Military ethics can mean a wide range of things. It can encompass all aspects of military conduct, from writing performance reviews on subordinates, to relations of military personnel with their civilian leaders, to issues related to war. For the purposes of this entry, however, the discussion will be limited to ethical questions concerning the use of military force for the redress of political disputes. As war becomes increasingly dominated by high technology weaponry (at least in the developed countries), there is an intimate link between developments in science and technology and the questions of appropriate military use of those advances as addressed by military ethics.

Fundamental Issues

Traditionally military ethics has emphasized an approach to just war thinking that has roots in classical and early-Christian sources. In post-Reformation and post-Enlightenment Europe, this ethical and religious tradition found secular and legal codification in the Laws of Armed...