63. Dr Ned Dobos - On the unaccounted costs of maintaining a military

The Voices of War

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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