Guns. Lies. Guilt. These are some of the topics discussed between The Heritage Foundation fellow Charles “Cully” Stimson and Tulane University Law School professor Frédéric Sourgens at the “Ethics of War” panel on Monday evening.
Around 25 students and professors gathered at the law school on Monday, March 24, to hear Sourgens, director of the Tulane Energy Law Center, and Stimson, former advisor to George W. Bush’s U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, discuss the ethical dilemmas associated with war.
The discussion was hosted by two Tulane Law students: Avery Nolen, member of the progressive American Constitution Society, and Haley Fuller, president of Tulane’s branch of the conservative Federalist Society.
“The four principles under the law of war: necessity, distinction, proportionality … and then the doctrine of humanity,” Stimson said.
Stimson spent three years on active duty for the United States Navy.
His most notable time working for the government, however, was as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs during the Bush administration, during which Guantánamo Bay, a detention facility created to hold international terrorist suspects, was created. It became a worldwide spectacle due to allegations of human rights abuse, namely the torture of the detainees, by U.S. officials.
The late Rumsfeld, Stimson’s former boss, served as secretary of defense during the Iraq War, infamous as a witch hunt for weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
“I’m reminded of something that Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to say to his close group of political appointees,” Stimson said. “He would say, ‘And what next?’ Somebody would propose an idea and he’d say, ‘And then what?’”
Sourgens highlighted the need to avoid civilian displacement in armed conflict in order to avoid its complex aftermath.
“If you can minimize the need for displacement,” he said, “people are in a much better position to begin with. The moment that you have refugees, you start having a real difficulty. We see that politically as a destabilizing factor in all manners of places.”
On the same issue, Stimson examined the differences between moral, ethical and legal obligations in war.
“Let’s transport ourselves back in time to the 1940s, because it’s a little easier to analyze that than thinking about Russia or … Palestine,” he said. “What obligations did the United States and our allies have to rebuild Germany and help with displaced persons? What obligations ethically or morally or legally did we have to help with the Japanese people after we dropped the bomb? …Legally, none, arguably. Ethically, pretty strong case.”
Stimson said dealing with the aftermath of a conflict is “where diplomacy starts.”
The speakers explored the “David vs. Goliath” dilemma in war with nuance.
To pick on someone who isn’t your own size, Sourgens said, “in some regards [is] flat out illegal.”
In examining the ethical side of the complex, Stimson presented another hypothetical.
“What if Eritrea, little, tiny country in Africa, acquired the bomb, and they had a deranged leader?”
What would the U.S. be obligated to do, Stimson asked, if the nuclear weapon had the capability to reach the U.S., or if there was a threat to do so?
“So I don’t necessarily buy into the big country, little country thing,” he said.
The U.S. military has recently been the subject of controversy for providing weapons to allied countries that then go on to use American weapons in war crimes.
“It’s not illegal to produce military weapons. It’s not illegal to sell them to other countries,” he said. Unless the country selling the weapons knows that it will be used for war crimes, Stimson said, they are not culpable.
Recently, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anton Demokhin claimed that generative AI is being used to distribute misinformation and target it to Ukrainians, highlighting a new phenomenon in warfare due to AI’s capacity to create misinformation.
“Misinformation is part of warfare. It’s been part of warfare since the Bible and before Jesus Christ,” Stimson said. “I would be worried about the manipulation of AI that is so credible that it could lead a country to the brink of war.”
Stimson proposed another possible scenario: What if a deepfake video was distributed in which a world leader says, “Nuclear bombs are leaving in seven minutes.”
“Today, with AI, it could have incredibly dire consequences,” he said.
