The Use of Force: Political and Moral Criteria

The course is designed to foster reflection, debate, and decision-making across the lines of politics, strategy, and ethics. It will focus on normative discourse about war and peace. Primary attention will be paid analytically and historically to the 'Just-War Ethic'.

Topics covered include:

• The morality of war: poles of the debate
• The use of force and the response to terror
• Ethics in the nuclear age
• Humanitarian intervention
• Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, and Darfur: The road to genocide and beyond
• Russian-Ukrainian war: choices and consequences
• The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Measuring just cause and just means
• New pattern of interventions and the role of the United Nations

The course develops students' ability to analyze high-stakes moral dilemmas, navigate complexity, and take ethically grounded action. Through "case-in-point" learning and group work, students confront simulated crises requiring rapid evaluation, moral judgment, and decision-making. Emphasis is placed on values, virtues, and the exercise of moral agency in creating public value.

Students will learn to:

• Assess moral dilemmas under sudden adversity.
• Discuss and critique ethical arguments.
• Understand and appreciate moral disagreements.
• Make informed moral judgments leading to action while weighing risks.
• Build moral and ethical literacy.