In this article from the Buddhism and IHL project, Dharmacārin Siṃhanāda uses the dialectical logic of Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy to analyze the nature of military duty, the soldier as a responsible individual, and the soldier in socio-political context. He then proposes a model for the ethical conduct of military operations in accordance with IHL, taking into account the challenges of enforcing compliance with IHL rules, and failures of ethics and law in the case of military atrocities.

Dharmacārin Siṃhanāda is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher. His principal interests are dialectics, Madhyamaka as anti-philosophy and the Yogacara-Madhyamaka synthesis. A Buddhist since 1979, he was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order as Siṃhanāda in 2006. As a secular professional, he has broad cross-sector experience over 40+ years as a researcher, psychometrician, teacher, trainer of trainers, business school lecturer, group facilitator, activist, change agent and management consultant in the field of organizational development. His efforts to cross-fertilise these fields with traditional Buddhist practice include harnessing Madhyamaka as a problem-solving technology.

Please read the article here.