Periodically Project Muse curates a selected bibliography on a hot topic, including sources available in full text in the database.
The most recent bibliography is about “Humanity’s ‘Code Red’ on Climate Change” and it explores the human causes and effects of climate change, and the urgency of action to avert future catastrophe.
The bibliography includes books, articles and special issues, and it can be used as a starting point for a more extensive research on the climate change topic. Do not forget to explore other databases and resources to discover more on this and other topics!
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Project Muse is a prestigious collection of humanities and social sciences journals available in full text. Current issues are available as well as over a decade of backfile for selected journals.
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Every month CIAO Focus highlights a particular topic or theme in the realm of international affairs. This month the focus is on drones.
For some, the final image of the War in Afghanistan is the widely-circulated photograph of the last soldier to depart the country. For others, it is the aftermath of a drone strike in Kabul on August 29th. Originally reported as a military action that eliminated "multiple suicide bombers" and later defended as "righteous" by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it is now known that the attack killed as many as ten civilians, including seven children, in what the head of US Central Command has called a "tragic mistake."
The ethical, strategic, and legal implications of drones, also know as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, have been debated since the first authorized use of drones against leaders of al-Qaeda. Today more US armed forces personnel are being trained as drone operators than air force pilots. According to the Fletcher Security Review—a CIAO partner—the US has been using Remotely Piloted Aircrafts to assassinate terrorist targets since its first RPA strike in Yemen in 2002. Drone policies through Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump have featured both change and continuity. Drone strikes are continuing under the Biden Administration, though at "historically low rates."
Ethically, armed drones offer an "unprecedented ability to reduce [the costs of conflicts] by increasing accuracy, reducing the risks to civilians, and protecting military personnel from harm." Some philosophers and weapons specialists believe drones have a moral advantage over other tools of warfare. The ethical dimension is complicated by the fact that civilian deaths from combat drone operations are almost certainly higher than official reports, with little redress for harm in the aftermath.
Strategically, drones have became the "perfect choice for military usage, especially for intelligence and reconnaissance purposes." But there are plausible costs of drone technology in both the domestic and international sphere. Armed drones are conceivably destabilizing global politics and reopening previously "frozen" conflicts. In addition, while drone warfare is often described as a surgical, precise, and effective counterterrorism strategy, there is evidence that targeted killing with drones has "led to an increase in terrorist group recruitment...[and] empathy for the terrorist group from the local population."
P.W. Singer, a Senior Fellow at New America, provides a useful view into the big-picture legal framework surrounding drones and accompanying military technology: "Whether it is a stone or a drone, technology is merely a tool that you can use for both good and bad purposes."
Explore more resources and reports from the Atlantic Council, Political Science Quarterly, the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, and many other sources.
CIAO searches full-text publications from 300 international publishing institutions, including government research organizations, international think tanks, and scholarly journals. Among the materials included we can find working papers, research projects, conference proceedings, books, journals and policy briefs.