Have efforts to make war more ethical — to ban torture and limit civilian casualties — only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? That is the controversial argument Professor Samuel Moyn makes in his new book Humane. Moyn, a professor at Yale University and Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute, looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless, he argues.

To discuss his thesis, Moyn will be joined by Princeton's Gary Bass, author of Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. Their conversation will be moderated by QI's Kelley Beaucar Vlahos.

This summer marked the 5th anniversary of the ruling by a tribunal convened by the U.N. Commission on the Law of the Sea in response to a case submitted by the Philippines against the People’s Republic of China. To note the occasion, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken reiterated the claim that China was “threatening freedom of navigation” and urged Beijing to “reassure the international community that it is committed to the rules-based maritime order.” 

Blinken’s charge raises more questions than it answers: What is the rules-based maritime order? How can the United States best work with countries throughout the Indo-Pacific region to strengthen and improve that order? Is it possible to work with, rather than against, China in bolstering the rules-based maritime order, and if so, how?  A recent report — Promoting Peace and Stability in the Maritime Order Amid China’s Rise — addresses these questions, laying out a strategy to reduce security tensions, enhance crisis management, and build a more inclusive maritime order in the region and beyond. 

Please join a distinguished group of maritime security experts in the Western Pacific for a discussion exploring and debating the analysis and recommendations of this report and offer their own ideas for promoting peace and stability at sea. Panelists include George Washington University's Mike Mochizuki, La Trobe University's Bec Strating, Center for Strategic and International Studies' Gregory Poling, and Brooking's Shuxian Luo. QI's Michael Swaine will moderate the discussion.