Justice at the Margins of War

Justice at the Margins of War fills two important gaps in the literature on the ethics of national security affairs. First, while thinking about the justice of warfare is highly developed, justifications of intelligence activitieswhich can involve lying, manipulation, coercion, stealing and even killing to obtain and defend informationare relatively limited and often conflicting. The authors explore relevant ethical principles and then apply them to specific activitiesincluding agent recruitment, human and technical methods of espionage and counterintelligence, interrogational torture, analysis, covert action, sabotage, and assassination. Second, ethical work on interstate conflict occurring in a gray zone between war and peace has only just begun. Gray zone operationsthe use of low-level lethal and sublethal means to weaken othersare not new. But technological developments have increased the forms, intensity, and significance of this realm of competition. This volume defines the gray zone and discusses moral challenges associated with various operationsincluding lethal, economic, information, election, legal, and cyber.