Soft War The Ethics of Unarmed Conflict

Just war theory focuses primarily on bodily harm, such as killing, maiming, and torture, while other harms are often largely 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 non-violent 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.

Introduction Michael L. Gross and Tamar Meisels; Part I. Definitions and Meta Views: 1. Defining war Jessica Wolfendale; 2. Coercion, manipulation, and harm: civilian immunity and soft war Valerie Morkevicius; Part II. Economic Warfare: 3. Reconsidering economic sanctions Joy Gordon; 4. Conditional sale Cécile Fabre; Part III. Cyber Warfare, Media Warfare, and Lawfare: 5. State-sponsored hacktivism and the rise of 'soft' war George R. Lucas, Jr; 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 21st-century battlefield: a typology of lawfare Janina Dill; Part IV. Nonviolence: 9. Unarmed bodyguards to the rescue? The ethics of non-violent 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 non-violent action Cheney Ryan; Part V. 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; 14. Conclusions: proportionate self defense in unarmed conflict Michael L. Gross.

Michael L. Gross is Professor in 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, 1997), Bioethics and Armed Conflict (2006), Moral Dilemmas of Modern War (Cambridge, 2010), Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century (with Don Carrick, 2013,) and The Ethics of Insurgency (Cambridge, 2015). He has lectured widely on battlefield and military medical ethics at defense centers in Israel, the US 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 the University of Oxford 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, 2009) and The Trouble with Terror: Liberty, Security, and the Response to Terrorism (Cambridge, 2008).