Ethical Dilemmas in the Global Defense Industry

The defense industry develops, produces, and sells weapons that cause great harm. It operates at the intersection of the public and private sectors, with increased reliance on technology companies. Although such firms exist primarily to serve their host states, they routinely interact with foreign legal systems and diverse cultures. This context creates unique ethical challenges. That being the case, is the defense industry ethically defensible? How should it be regulated? How should it respond to worrisome technological developments such as autonomous weapons systems? How should business be conducted in countries where bribery is the norm? To what extent can this industry's intrinsic ethical problems be overcome? This book addresses such questions, bringing together the diverse perspectives of scholars and practitioners from academia, government service, the military, and the private sector. It aims to inform a discussion about the moral and legal challenges facing the global
defense industry and to introduce solutions that are innovative, effective, and practical.

About the Author:
Daniel Schoeni has been with the U.S. Air Force JAG Corps since 2004, has served as a prosecutor, trial and appellate defense counsel, program counsel, and staff judge advocate, and has deployed twice. As a Language Enabled Airman Program scholar, and he has extensive experience in security cooperation. He is assigned to Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He studied at Brigham Young University (B.A. 2000), the University of Iowa (M.A./J.D. 2003), the University of Nottingham (LL.M. 2011), and George Washington University (LL.M. 2014). Prior to the military, he clerked for the Honorable Jerry Larson of the Iowa Supreme Court. He has published on a variety of subjects, and his writings have earned several awards, including the ABA's Standing Committee on Armed Forces Law's Keithe E. Nelson award and the U.S. Air Force JAG School's Thomas P. Keenan award. He is a Ph.D. candidate (Nottingham) and since 2017 has lectured on EU defense procurement law at King's
College London.

Tobias Vestner researches, teaches, and organizes conferences on the intersection between security policy and international law. He has widely published and as regularly advises governments, international organizations, and private firms. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, a Fellow at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (NATO), and a Non-Resident Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). A former reserve member of the Swiss Special Forces Command, he serves as reserve Legal Advisor at the Swiss Armed Forces Staff. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War and a member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law. Before joining the GCSP, he was Research Affiliate and Global Futures Fellow at Georgetown University and Policy Advisor at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, where he managed political processes with regard to the export
of conventional weapons and participated in the UN negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty.