Military Ethics

Academics working on military ethics and serving military personnel rarely have opportunities to talk to each other in ways that can inform and illuminate their respective experiences and approaches to the ethics of war. The workshop from which this paper evolved was a rare opportunity to remedy this problem. Our conversations about First Lieutenant (1LT) Portis’s experiences in combat provided a unique chance to explore questions about the relationship between oversight, accountability, and the idea of moral risk in military operations. (...) In this paper, we outline a particular experience of 1LT Portis’s that formed the basis of our discussions, before elucidating the ethical issues this experience raised. In particular, we see 1LT Portis’s experience as, first, illustrative of the problem of moral risk – when military personnel are placed in situations of moral temptation. The problem of moral risk, we propose, is best understood through the framework of the military’s duty of care. Second, we see his experience as highlighting tensions within the dominant moralized warrior model of the military profession. What we call a toxic warrior identity — a distorted form of the moralized warrior identity — can negatively affect the attitudes of military personnel toward rules, policies, procedures, and accountability mechanisms, particularly in relation to non-combat related roles and duties and when leaders must choose between competing bureaucratic demands. We see 1LT Portis’s experience as illustrative of these tensions, yet his experiences also highlight important concerns about the impact of increasing bureaucratic demands on military functioning. In the conclusion, we address the need to balance concerns about toxic warrior identity with legitimate criticisms of overly demanding bureaucracy and suggest avenues for further research on this issue. (shrink)

Recently criticisms against autonomous weapons were presented in a video in which an AI-powered drone kills a person. However, some said that this video is a distraction from the real risk of AI—the risk of unlimitedly self-improving AI systems. In this article, we analyze arguments from both sides and turn them into conditions. The following conditions are identified as leading to autonomous weapons becoming a global catastrophic risk: 1) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) development is delayed relative to progress in narrow (...) AI and manufacturing. 2) The potential for very cheap manufacture of drones, with prices below 1 USD each. 3) Anti-drone defense capabilities lagging offensive development. 4) Special global military posture encouraging development of drone swarms as a strategic offensive weapon, able to kill civilians. We conclude that while it is unlikely that drone swarms alone will become existential risk, lethal autonomous weapons could contribute to civilizational collapse in case of new world war. (shrink)

In international law and the ethics of war, there are a variety of actions which are seen as particularly problematic and presumed to be always or inherently wrong, or in need of some overwhelmingly strong justification to override the presumption against them. One of these actions is assassination, in particular, assassination of heads of state. In this essay I argue that the presumption against assassination is incorrect. In particular, I argue that if in a given scenario war is justified, then (...) assassination of the enemy state's leader is also justified, and in fact ought to be pursued as a means short of war. I defend this position on both consequential and deontic grounds, arguing that assassination is both more discriminate than war and serves to harm only those most responsible for the situation which justifies war in the first place. I conclude by arguing that a norm of assassination, far from being a destabilizing force, as some have argued, would in fact serve to reinforce international norms of rights and respect for persons by making clear that tyrants and would-be oppressors cannot hide behind military forces or notions of sovereignty to protect themselves from judgment and retribution. (shrink)

in Scott Gates and Simon Reich, eds., Building Knowledge About Children in Armed Conflict (forthcoming in the University of Pittsburgh’s Ridgway/Ford security studies series).

Warfare ideologies are as old as human civilization. By now, they have grown into an important and extended research field, including works analyzing the justification of war in ancient Indian epic...

This small volume from Claudia Hauer results from an interesting and important intersection of her professional experiences. Trained in Classics, Hauer has spent most of her career at St. John’s Co...

Note: Content within this article regarding moral injury, sexual trauma, and mental health may be distressing to some people.Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan involving Coalition troops are over but sol...

This article is a result of a unique project that brought together academics and military practitioners with a mind to addressing difficult moral questions in a way that is philosophically careful,...

I offer eight arguments against the Doctrine of Double Effect, a normative principle according to which in pursuing the good it is sometimes morally permissible to bring about some evil as a side-effect or merely foreseen consequence: the same evil would not be morally justified as an intended means or end.

George Lucas, an internationally renowned authority on military ethics, passionately and persuasively submits the argument in his latest book that military strategy must surpass the outdated Clause...

A wide-ranging compendium of incisive essays, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition promises to be an important contribution to the just war dialogue. Writte...

Neither non-lethal violence nor psychochemical weapons are new concepts. History provides examples of attempts to use these both to limit the scope of war and to turn mind-altering compounds into w...

This book-cover's announcement of a “new theory” of just war is likely just publisher's editorial hyperbole. The author, however, does not in the end require such outside assistance. From the outse...

Cian O’Driscoll’s Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War covers a vast range of materials, discussing the idea of victory and its relationship to just war theory. The idea of victory raises s...

Fostering a culture and climate of respect is a point of emphasis for the United States military. Yet, despite its clear commitment to the value of respect—and, more specifically, respect for human...

The just-war framework neatly distinguishes between jus ad bellum, the criteria that address political leaders’ decisions for waging war, and jus in bello, the criteria that address soldiers’ condu...

Advances in AI are powering increasingly precise and widespread computational propaganda, posing serious threats to national security. The military and intelligence communities are starting to discuss ways to engage in this space, but the path forward is still unclear. These developments raise pressing ethical questions, about which existing ethics frameworks are silent. Understanding these challenges through the lens of “cognitive security,” we argue, offers a promising approach.

Human nature, regardless of how we perceive it, whether from an ethical or psychological standpoint, is arguably such that it prevents the overwhelming majority of people from killing other humans....

From their origins in Greek and Latin, the words ethics and morality have always contained an in-built ambivalence. Are they primarily concerned with individual character-building and virtue, or ar...

Air Force General Curtis LeMay: the name alone instills fear in many. The key architect behind the firebombing of Tokyo, and later the ardent supporter of a U.S. military airstrike during the Cuban...

Academics working on military ethics and serving military personnel rarely have opportunities to talk to each other in ways that can illuminate their respective experiences and approaches to the et...

Training on the Law of armed conflict employs different rationales to motivate soldiers and to induce their compliance with LOAC rules. Of these, none is as controversial, or as potentially...

Senior service colleges provide professional education to prepare military and government civilians for public service at the senior levels of strategy and policy. Inclusive in the program of study...

This article contends that certain types of Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) are susceptible to Hume’s Law. Hume’s Law highlights the seeming impossibility of deriving moral judgments, if not all evaluative ones, from purely factual premises. If autonomous weapons make use of factual data from their environments to carry out specific actions, then justifying their ethical decisions may prove to be intractable in light of the said problem. In this article, Hume’s original formulation of the no-ought-from-is thesis is evaluated in relation (...) to the dominant views regarding it (viz., moral non-descriptivism and moral descriptivism). Citing the objections raised against these views, it is claimed that, if there is no clear-cut solution to Hume’s is-ought problem that presently exists, then the task of grounding the moral judgements of AWS would still be left unaccounted for. (shrink)

This article responds to Anh Le’s critique of my Journal of Military Ethics article entitled “The Morality of Retributive Targeted Killing.” Le argues that while retribution can in theory function...

A goal of modern war ought to be the minimization of innocent death and injury, while at the same time maximizing the potential to decisively defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as is possible. As the techniques for warfighting have evolved, a growing trend of reliance on sophisticated technology has followed. Likely, autonomous systems will increasingly play a role¾lethal and non-lethal—in future wars. Much of the current debate surrounding such autonomous systems—autonomous weapons systems (AWS) to be exact— is “pre-implementational” (...) and potentially lags the political and military realities in the. Nations and non-nation state groups are actively pursuing the possibility of deploying such systems on the battlefield. The “pre-implementational” nature of these discussions risks making any one of them irrelevant as these nations continue to move ahead with development. As such, philosophers, military tacticians, political leaders, and other researchers in the field of artificial intelligence ethics must “get ahead of the curve” and examine what the battlefield and the laws of armed conflict ought to look like when—not if— such systems are deployed. Supporting this move from “pre-implementation” to “post-implementation” this paper makes a normative claim about the nature of the relationship between innocents on the battlefield and combatants, given certain pre-conditions are met. I argue that, if and only if autonomous weapon systems reach a point in their development where they are capable of being both more discriminating in their target selection and more proportionate in their response to threats, then innocents on the battlefield1 (as a social kind) have a claim-right to not be unjustly harmed against both sets of combatants, claiming that AWS be used in place of human soldiers. (shrink)

“Fear and I were born twins together,” said Hobbes, alluding to the Spanish armada-borne scare of 1588. The year 2001 birthed a similarly synergistic pair, the attacks of 9/11 and this journal, Jou...

Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) have not gained a good reputation in the past. This attitude is odd if we look at the discussion of other-usually highly anticipated-AI-technologies, like autonomous vehicles (AVs); whereby even though these machines evoke very similar ethical issues, philosophers' attitudes towards them are constructive. In this article, I try to prove that there is an unjust bias against AWS because almost every argument against them is effective against AVs too. I start with the definition of "AWS." Then, (...) I arrange my arguments by the Just War Theory (JWT), covering jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum problems. Meanwhile, I draw attention to similar problems against other AI-technologies outside the JWT framework. Finally, I address an exception, as addressed by Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins and Bradley Strawser, who realized the unjustified double standard, and deliberately tried to construct a special argument which rules out only AWS. (shrink)

What proper role should considerations of risk, particularly to research subjects, play when it comes to conducting research on human enhancement in the military context? We introduce the currently visible military enhancement techniques (1) and the standard discussion of risk for these (2), in particular what we refer to as the ‘Assumption’, which states that the demands for risk-avoidance are higher for enhancement than for therapy. We challenge the Assumption through the introduction of three categories of enhancements (3): therapeutic, preventive, (...) and pure enhancements. This demands a revision of the Assumption (4), alongside which we propose some further general principles bearing on how to balance risks and benefits in the context of military enhancement research. We identify a particular type of therapeutic enhancements as providing a more responsible path to human trials of the relevant interventions than pure enhancement applications. Finally, we discuss some possible objections to our line of thought (5). While acknowledging their potential insights, we ultimately find them to be unpersuasive, at least provided that our proposal is understood as fully non-coercive towards the candidates for such therapeutic enhancement trials. (shrink)

A wide-ranging compendium of incisive essays, Responsibility and Restraint: James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition promises to be an important contribution to the just war dialogue. Writte...

Before they can commit their states to war, leaders who believe that war is necessary must first secure public commitment to collective action and sacrifice. The chief instrument for achieving this...

Are field medics morally permitted to treat unjust combatants? I distinguish between two kinds of enemy combatants: reactivated ones who will rejoin the fight, and deactivated ones who will not rej...

This article critically engages with Christian Braun's article “The Morality of Retributive Targeted Killing” from the Journal of Military Ethics. Braun argues that retributive targeted killing can...

Military personnel encounter analogies meant to help them understand their role and tasks. One such depicts military “sheepdogs” protecting ordinary-citizen “sheep” from predator “wolves.” But simp...

This book sheds light on various ethical challenges military and humanitarian health care personnel face while working in adverse conditions. Contexts of armed conflict, hybrid wars or other forms of violence short of war, as well as natural disasters, all have in common that ordinary circumstances can no longer be taken for granted. Hence, the provision of health care has to adapt, for example, to a different level of risk, to scarce resources, or uncommon approaches due to external incentives or (...) requirements. This affects the practice of health care as well as its ethics. This book offers a panoramic overview on various challenges healthcare faces in extraordinary situations and provides new insights from practitioners’ as well as from academic scholars’ perspectives. (shrink)

While there is a budding literature on media ethics in the light of characteristic sub-Saharan moral values, there is virtually nothing on wartime reporting more specifically. Furthermore, the literature insofar as it has a bearing on wartime reporting suggests that embedded journalism and patriotic journalism are ethically justified during war. In this essay, I sketch a prima facie attractive African moral theory, grounded on a certain interpretation of the value of communal relationship, and bring out what it entails for the (...) ways journalists should report on war. My aims are the normative ones of showing how this Afro-communal ethic can provide a unitary foundation for a wide array of plausible conclusions about reporting on war, and, in particular, can avoid objectionable implications such as support for embedded and patriotic journalism. (shrink)

How can military personnel be prevented from using force unlawfully? A critical examination of typical methods and the suitability of virtue ethics for this task starts with the inadequacies of a purely rules-based approach, and the fact that many armed forces increasingly rely on character development training. The three investigated complexes also raise further questions which require serious consideration – such as about the general teachability of virtues. First, the changing roles and responsibilities of modern armed forces are used to (...) refute the notion that timeless, “classic” military virtues exist, for example physical courage. With regard to today’s missions, virtues of restraint seem more necessary. Reflecting on the four interrelated and less military-specific cardinal virtues of courage, wisdom, temperance and justice could bring the military and civil society closer together. At the same time, this would be a logical step towards promoting personality development. Respect is one example of such a “contemporary” inclusive virtue that some armed forces have adopted into their canon of values. Apparently, however, it often refers only to members of one’s own organization. And it is no less inappropriate to use it to justify moral relativism or excuse immoral practices, such as the widespread sexual abuse of Afghan boys by men in positions of power (“boy play”). Finally, the essay asks about the general suitability of a virtue-based approach in ethical education, since social psychological research has shown that situational factors strongly influence behavior. The research findings do not render such an approach worthless, but they should be integrated into military personality training. (shrink)

Until recently most militaries tended to see moral issues through the lens of rules and regulations. Today, however, many armed forces consider teaching virtues to be an important complement to imposing rules and codes from above. A closer look reveals that it is mainly established military virtues such as honour, courage and loyalty that dominate both the lists of virtues and values of most militaries and the growing body of literature on military virtues. Although there is evidently still a role (...) for these traditional martial virtues, it is equally evident that they are not particularly relevant to, for instance, military personnel operating drones. This chapter looks into the ethics of unmanned warfare from the perspective of military virtues and military ethics education, and addresses the question of what we need to solve that just-mentioned misalignment: 1) a new set of virtues; 2) a different interpretation of the existing virtues; or 3) a different approach altogether, that is, an alternative to teaching virtues? That we have to think about such questions is at least partly because unmanned systems bring risk asymmetry in war to a new level, making warlike virtues such as physical courage by and large obsolete. The last section of this chapter therefore addresses the question: to what extent does the possibility of riskless warfare makes drone use ‘virtue-less’? (shrink)

Marc LiVecche concludes this important book thus, My hope is that we may begin to unburden warfighters from unnecessary burdens of guilt. At the very least, in distinguishing actions that issue in...