Abstract
This chapter introduces to the main topic of the volume, namely the influence of the changing nature of warfare on the provision of medical care and the ethical challenges that occur. It presents the main ideas of relevant concepts such as asymmetrical warfare, hybrid warfare, and complex emergencies before illustrating the ethical challenges that new forms of warfare create for military and humanitarian health care providers. Examples of ethical challenges include embedding medical personnel in combating forces, questions regarding the treatment of detainees, the need to uphold medical neutrality, and pitfalls of using medicine to non-medical ends. The chapter concludes with a synopsis of the volume.
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Notes
- 1.
The term “hybrid war” is notoriously under-defined. See our discussion in Sect. 1.1.2 below.
- 2.
An overview on how modern modes of warfare challenge the application of IHL can be found in Pfanner, T. (2005), ‘Asymmetrical warfare from the perspective of humanitarian law and humanitarian action’, International Review of the Red Cross, 87, 149–74.
- 3.
An overview on the history of the concept “hybrid warfare” can be found in Tenenbaum, E.l. (2015), ‘Hybrid Warfare in the Strategic Spectrum: An Historical Assessment’, in Lasconjarias, G. and Larsen, J.A. (eds.) NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats. Rome: NATO Defense College, Research Division.
- 4.
Other definitions of “complex emergencies”: “relatively acute situations affecting large civilian populations, usually involving a combination of war or civil strife, food shortages and population displacement, resulting in significant excess mortality.” Toole, M.J. (1995), ‘Mass population displacement. A global public health challenge’, Infectious disease clinics of North America, 9, 353–66. “[S]ituations in which mortality among the civilian population substantially increases above the population baseline, either as a result of the direct effects of war or indirectly through increased prevalence of malnutrition and/or transmission of communicable diseases, particularly if the latter result from deliberate political and military policies and strategies (national, subnational, or international).” Salama, P., Spiegel, P., Talley, L. and Waldman, R. (2004), ‘Lessons learned from complex emergencies over past decade’, The Lancet, 364, 1801–13.
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Acknowledgements
This book would is the result of the continued engagement of a number of people. Our sincere thanks are due to the contributors who carefully prepared and revised their chapters. Without their efforts, this book would not exist.
Financial support for the work on this volume was granted by the Centre of Competence for Military and Disaster Medicine of the Swiss Armed Forces.
We would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript, as well as the team from Springer for their support throughout the conception and production of this volume.
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Messelken, D., Winkler, D.T. (2022). Health Care in Contexts of Risk, Uncertainty, and Hybridity – Introduction to the Volume. In: Messelken, D., Winkler, D. (eds) Health Care in Contexts of Risk, Uncertainty, and Hybridity. Military and Humanitarian Health Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80443-5_1
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