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The Just War Theory and the Ethical Governance of Research

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Abstract

This article analyses current trends in and future expectations of nanotechnology and other key enabling technologies for security as well as dual use nanotechnology from the perspective of the ethical Just War Theory (JWT), interpreted as an instrument to increase the threshold for using armed force for solving conflicts. The aim is to investigate the relevance of the JWT to the ethical governance of research. The analysis gives rise to the following results. From the perspective of the JWT, military research should be evaluated with different criteria than research for civil or civil security applications. From a technological perspective, the boundaries between technologies for civil and military applications are fuzzy. Therefore the JWT offers theoretical grounds for making clear distinctions between research for military, civil security and other applications that are not obvious from a purely technological perspective. Different actors bear responsibility for development of the technology than for resorting to armed force for solving conflicts or for use of weapons and military technologies in combat. Different criteria should be used for moral judgment of decisions made by each type of actor in each context. In addition to evaluation of potential consequences of future use of the weapons or military technologies under development, the JWT also prescribes ethical evaluation of the inherent intent and other foreseeable consequences of the development itself of new military technologies.

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Notes

  1. Risk assessment projects have also been funded on the basis of the constitutional government’s responsibilities for occupational health and safety, environment and public health.

  2. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/470-750045?OpenDocument.

  3. This view is contested. To many international lawyers, legitimate preventive self-defence is a contradictio in terminis, even those that like Grotius accept humanitarian intervention.

  4. See also http://www.homelandsecurity.org/hsireports/DHS_ST_RL_Calculator_report20091020.pdf.

  5. In current international law, apart from self-defence, a mandate from the Security Council is required for military action to be legitimate. In the future, European integration could lead to the transfer of authority the national to the EU level. A more thorough discussion on an adequate interpretation of the ethical concept of “legitimate authority” goes beyond the scope of this article.

  6. Exactly what should be the responsibility of the state and what should be left to private parties is a political question that is answered differently in different countries and at different times. There is also a debate on democratising science: giving groups in society other than the scientific community and industry a say in research policy decisions. This debate goes beyond the scope of this article.

  7. This criterion Just Intent should not be interpreted in a psychological way, but as the explicit or implicit purpose of the military technology in question (e.g. the apparent intent of a precision weapon is to limit collateral damage as much as possible, whereas the apparent intent of WMD is to indiscriminately create as many victims as possible).

  8. A commonly accepted requirement of new weapons developed today is that their effects should be scalable.

  9. C.f. literature on codes of conduct for research, dual use life sciences and nanotechnology.

  10. E.g. in several EU funded projects including HIDE www.hideproject.org, RISE www.riseproject.eu and ETICA http://www.etica-project.eu/.

  11. C.f. BTWC: http://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/C4048678A93B6934C1257188004848D0/$file/BWC-text-English.pdf and CWC: http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/.

  12. This presumed aversion of defence contracts in universities is contested by others.

  13. This section largely discusses trends in nanotechnology for civil and dual use applications that have been discussed in public literature, internet sources and events. Explicitly military nanotechnology was outside of the mandate of the project in which these information sources were reviewed. See for reviews of trends in military nanotechnology (Altmann 2006; Simonis and Schilthuizen 2006).

  14. ICT R&D in Europe is located completely in the civilian sector because military demands are not more stringent than civilian.

  15. www.nanowerk.com.

  16. Dutch newspapers reported on this discussion, e.g. Trouw: http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4324/Nieuws/article/detail/1177074/2009/12/28/rsquo-RIVM-stond-er-te-vaak-alleen-voor-rsquo.dhtml and HP/De Tijd, http://test.hpdetijd.nl/2009-11-09/zeven-vragen-over-de-mexicaanse-griep.

  17. E.g. EDRI website, Digital Civil Rights in Europe, http://edri.org/.

  18. On 22 March 2011: http://ec.europa.eu/european_group_ethics/index_en.htm.

  19. René von Schomberg, intervention at ETICA-EGAIS-STOA workshop on IT for a Better Future, European Parliament, 31 March 2011, http://www.etica-project.eu/.

  20. “Dual use” is traditionally a term that implies that certain technologies or other resources can both be used for civil and military applications. However, in philosophical debates, “dual use” can also mean that a technology can be used for good and bad purposes, where the distinction between military and civil uses is not made (C.f. van der Bruggen 2011).

  21. Discussion at RISE/HIDE workshop on the 9th and 10th of December 2010.

  22. In classical JWT, this would be the legitimate government of a sovereign state. Under International Humanitarian Law, legitimate authority may not be limited to national governments, but may also be attributed to some specific supranational bodies. A discussion on the right interpretation of the ethical concept “legitimate authority” goes beyond the scope of this article.

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Acknowledgments

The collection of empirical data on technological trends, foresight, policymakers and stakeholder discussions and ethical and social science literature was supported by the EU in the ObservatoryNano project no. 218528. Comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article by Marcel Becker and Wim Pelt and an anonymous reviewer are gratefully acknowledged.

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    Ineke Malsch

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Malsch, I. The Just War Theory and the Ethical Governance of Research. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 461–486 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9357-8

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