Ethics Under Fire: Challenges for the Australian Army

By Tom Frame, Albert Palazzo

Published by UNSW Press
RRP $39.99 in paperback • ISBN 9781742235493

This book is part of a series produced by the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society (ACSACS) – a UNSW Canberra Research Centre at ADFA with the expectation that titles will become standard reference works. It has a distinguished list of contributors. It aims to ask questions and raise issues that the Australian Army cannot ignore.

As Tom Frame puts it bluntly, the ‘decision to kill people and to destroy their homes demands a compelling and convincing explanation’ and yet he contends that even now, he is still not convinced that recruits or officer trainees are given an adequate grounding in the whole ethics enterprise.

Beginning with ‘Why Ethics Matter’, the book covers a range of topics including

• ethics in multi-national peacekeeping;
• ethics in special operations;
• operating within an NGO;
• the ethics of tactics and
• the future battle space.

If it raises more questions than it answers, that may be regarded as a success for most importantly it aims to promote discussion and debate on this important topic.