ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the three key paradigms that have differing ethical orientations to force: realism, liberalism and neoconservatism. Force has also been a concern of the national security agenda in the form of debates about strategy, deterrence, defence and limited wardebates that have rarely been couched in self-consciously ethical terms. Because of the perceived imperatives of national survival many strategists and national security planners have chosen to assert an amoral perspective that rejects or suppresses ethical considerations. Making global security the goal of ethical reasoning about force places the institution of war as such into question, even if there may be circumstances where the use of force or deterrent capabilities can be conditionally justified. Deterrence rests on communication, signalling, and perception between adversaries, and in the classical theory assumes competition between rational actors who value similar interests and share assumptions.
