Table Of ContentS O F T WAR
Just war theory focuses primarily on bodily harm, such as killing,
maiming, and torture, while other harms are often overlooked. At the
same time, contemporary international conflicts increasingly involve
the use of unarmed tactics, employing “softer” alternatives or
supplements to kinetic power that have not been sufficiently
addressed by the ethics of war or international law. Soft war tactics
include cyber warfare and economic sanctions, media warfare and
propaganda, as well as nonviolent resistance as it plays out in civil
disobedience, boycotts, and “lawfare.” While the just war tradition
has much to say about “hard” war – bullets, bombs, and bayonets –
it is virtually silent on the subject of “soft” war. Soft War: The Ethics
of Unarmed Conflict illuminates this neglected aspect of international
conflict.
Michael L. Gross is Professor and Head of the School of Political
Science at the University of Haifa, Israel. He specializes in applied
normative theory, military and medical ethics, asymmetric war, and
non-kinetic warfare. He is the author of Ethics and Activism
(Cambridge University Press, 1997); Bioethics and Armed Conflict
(2006); Moral Dilemmas of Modern War (Cambridge University
Press, 2010); Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century (with Don
Carrick, 2013); and The Ethics of Insurgency (Cambridge University
Press, 2015). He has lectured widely on battlefield and military
medical ethics at defense centers in Israel, the United States, and
Europe.
Tamar Meisels is a political theorist and Associate Professor in the
Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University. She earned her
D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University in 2001. Her primary
research and teaching interests include liberal nationalism, territorial
rights, and the philosophical questions surrounding war and
terrorism. She is the author of Territorial Rights (2005 and 2009) and
The Trouble with Terror: Liberty, Security, and the Response to
Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Contemporary
Just War: Theory and Practice (2017).
S OF T WA R
The Ethics of Unarmed Conflict
Edited by
Michael L. Gross and Tamar Meisels
Foreword by
Michael Walzer
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
4843/24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi – 110002, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the
pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international
levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107132245
DOI: 10.1017/9781316450802
© Cambridge University Press 2017
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the
provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any
part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University
Press.
First published 2017
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc.
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-107-13224-5 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-107-58478-5 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of Contributors
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Soft War: The Ethics of Unarmed Conflict
Michael L. Gross and Tamar Meisels
Definitions and Meta Views
1 Defining War
Jessica Wolfendale
2 Coercion, Manipulation, and Harm: Civilian Immunity
and Soft War
Valerie Morkevičius
Economic Warfare
3 Reconsidering Economic Sanctions
Joy Gordon
4 Conditional Sale
Cécile Fabre
Cyber Warfare, Media Warfare, and Lawfare
5 State-Sponsored Hacktivism and the Rise of “Soft” War
George Lucas
6 Media Warfare, Propaganda, and the Law of War
Laurie R. Blank
7 The Ethics of Soft War on Today’s Mediatized
Battlespaces
Sebastian Kaempf
8 Abuse of Law on the Twenty-First-Century Battlefield: A
Typology of Lawfare
Janina Dill
Nonviolence
9 Unarmed Bodyguards to the Rescue? The Ethics of
Nonviolent Intervention
James Pattison
10 How Subversive Are Human Rights? Civil Subversion
and the Ethics of Unarmed Resistance
Christopher J. Finlay
11 Bearers of Hope: On the Paradox of Nonviolent Action
Cheyney Ryan
Hostage Taking and Prisoners
12 A Cooperative Globalist Approach to the Hostage
Dilemma
Ariel Colonomos
13 Kidnapping and Extortion as Tactics of Soft War
Tamar Meisels
Conclusion
14 Proportionate Self-Defense in Unarmed Conflict
Michael L. Gross
References
Index
Contributors
Laurie R. Blank is a clinical professor of law and the Director of
the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University
School of Law, where she teaches the law of armed conflict and
works directly with students to provide assistance to
international tribunals, non-governmental organizations, and law
firms around the world on cutting edge issues in humanitarian
law and human rights. Professor Blank is the co-author of
International Law and Armed Conflict: Fundamental Principles
and Contemporary Challenges in the Law of War, a casebook
on the law of war (with G. Noone, 2013). She is also the co-
director of a multi-year project on military training programs in
the law of war and the co-author of Law of War Training:
Resources for Military and Civilian Leaders (with G. Noone,
2013).
Ariel Colonomos is Senior Research Fellow at the National
Center for Scientific Research (CNRS – Centre de Recherches
Internationales) and Research Professor at Sciences Po in
Paris, where he teaches courses on international relations
theory and the ethics of war. He has published in the areas of
international relations, the ethics of war, and political sociology.
His recent books include Selling the Future – The Perils of
Predicting Global Politics (2016), Le Pari de la guerre: guerre
preventive, guerre juste? (Denoël, 2009; transl. The Gamble of
War: On Justifying Preventive War, 2013), and La Morale dans
les relations internationales: Rendre des comptes (Odile Jacob,
2005; transl. Moralizing International Relations: Called to
Account, 2008).
Janina Dill is Assistant Professor of Normative International
Theory at the Department of International Relations at the
London School of Economics and Political Science and a
research fellow of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed
Conflict (ELAC) at the University of Oxford. She was previously
a departmental lecturer at the University of Oxford, where she
also served as Associate Director of ELAC and as Deputy
Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of
War (CCW). Janina Dill’s research focuses on international law
and ethics in international relations, specifically in war. She is
interested in how legal and moral imperatives interact with
strategic thinking and technological developments to explain
conduct in war and the development of conflict more generally.
Her latest book is Legitimate Targets? Social Construction,
International Law and US Bombing (Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
Cécile Fabre is a senior research fellow at All Souls College,
Oxford, and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of
Oxford. She has written extensively on distributive justice,
democracy, and the rights we have over our own body. She has
just completed a two-volume project on the ethics of war and
peace – Cosmopolitan War (2012) and Cosmopolitan Peace
(2016) – and is currently working on the ethics of economic
statecraft.
Christopher J. Finlay completed his Ph.D. at the Department of
Modern History, Trinity College Dublin, in 2000 and he is
currently Reader in Political Theory at the University of
Birmingham, where he works chiefly on philosophical issues
