverage their technical skills and learned leadership abilities to...

  • Hi @JesseN , great post! This sounds a lot like the picture that the philosopher Robert Nozick develops in his very influential book 'Anarchy, State and Utopia', where he tries to show that states (but, in his view, only 'minimal' states) can exist without violating individual rights to property etc.

  • That's a tricky question @DavidIsted , but a good one! We can't be idealists about this, as no state is perfect in it's adherence to the social contract. I think the question of whether a particular state is legitimate has to be considered on a case by case basis. And of course an illegitimate state may sometimes still be better than the alternatives. To put...

  • Hi @RichardDennehy , that's definitely a coherent position. Many who argue for the 'right to rebel' (i.e. the right to take up arms against the state) base that position on this point.

  • Hi @ShaneC , you are not the only one to find the distinction between ‘foreseen’ and ‘intended’, this is a major area of critique for the DDE. The usual test is to ask ‘would I still want to go ahead with this act if the effect in question did not occur?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then that effect is not intended, only foreseen.

  • Thanks for this thoughtful comment @GarthC . This brings us back to one of the shortcomings of consequentialist ethics - the enormous challenge of predicting consequences.

  • Hi @BA that’s a big question! Here’s a preliminary question that would need to be answered first - if virtues are ‘excellences of character’ can we apply virtue ethics when evaluating the actions of states?

  • So the ends justify the means @JoelMcClure ?

  • That’s definitely an important topic Ben, but beyond what we can do in 7 short weeks, unfortunately.

  • That’s a great analogy, I’ll have to use that!

  • Hi Johanna, great question! One way to think of democratic elections is that they are a way to make the contract explicit.

  • You're right @SamG that the DDE is focused on comparing effects. I think I hedged a little in the description in the article because effects are never 100% certain, plus killing the HVT is not, strictly speaking an action but rather (as you say) the outcome or effect of an action. But that's probably making things unduly complex!

  • Even then, of course, conscription has traditionally only been applied to males (with some noteable exceptions), and excludes a wide range of people on the basis of health, criminal record, weight and fitness ... etc. So can a military ever completely reflect society? Is it enough that it be broadly reflective of society in key aspects - gender, race,...

  • Thanks @StephenMark , that book is on my 'to read' list.

  • Hi Brent - agreed. See my response to Sam below.

  • Hi @SamG , good observation. The key distinction here is between why people do what they do in practice (which, as you say, involves a wide range of disparate reasons) on the one hand, and what gives the state moral legitimacy on the other. That's where the social contract is supposed to kick in, and why it is largely hypothetical - states come in to being in...

  • Hi @SamG , thanks for this thoughtful comment. You're right that one of the challenges with the DDE is that the same scenario can often be described in different ways, which can skew the outcome of applying the DDE. One thing to remember, though, is that the DDE does not exist independently of the main principles of the jus in bello. So your question about...

  • Corrected, thanks.

  • Good catch, thanks Sam!

  • Good question @PaulRothwell . You're right that violators of these norms too often get away with it. Post-war tribunals like those in the aftermath of WWII, Yugoslavia and Rwanda are one means by which individuals are held accountable, and as you say the ICC is another. First responsibility, of course, lies with states themselves, and we do see some held...

  • Hi @PaulRothwell thanks for your comment. I have stood in the field where those POW's were murdered at Malmedy - it was difficult to imagine such savagery on a beautiful summer's day with cows grazing peacefully there and butterflies flitting about. You're right, of course, that the principles of the jus in bello have and will be ignored in wars. But for every...

  • Hi @PaulFerguson An infamous version of this argument was put forward by none other than Osama Bin Laden, in his 'Letter to America', justifying the 9/11 attacks (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver). After giving examples to support his claim that 9/11 was an act of self-defence because 'you have attacked us', he justifies targeting...

  • Oh James, I think you may have opened up a can of worms! Are you saying it would have been wrong for Skorzeny's men to shoot US troops in the back while wearing US uniforms, or that it is generally wrong to shoot enemy troops in the back? If the latter, you've stumbled into a debate that uses the 'sleeping soldier' as the key case - is it okay to kill sleeping...

  • @JohannaR , you've hit on a fundamental issue in the debate over the ethics of war - is pursuing the aims of a just war enough justification for the unintended but foreseen deaths of innocent bystanders? The broad Just War tradition has always answered that in the positive - that pursuing a just peace justifies collateral damage, even if that is to be avoided...

  • Hi @IlonaH , thanks for this comment. You are right that there is no neat and clean objective way to make this kind of judgment in some cases. But there are many cases where pretty much anyone would agree that the proportionality requirement is not met (e.g. if the insurgent in the scenario were not a HVT but rather a low-ranking part-timer - 'small fry').

  • Hi Johanna - that's a big question! The principles of the jus in bello were applied pretty unevenly in WWII. There are many cases of the deliberate killing of civilians, e.g. Nazi reprisals in response to partisan attacks, deliberate strafing of refugees etc. And of course there were significant violations on the Allied side as well - firebombing of Dresden,...

  • @DavidIsted , thanks for this. I think a key distinction here is between what 'is' and what 'ought to be'. Moellendorf is not arguing that this is what states do in practice, but what should be done - i.e. his claim is normative, not descriptive.

  • Or you could watch Kenneth Branagh deliver the speech - stirring stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpdeNcH1H8A

  • If you can stomach the seasickness-inducing camera shake, Paul Greengrass' film Bloody Sunday is a very challenging account of that event which is sometimes used as a military leadership teaching tool. (An interesting side note - the role of Lt. Col. Derek Wilford, who commanded 1 Batt of the Parachute Regiment on that day was played in the film by Simon Mann,...

  • Hi Barbara - the fact that there are systems of ethics doesn't mean that people will necessarily abide by them (and the same goes for war). But we need the system of ethics to be able to say that what they are doing is wrong, and why.

  • Hi Barbara. The challenge with revising principles to account for situations where we think an exception is required is that this seems to become an infinite regress as principles get more and more complicated, yet never quite deal with every exception.

  • @BA universal human rights are very firmly at the basis of the international laws of war. The just war tradition, from which we draw the ethics of war, reaches back further than the modern notion of states, so in its traditional form tends to be more state focused than individual focused. Some just war theorists, however, known as the...

  • ... and then there is the question about this at the level of domestic law and politics, where it's an issue of the accountability of the elected government to the people, i.e. an issue of the democratic control of armed force. (An aside: I once co-edited a book with a scholar from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, which has the...

  • A few thoughts in response @SamG : I agree that in a democracy there is an obligation for those in power to justify going to war. Obviously there can be reasonable limitations on that - information that would, for example, compromise key intelligence sources can reasonably be withheld. A key consideration here, though, is that JWT is not intended to apply to...

  • Fixed!

  • Quite right Sam, well spotted, thanks!

  • Yup

  • @JamesO'Hanlon I edited a book some years ago in which one of the contributors proposed a 'fire insurance' model for war and peace, in which states would pay a third party to manage the risk of war. Because war and sustaining military forces is expensive, the argument went, there would be a strong financial incentive for the third party to invest significantly...

  • Isn't that the wrong way around James? Aren't you saying that just wars are possible, and could be actual, we've just opted not to fight them?

  • Hi David - I just tried getting through to the IEP site, and it seems to be experiencing some problems. Hopefully they will get that sorted out pronto.

  • So today is the anniversary of the start of the battle of Mogadishu, and a reminder to me of what a privilege it is to have been able to talk to Rob Phipps about his experience in the battle, some of that conversation captured in this video. Humble and a real quiet professional, the real deal, Rob had just completed a distinguished career as an Army Ranger NCO...

  • @JoW Hindsight bias is always a problem, but I suppose we trust judges to get this right in criminal matters, so perhaps an independent ‘international JWT panel’ could navigate this challenge.

  • In some sense yes, @ilonaH but many scholars think the structural problems with the UN, particularly the Security Council veto, undermines the UN’s ethical status.

  • Indeed ...

  • Great question Brent! Darrel Moellendorf has argued that there should be a category of ‘jus ex bello’ - essentially the idea is to continually evaluate the jus as vellum requirements to see whether continuing to fight is justified.

  • Good question Richard! It strikes me that at the very least the principles of proportionality and last resort are problematic in this case.

  • That raises a great question, Jayson - who should decide when the criteria of JWT are met? The Oxford philosopher and ethicist, Jeff McMahan, has suggested that perhaps there should be an independent body tasked with making those evaluations.

  • Hi Darren. One of the unanswered questions is just how many jus in bello violations there must be, and how severe they must be, for a war that meets the requirements of jus ad bellum to be considered unjust overall. Some would argue that firebombing cities in WWII was sufficiently egregious to make the war unjust on the side of the Allies. What do you think?

  • Hi Ben thanks for your thoughts on this. Even the Falklands war has some ethicists arguing it was unjust - I talk about this in a paper I published a few years ago (2015), 'Epistemic Uncertainty and Excusable Wars' in the Philosophical Forum (journal). If you have access via a university library you could check it out, I'd be interested in your thoughts....

  • @RichardDennehy , thanks for this interesting perspective. You're right that most forms of realism have traditionally presuppose the Westphalian nation-state as the 'black box' basic player in the international realm. This has made realists uncomfortable with addressing the role of non-state actors like terrorists, though of course many have done so. For more...

  • @JoelMcClure thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. FWIW, I agree that there are very significant differences between Pauline theology and stoicism, but we'll just have to put this one in the 'interesting questions to follow up on later' box!

  • Thanks for your contributions this week everyone! Next week - when, if ever, is it right to go to war?

  • Can I push you a little on that James? Can we really separate culture and ethics, do you think?

  • Great book, terrible movie (terrible enough to be a wierd sort of classic)!

  • Thanks for flagging this up Rafael, we'll try to get that sorted out.

  • Thanks for sharing this @JamesO'Hanlon . Interestingly, I remember a survey of attitudes on this issue (which, I apologise, I cannot now locate) which showed that many soldiers believe strongly that they have a responsibility to not leave anyone behind, but at the same time did not want their team mates to risk their lives to come for them if they were the...

  • A subtle and interesting distinction Neil. I take it at some level, because troops are also citizens, the state (and therefore the military) has a basic responsibility to protect them. But under appropriate circumstances I think you are right that that responsibility gives way to a responsibility not to waste their lives, which is appropriate due to their...

  • Hi Sam, that's a very interesting idea, and attractive for several reasons, including the practical point that my students sometimes mix up ethical triangulation and the triangular balance! Two triangles is too many, it seems. I suppose what the triangle is trying to impart is that the choices commanders make distribute risk, whether it's risk to own-forces,...

  • Interesting thought Brent. Military personnel have a duty to disobey illegal orders, arguably have a duty to disobey unethical orders, but do they have a duty to disobey stupid orders???

  • Thanks for sharing that link Paul. It's a great example of an attempt to make the terms of the contract/covenant explicit.

  • Hi David. I look forward to your thoughts on Just War theory, which we get to very soon.

  • We touch on this issue (all too briefly) in the final week of the course

  • Great question Sam, looking forward to what you think after we do JWT.

  • I'm delighted to see you putting ethical triangulation to work Johanna!

  • Hi Mick. Nikki Coleman's PhD thesis, which I co-supervised, digs into this in some depth, in part because - as you rightly say - there has been very little analysis of this concept done. I think she is planning to turn it into a book in the not too distant future.

  • Hi Paul. That’s a really thoughtful point. And yes, I do think the gap between the ethics of war at the level of the state and the morality of individuals and society is a significant fissure - arguably the locus of much moral injury. I am actually working on a book addressing that at the moment.