Countries ask that their military forces be ready to deploy across the world and do harm to those that threaten their national interests. These same countries also ask that these warriors return home, reintegrate as contributing members of society, and reestablish bonds with families – as if they can turn a switch on and off. It then asks soldiers to repeat that process again and again and again, until the soldier eventually puts the uniform away. Thus, it is vital that those charged with protecting national interests – those soldiers at the sharp end of the spear – are morally fortified to harm the harmful without hesitation and cherish the loving without reservation. This requires an understanding of applied military ethics, and this paper advocates for a doubling down on miliary ethics education.

The operational environment is growing in complexity due to advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous weapons systems. This development in machine-human teaming, especially with respect to lethal automation, obfuscates the relationship between actors and actions, thus challenging moral considerations. Yet, soldiers must make these determinations at pace with operations. AI has accelerated the tempo of warfare, requiring commanders to assume more risk – not only operationally but also morally. Ethics education is a tool to develop a soldier’s moral competence. Like most military tools, it is best to train on this tool before the situation arises when a soldier must execute. Thus, a foundational understanding in the ethics of war can be part of a soldier’s toolkit to deal with the moral complexity of the battlefield. For the purposes of this article, I use “ethics” to mean the principles and structures that govern a society or organisation’s determination of right and wrong. I use “moral” to mean an individual’s rule of conduct for determining what is right. Thus, ethics would relate to a collective, such as a military or armed group, and morals relates to the individual.

Currently, there are some that argue against military ethics – seeing this as something soft or that gives adversaries a competitive advantage. Yet, this position leaves soldiers vulnerable to the challenges of combat and reintegration – left to navigate these challenges without the vocabulary or framework to analyse and discuss the challenges. Therefore, ethics is not “about them.” It is about us: those of us charged with executing our country’s security objectives – often at night, in extreme weather, and accompanied by just a few of our comrades. Ethics education provides a moral armouring for soldiers to do their jobs and return home as whole individuals.[1] Conversely, there are others that seek to apply complex and highly restrictive individual ethics to wartime. This asks that warriors not only be technical and tactical experts in their craft, but that they also have solutions that moral philosophers continue to debate. As Aristotle captures this could be “philosophic but not practical wisdom,” ultimately claiming that these things may be “remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless.”[2] As Michael Walzer provides “the moral life of a combat soldier is not a research assignment.”[3] Thus, this article advocates for an enhanced focus on applied military ethics education, centred on the Just War Tradition, that gives soldiers the tools to ethically do their jobs and return home as whole individuals.

The Just War Tradition has guided the ethics of war for millennia. It forms the pragmatic compromise between the realist position, that states should only be guided by self-interest, and the pacifist position, that war is inherently wrong.[4] While the ethics of war date back to ancient Egypt,[5] Just War has been mostly developed between Greco-Roman, such as Cicero, and Western Catholic writers, such as Saint Augustine.[6] The Tradition provides normative guidance on when it is just to resort to war, just conduct in war, and ending wars justly. While the criteria are far from settled, there are some general agreements.

For a just resort to war, Just War provides that there must be a just cause, such as aggression, self-determination, or humanitarian intervention; declared by a legitimate authority, such as a president, prime minister, or monarch; be proportional, meaning that the good the war seeks to bring about outweighs the likely damage the war will cause; have exhausted peaceful alternatives, such as diplomatic engagements or sanctions; be for a right intention, meaning that the just cause is not a ruse for an ulterior motive; and have a reasonable chance of success, which recognizes that if soldiers are to be sent in harm’s way there must be a chance that they will accomplish what they set out to do.[7] Resorting to war is generally considered to be the prerogative of states, and the requirement here is on political officials and senior most military officers. There are exceptions to the state presumption when seeking self-determination against colonial domination, alien occupation, or racist regimes or when fighting for humanitarian intervention to prevent crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide.

Just conduct in war includes discrimination and proportionality. Discrimination means that only combatants must be targeted, and civilians should be immune from targeting. Proportionality holds that the means must not be excessive even for lawful military targets.[8] Underlying these criteria are the two conflicting interests of military necessity and humanity. Military necessity allows one to target lawful military objectives to achieve the mission. Humanity requires that civilians and civilian objects be protected. When one cannot be certain that a target is a lawful military objective, there is a presumption that it is a civilian or civilian object. These requirements are for individual combatants and their supervisors.

The ethics of ending wars does not have something akin to a Geneva Convention. Thus, the ethical considerations of ending wars are relatively newer and less settled. Generally, though, the considerations for ending wars justly include accountability, compensation, and protection.[9] Those that committed war crimes – be it by an unjust resort to war or unjust conduct in war – should be held accountable. Those that were damaged by the war should be restored by the unjust aggressor. Those combatants that adhered to the laws of war, and those civilians that may have cooperated with the occupation should not be prosecuted. Additionally, there may be a proportionality and chance of success criteria in ending wars. The assistance provided after war should not hurt more than those being helped. For instance, Walzer recognizes that it would have made little sense to tax Afghans to help rebuild Manhattan after the attacks on September 11^th.[10] He also added that the United States (U.S.) should not attempt to install a Swedish style democracy in Afghanistan (not claiming that the U.S. sought this) – not because it was unjust, but because it was unlikely to succeed.[11]

This paper identified two related issues: how we conduct ourselves in the battlespace, and how we accept or justify our actions when returning home. Educating professional militaries on the ethics of armed force, using the Just War Tradition, gives soldiers the vocabulary and framework to discuss and analyse what they are experiencing. This provides soldiers with moral armour to accomplish the mission – at home and abroad, harming the harmful and cherishing the loving. The battlefield and the world are evolving fast, but Just War has withstood the test of time. Educating soldiers on just uses of military force and just conduct in war can help ensure we deploy soldiers to do achieve security objectives and return them home as whole individuals.

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this paper are solely that of the author and do not represent the U.S. Department of War, U.S. Army, or the Command and General Staff School.