MAW’s 2026 Remembrance Lecture, “The Changing Face of War – Thoughts on the Erosion of Ethics” was delivered by Rowan Williams, Chair of Academi Heddwch Cymru (Wales’s peace institute), and former Archbishop of Canterbury.
You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/qqDOaHhIERE?si=L9OoAwp7-SmFaPHF
Rowan Williams argues that modern warfare has eroded the ethical foundations of just‑war theory, with mechanized and drone tactics normalizing civilian harm. He calls for urgent UN reform, nuclear disarmament, a new Geneva Convention covering cyber and drone attacks, and a democratic culture that safeguards minority voices. The lecture urges activists to build solidarity, trust, and argumentative democracy to create a war‑less world.
Sue Dowell writes:
Those familiar with Williams’ work will know that although widely hailed as an impressive theologian, he doesn’t argue like a theologian but rather appeals to common experience, to an awareness that our/my own welfare is inextricably bound up with and dependent on that of others. Interdependence is more than a desirable ‘add on’ to our understanding of the human condition; it is central to it if we are to remain human in an increasingly troubled and violent world.
Hence a major element is Williams’ writing and thinking has focused on the erosion of patterns of thinking and speaking to and of one another and the world along with those mechanisms – neighbourly networks and civic fraternities-which, until the modern period, offered ‘a sense of integration, of belonging with an entire social body extending far beyond one’s choice or one’s affiliations of interest and “natural” loyalty.
To retrieve what has been if not lost then fatally weakened, Williams believes will require more than good will. It will require anger; anger at what he named “ a recent history of public corruption and barbarity compounded by apathy and narcissism”