Building Ethics into CBRNE Security

Abstract

This chapter explores the most effective way to build ethics into CBRNE security. The most obvious approach may appear to encompass generating a list of activities involved in CBRNE security and to develop ethical guidance for each item. But this approach encounters two significant difficulties. First, every decision in CBRNE security has an ethical side and so the list is likely to be extremely long. Second, in this domain ethical issues are often insufficiently distinguished from societal and legal issues: this is liable to obscure important nuances. All this makes the main practical goal of CBRNE ethics – to build ethics into all aspects of CBRNE resilience – a challenging one. In this chapter I argue that the need to support responders in on-the-spot ethical decision-making, amid so much pressure and so many stressors, suggests that organisations should build ethics into CBRNE security by developing an ethos of key ethical values and principles. Staff should be trained in how to operationalise the ethos when making ethical decisions. Finally, I argue that the complexity of CBRNE security – its multi-agency, multi-disciplinary, inter-regional, and international character – requires us to focus on how organisations with divergent ethical positions, ethoses, and cultural backgrounds can cooperate effectively. Such cooperation should provide clarity and reassurance so that CBRNE professionals can make on-the-spot ethical decisions relatively free from doubt as to the legitimacy of their decisions in uncertain cultural contexts.