The Obama administration claims that drone strikes are directed at known leaders of Al Qaeda. The majority of those killed in these attacks, however, are insurgents from the Taliban and other locally based militant movements. At the drone warfare conference, Peter...
Mary Ellen O’Connell In the wake of 9/11 the United States adopted a new approach to countering terrorism, an approach made possible by two developments: adding missiles and bombs to unmanned drones and asserting the legal right to use these weapons outside combat...
David Cortright The nature of armed conflict has changed dramatically in recent decades. Gone is the old paradigm of industrial interstate war. Instead, conflicts have risen sharply within and beyond states. In the world today there are 37 armed conflicts (as measured...
Andrew J. Bacevich When it comes to America’s role in the world, the 2012 presidential campaign was notable chiefly for what was left unsaid. Other than uttering platitudes or striking postures aimed at particular domestic constituencies, neither candidate had much to...
David Cortright Old thinking retains its grip at the Pentagon. The vested interests that profit from excessive military spending remain a formidable lobby. Congress sustains nuclear postures that are inherited from the Cold War and continues to fund unneeded weapons...
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite Four senior U.S. statesmen — George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn — captured world attention in January 2007 with their call for “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” in the Wall Street Journal. Their premise is...
Robert C. Johansen International law and time-honored ethical traditions prohibit the targeting of noncombatants. Yet in most recent conflicts, more civilians have been killed than soldiers. What can we do to increase the influence of legal and ethical norms...
Maryann Cusimano Love General David Petraeus was in the hot seat during his Senate confirmation hearings in Washington this summer, and it had nothing to do with the heat wave outside. While senators were confirming Petraeus as commander of U.S. and international...
Gerard F. Powers In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter on nuclear weapons, The Challenge of Peace, which is still considered a seminal analysis of the ethics of nuclear weapons. The bishops concluded that most...
Mary Ellen O'Connell The United States is using combat drones — remotely piloted missile aircraft — to target terrorist leaders in the volatile border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This continues despite the high number of civilians killed. Credible estimates find...
David Cortright This article includes video content. (4:00) The goal of defeating Al Qaeda and preventing global terrorist strikes is a just cause. But current U.S. war policies in Afghanistan will not achieve that goal. In fact, they may make matters worse. U.S....
Michael Desch The United States’ military response to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan following 9/11 was morally justified. It was an act of self-defense against a dangerous Taliban regime in cahoots with the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the...