Brief Description
The Ethics of Insurgency explains how guerrillas who pursue national self-determination may justly utilize many unlawful practices of war.
Learn More about the Book
As insurgencies rage, a burning question remains, How should insurgents fight technologically superior state armies? Commentators rarely ask this question because the catchphrase we fight by the rules, but they don't is nearly axiomatic. But truly, are all forms of guerrilla warfare equally reprehensible? Can we think cogently about just guerrilla warfare? May guerrilla tactics such as laying improvised explosive devices (IED), assassinating informers, using human shields, seizing prisoners of war, conducting cyber strikes against civilians, manipulating the media, looting resources, or using nonviolence to provoke violence prove acceptable under the changing norms of contemporary warfare? The short answer is yes, but modern guerrilla warfare requires a great deal of qualification, explanation, and argumentation before it joins the repertoire of acceptable military behavior. Not all insurgents fight justly, but guerrilla tactics and strategies are also not always the heinous practices that state powers often portray them to be."
About the Author
Michael L. Gross is a professor in and the head of the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Israel. His articles have appeared in Political Studies, Social Forces, the New England Journal of Medicine, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Philosophy, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Military Ethics, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and Political Psychology. His books include Ethics and Activism (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Bioethics and Armed Conflict (2006), Moral Dilemmas of Modern War: Torture, Assassination and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and an edited volume, Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century (2013). He serves on regional and national bioethics committees in Israel and has led workshops and lectured on battlefield ethics, medicine, and national security for the US Army Medical Department at Walter Reed Medical Center, the US Naval Academy, the International Committee of Military Medicine, the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and the Medical Corps and National Security College of the Israel Defense Forces.
Review Quotes
1. "The Ethics of Insurgency brings conceptual clarity to a vexed area of military ethics: the ethical permissibility of tactic used by weaker military forces against much stronger, usually state, militaries. It is a provocative and comprehensive exploration of a very complex issue. A valuable contribution to just war scholarship."
Martin L. Cook, Stockdale Chair of Professional Military Ethics, United States Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island
2. "Although in recent years several books concerned with international law, ethics, and contemporary conflicts marginally addressed the issue of just guerrilla warfare, this is without any doubt the first exhaustive academic discussion of the topic. It will definitely be of great interest not only to academics and international organizations officers but particularly to all those, military and civilian, who in their professional capacity are called to take decisions on the battlefield influenced by the perception of the justness of a certain way of conducting guerrilla warfare."
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