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My guest today is Dr Ned Dobos, who is a Senior Lecturer in International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. He joined me to discuss his more-recent book, ‘Ethics, Security, and the War Machine: the True Cost of the Military’. Some of the topics we covered are:
Ned’s background and entry into military ethics
Explanation of Ned’s thesis, which asks whether justification of war necessarily justifies maintaining a military
Discussion on military as an ‘insurance policy’
The challenge of the classic security dilemma
Fear induced aggression and the Pre-emptive Strike Experiment
Discussion on Russian invasion of Ukraine
Military conditioning as potentially morally injurious
How we ensure accountability for possible moral injury
The Civil-Military gap and the ‘Veteran Superiority Complex’, and why they matter
The risk of military coups and what makes one more likely
Accounting for overconfidence, Einstellung Effect and other cognitive biases when considering war
Gene Sharp and the post-military defence system