Moral victories : the ethics of winning wars / edited by Andrew R. Hom, Cian O'Driscoll, and Kurt Mills.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"What does it mean to win a moral victory? Ideals of just and decisive triumphs often colour the call to war, yet victory is an increasingly dubious proposition in modern conflict, where negotiated settlements and festering violence have replaced formal surrenders. In the Just War and strategic studies traditions, assumptions about victory also underpin decisions to go to war but become more problematic in discussions about its conduct and conclusion. So although winning is typically considered the very object of war, we lack a clear understanding of victory itself. Likewise, we lack reliable resources for discerning a just from an unjust victory, for balancing the duty to fight ethically with the obligation to win, and for assessing the significance of changing ways of war for moral judgment. Though not amenable to easy answers, these important questions are both perennial and especially urgent. This book brings together a group of leading scholars from various disciplines to tackle them."--Back cover.

Introduction: Moral victories: the ethics of winning wars / Cian O'Driscoll and Andrew R. Hom -- Traditions: the changing character of victory. 'Let God Rise Up!' The bible and notions of victory in war / John Kelsay -- Carl von Clausewitz and moral victories / Sibylle Scheipers -- Defeat as moral victory: the historical experience / Beatrice Heuser -- Victory though the heavens fall? Unlimited warfare as theme and phenomenon / James Turner Johnson -- Revisionist just war theory and the impossibility of a moral victory / Chris Brown -- Challenges: the problem of victory in contemporary warfare. Victory and the ending of conflicts / Eric Patterson -- The ethics of unwinnable war / Dominic Tierney -- The scars of victory: the implied 'finality' of success in war / Luke Campbell and Brent J. Steele -- Winning humanitarian interventions? Problematizing victory and jus post bellum in international action to stop mass atrocities / Kurt Mills -- Neither victors nor victims: royal Wootton Bassett and civil-military relations in the twenty-first century / David Whetham -- Cui Bono: moral victory in privatized war / Amy E. Eckert -- Justice after the use of limited force: victory and the moral dilemmas of jus post vim / Daniel R. Brunstetter -- Conclusion: The normative, political, and temporal dimensions of moral victories / Andrew R. Hom, Cian O'Driscoll, and Kurt Mills.