Establishing
our Professional Ethic
Major
Dan Cazier
At
present, the American military profession lacks a professional ethic.[1] Or more accurately, we don’t know what our
professional ethic is. While recent
years have witnessed much meaningful discussion about the ethics of the
profession,[2]
these discussions have directed themselves only to particular aspects of an
overarching professional ethic. There
doesn’t seem to be much discussion within our profession as to what a
professional ethic itself is, what it does, where it comes from, and what it
commits us to. There is not even
universal understanding of the need for a formally recognized expression of the
professional military ethic. This essay
undertakes to remedy these shortcomings.
In this paper, I argue the need for a formal expression of the
professional military ethic and propose a framework for exploring and
expressing our ethic.
Before
I attempt to make a case for our needing a formal expression of the
professional military ethic, it may be worth establishing that we don’t already
have one. Given the abundant discussion
of the ethics of our profession, many suppose that we already have a formal
expression of our ethic. Perhaps I can
get away with simply denying that we have any statement of our ethic and then
leave it to those who disagree to offer evidence of such a statement. It really isn’t clear what more one could do
to prove the non-existence of something.
But I think I can still provide greater support for my claim. First, casual discussion with other soldiers
suggests that if you were to ask any two soldiers – of any rank or position –
what our professional ethic is, they would not likely be able to formulate a
coherent response. But presuming that
they did, there would be little similarity in their responses. This alone implies that we lack any publicly
acknowledged ethic. Second, more
insightful members of our profession might offer evidence of a written
expression of our professional ethic by alluding to the Constitution, U.S.
Code, the UCMJ, various creeds,[3]
Army Values, etc. But while all of these
may allude to certain moral commitments of our profession, none of these
documents offers a direct account of what those commitments are. And, arguably, the abundance of sources that
could be cited constitutes strong evidence of the lack of any common source
document. Third, I cite the abundance of
articles coming out of the Army War College over the past two or three decades
lamenting the absence of and calling for the establishment of a formal expression
of our professional ethic.[4] Finally, I note that the newly established
Army Center for the Professional Military Ethic has made one of its initial
goals the determination of what the profession’s ethic is. It is hard to imagine that we might really
have a functional expression of the professional military ethic but that it
somehow has escaped the attention of this center.
One might question whether a written
expression of our ethic is really necessary.
After all, there is no single authoritative written account of ethics
writ large, and we still manage to get along reasonably well most of the
time. Surely conscience alone is
sufficient. Furthermore, if there is
already plenty of intelligent discussion within the profession about our moral
commitments, why should we suppose a written expression of our ethic to be
essential? Instead, isn’t this actually
a dangerous undertaking? Doesn’t writing
it out risk trivializing our professional ethic, making it into just another
piece of professional propaganda?
In
response, I acknowledge that there is indeed already an abundance of dialogue
within the profession about its ethic.
But an abundance of dialogue is no better than a shortage if that
dialogue is not harmonious and well structured.
In place of a clear account of our professional ethic, we presently have
an assortment of vague, and possibly even incompatible, accounts of what the
soldier should be and/or what he should do in particular situations. At best, this discussion touches only on
particular moral issues affecting our profession, confusing those specific
issues for the ethic itself and leaving the ethic itself unaddressed. At worst, such accounts create a cacophony of
voices that leaves the professional just as directionless[5]
as if there were no discussion at all.
They risk generating greater confusion and/or eroding confidence that
proper direction can ever be found.
As
for the argument that perhaps we should not even desire to give written
expression to our professional ethic, I suspect there is something right about
this argument. It supposes that giving
written expression to the ethic constitutes trying to turn something which is
fundamentally principled and abstract into something that is formalistic,
concrete, definitive, and legalistic. It
risks implying that the full extent of our moral commitments can be subsumed in
a list of prescriptions and proscriptions.
It risks diverting the attention of the professional from reflection on
his moral obligations to simply referencing a published list of acceptable
behavior. These dangers are indeed
real. I suspect that many codes of
professional ethics do exactly this. But
this is not a necessary consequence of giving expression to our professional
ethic. I will have more to say on this
later. At this point, I simply
acknowledge the concern and express my confidence that these dangers can all be
avoided.
The Need for a
Written Expression of the Professional Military Ethic
Perhaps
the first of several drawbacks to our not already having a written expression
of our professional ethic is that it permits great confusion as to our ethical
obligations. Indeed, much of the present
discussion of the ethics of the military profession is fundamentally flawed,
lacking in philosophical richness or even conceptually absurd. Perhaps the most common example of this in
military ethics today is the attempt to subordinate ethical decision making to
character development.[6] This approach presumes that if we just become
the right kind of people, then we will make the right kind of judgments. Francis Lieber, the author of the Lieber Code
– our first written account of the rules of war, epitomized this sentiment in
an 1846 pamphlet titled “The Character of a Gentleman.” A gentleman, he argued, never has to think
about what to do. He already knows what
to do. Right action flows naturally from
proper character. But while character
development is undoubtedly indispensible to moral judgment, it is far from
sufficient on its own. Men of high
character and sound judgment routinely disagree about the moral obligations of
the profession.
Another
error commonly made in determining our professional ethic is attempting to
deduce it from law, heritage or culture, or even oaths and creeds. These approaches all seem to make the same
fundamental error. They conflate what is with what ought to be.[7] They attempt to derive professional ethics –
a subset of ethics writ large – from somewhere other than ethics writ large,
from somewhere independent of ethics writ large. It seems conceptually confused to attempt to
derive a subset of ethics from something other than ethics. To be fair, these other sources from which
they attempt to derive professional ethics are not entirely immune to the
influence of ethics writ large. But my
concern is that they are not sufficiently dependent upon it either. It just doesn’t seem possible that we can
derive genuine ethical obligations from some source which is not itself
dependent upon ethics.
Second
on my list of concerns about our lack of written expression of our professional
ethic is that we can’t really even claim status as a profession without such a
statement. Michael Davis, a Senior
Fellow at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Center for the Study of Ethics
in the Professions, argues that one of the hallmarks of a profession is not
just that it marshals a unique skill set to advance a particular social good,
but that it seeks to do so in a certain way – “beyond what law, market, and
morality would otherwise require.” In
other words, its very methodology reflects certain moral commitments. To ensure proper conduct within its ranks, a
profession establishes a number of standards, concerning – for example – the
education and skill required to enter the profession. But a profession is concerned about more than
just the competence of each member; it is concerned about the actual practice
of the profession – in other words, the conduct of the profession. For this reason, the standards of a bona fide
profession must address the ethical expectations of each member. A profession which has not yet established
such a written statement of such expectations, argues Davis, is not actually a
profession at all. It “is at best a
profession in utero.”[8]
To
be fair, the Uniform Code of Military Justice probably fulfills our basic
requirement for a written code of ethics.
But it falls far short of giving robust expression to our genuine moral
commitments. In fact, while a code of
ethics may be a prerequisite to being recognized as a profession, it alone
cannot provide the rich moral guidance our profession needs. Our UCMJ, as with any code of ethics,
exemplifies the kinds of shortcomings already alluded to. A code of ethics is fundamentally a legal
document. So it invites legalistic interpretation. Nothing is wrong unless it is specifically
prohibited in the code; nothing is obligatory unless it is specifically
mandated in the code. A legalistic code
invites us to aspire to nothing higher than the minimal requirements of
legality. It doesn’t inspire us to
aspire to any supererogatory conduct. In
fact, because it omits discussion of ideals, it doesn’t inspire us at all. To the extent that Davis is right, our status
as a profession is probably not really in jeopardy. Our UCMJ is surely adequate to secure that
status. But the principle behind this
requirement also suggests that our professional status improves as we better
identify and promote our genuine moral obligations. Giving written expression to a more robust
ethic than that reflected in the UCMJ would surely make us more
professional. Instead of being slave to
a list of mandates and prohibitions, we would become morally autonomous – i.e.,
capable of rendering appropriate moral judgment on our own.
My
third concern over our lack of written ethic is that it is morally
irresponsible not to define our ethic.
Whether or not we formally identify our ethic, ethics already applies to
our profession. Morality places demands
upon all of us, independent of our recognizing those demands. As moral agents, each of us individually
already has obligations to each other and to mankind in general. While joining a profession certainly alters
those responsibilities, it is not as if those responsibilities only arise once
they are specified in writing.
Publishing our understanding of our professional ethic neither increases
nor diminishes our genuine moral responsibility. So inasmuch as we already have moral obligations,
we are just being morally irresponsible if we decline to identify those responsibilities. For a profession, the only way to identify
our moral obligations is to give them written expression. Until we express our professional ethic in
writing, we as a profession don’t really know what our ethic is.
Fourth
– and perhaps the strongest of all the reasons I offer here – if our profession
doesn’t understand its ethic, then the individual soldier surely doesn’t
either. And there is little prospect of
our educating him or her on this ethic if we have not yet determined our
ethical obligations. Without a written
expression of our ethic, we lack an account of right action within the context
of our profession. Without knowing what
constitutes right action, we can’t teach moral decision making. We can’t even engage in meaningful character
development because we won’t know what the man or woman of character should do
in our professional environment. It was
noted earlier that many people make it through life adequately well without any
focused study of ethics or any written expression of ethics writ large. So why should we be concerned that military
professionals will be unable to do the same without a written expression of our
ethic? Why should we presume that he is
in need of extensive additional ethics training?
I
think there are many good responses to this challenge. I’ll offer only one or two of what I presume
to be the stronger ones. It is true that
most of us muddle through life adequately well with only a basic understanding
of ethics. But that is because we really
did receive extensive conditioning during our formative years in what might be
called “common-sense” morality. This
preparation equipped us adequately to deal with the vast majority of routine
situations we encounter. But any
reflection upon the kind of hard ethical cases philosophers love to explore
demonstrates that our common sense moral training is inadequate to guide us
through the exceptional cases. And our
profession deals extensively with exceptional cases. We are a profession that engages in acts not
otherwise generally recognized as morally acceptable. Our professional practice is to perform some
of the most severe acts of harm.
“Muddling” through life “adequately well” is surely insufficient. The moral consequences of our acts are too
high for us to be cavalier about our moral performance. In order to do morally what is generally
taboo, we need much more moral education and conditioning than that afforded
the average citizen.[9]
Finally,
the absence of a written version of the professional military ethic hampers
further exploration of that ethic. I
have deliberately resisted referring to our ethic as something we develop. Instead, we simply “give expression” to it or
“develop a written statement” of it.
This reflects my presumption that morality in general is not ours to
develop, but only to discover.[10] If this is true, then why should we presume
professional ethics – a subset of ethics writ large – to be any different? Inasmuch as ethics is a study of morality,
the claims we make about ethics should be seen as theories, comparable to those
espoused in other academic disciplines.
They are subject to scrutiny – to confirmation or refutation – as we
seek a better understanding of this discipline called ethics. But if we don’t publish our understanding of
our ethical obligations, then we offer up nothing to be scrutinized. Thus our correct theories can’t be confirmed
and our incorrect ones can’t be refuted.
Without establishing common terms for discourse, the best we can likely
hope for is moral stagnation or even moral paralysis. But it is more likely that we will see moral
confusion and corruption of the kind we have witnessed in military campaigns
throughout history, perhaps nowhere more infamously today than at Abu Ghraib[11].
What a Professional
Ethic is
Having
highlighted some of the problems of not having a written expression of our
professional military ethic, I now turn to a discussion of what a professional
ethic is. I do this by briefly exploring
the nature of morality in general. Up to
this point, I have largely used the terms “ethics” and “morality”
interchangeably. I will now briefly
distinguish the terms in order to illuminate the nature of professional
ethics. Morality constitutes a code of
ideal conduct. It comprises the set of
ideal principles which should govern human behavior. Inasmuch as morality is a set of ideals, the
specific content of the moral code is relatively unknown to us. Ethics is the study of morality. Again, morality is a set of principles of
ideal conduct; ethics is an academic discipline devoted to discovering those
principles.[12] Technically speaking, what we seek is an
expression of professional morality. But
since the term “professional ethic” is in greater vogue, I will continue to use
that term throughout this paper.
Inasmuch
as morality is a set of ideals, the contents of morality are not up to us to
decide. We do not create morality. Instead, we seek to determine what principles
already are the right ones to govern our conduct by. While our tools of investigation are
relatively crude – experience, intuition, reflection, etc. – we presume that we
can make progress in discovering the contents of the moral code. But we cannot simply stipulate the moral
code. Morality does not bend to our will
this way. The ideals upon which morality
is based have objective worth. With this
understanding, we should be able to better understand that a traditional code
of professional ethics is inadequate. It
is a creation, rather than a discovery.[13] As I have already pointed out, one of the
problems of a traditional code of ethics is that it is inherently legal. It expresses the minimal ethical conduct the
profession requires and intends to enforce with legal sanction. But morality proper demands much more of us. And it is clear that there are many moral
acts that we should not attempt to compel with legal sanction. Furthermore, codes of ethics are behavior
oriented (versus principle based). They
have to be in order to be enforceable.
Principles are too subject to interpretation (and misinterpretation) to
be the form of expression for an enforceable code of ethics. But morality is principle-based. Additionally, codes of ethics are specific. Yet morality remains somewhat obscure to
us. So any attempt to express the
content of our professional morality should be principle-based. We should be wary of any approach to
professional ethics that attempts to establish it by definitive prescriptions
and proscriptions of specific conduct.
The
fundamental function of an expression of a professional ethic is to provide
action guidance to the profession. It
should enrich the profession’s understanding of its moral obligations. It should help the professional determine
what is morally required of one in his particular professional role. It should provide an account of right action
within the context of the profession.
But this cannot take the form of a list of prescribed and proscribed
behaviors. The range of possibilities
simply defies enumeration. Instead, an
expression of the professional military ethic must enable the soldier to
determine adequately on his own what is morally appropriate in any number of
diverse situations. It needs to educate
his moral judgment.[14] To accomplish this, a statement of the
professional military ethic must illuminate the moral principles that govern
the profession of arms. And it must help
the professional understand how those principles interact, particularly when
they periodically seem to come into conflict.
The
moral insight necessary to render sound moral judgment requires considerable
study. For an expression of the
professional military ethic to foster such insight, it must not merely
illuminate the moral principles that govern our profession. It must also promote reflection upon and
dialogue about those principles. Only in
this way can it invite the professional to truly understand and internalize the
moral principles governing our profession.
So any functional expression of the professional military ethic should
be in terms of dialectic. It should be
open to challenge. If the expression is
flawed, then subjecting it to challenge allows it to be amended. If it is not flawed, then subjecting it to
challenge allows the soldier to become genuinely convinced of its propriety (inasmuch
as it proves resistant to challenge).
Beliefs that are not subjected to challenge are mere superstitions. Only those that are subjected to challenge
attain the status of convictions.
Since
professional morality constitutes the set of moral principles that should
govern the conduct of a profession, any expression of the professional military
ethic needs to be presented in a way that will improve the conduct of the
profession. In a profession as diverse
as ours (i.e., ranging from young, minimally educated enlisted soldiers to
highly educated senior officers),[15]
this is no small challenge. For an
expression of our ethic to be accessible to junior soldiers, it will likely
have to be simple and concise.
Otherwise, it won’t be understood.
And it won’t be remembered. And
yet a simple, concise expression of our ethic can’t possibly do justice to the
richness and complexity of morality.
This is one of the problems we witness with the Army Values today. Although they are quite simple and concise,
it is not really clear to anyone exactly what those values commit us to.[16] So for an expression of our ethic to be
functional, it must also be fairly comprehensive. It must not stop at simple expression of
values or even overarching principles.
It needs to help the professional understand what those values and
principles commit him or her to. And
beyond this, it must also be persuasive.
In other words, it must be philosophically defensible. It must be something that the honest and
responsible inquirer can find reason to adopt.
This
presents a considerable challenge. How
do you balance concision against completeness?
A concise version is easily remembered, but won’t likely yield
sufficient insight to guide soldiers through the tough cases. How do you balance the need for simplicity
against the need to be persuasive (assuming that persuasion requires greater
thoroughness)? A simple version is
easily understood, but can’t generate genuine moral conviction.
I
suspect that the only way to achieve the balance indicated above is for the
expression of the ethic to be layered.
In other words, it should be expressible at various levels, with each
level increasingly more detailed than the last.
The most basic level would reflect the simplicity and concision appropriate
to junior soldiers. The deepest level
would reflect the rich philosophical dialectic essential to determining whether
the expression of the ethic is appropriate.
As soldiers mature, they would progress in their education from a basic
understanding of the ethic to a more thorough understanding of it. The expression of the ethic should also be
somewhat topical (or “modular”). In
other words, to the extent possible, it ought to allow the professional to
inquire further into individual aspects of the professional ethic. Not all elements of it will resonate equally
with all professionals at the same time.
The Source of the
Professional Military Ethic
Having
attended already to the question of what a professional ethic is and how it
ought to be expressed within our profession, I turn now to the question of
where our ethic comes from. I suggested
previously that the common presumption that the professional military ethic
derives from our heritage or culture, law, or oaths & creeds is
philosophically flawed. To make clear
where our ethic really does come from, it is worth my saying a bit more about
this. First, I take it that our heritage
or culture cannot be the primary source of our ethic without our devolving into
ethical relativism. And I trust that the
implausibility of ethical relativism is already sufficiently evident that I
need not say much about it. While I
accept that our culture can influence our ethic, I presume that it can only do
so to roughly the same degree that it affects ethics writ large. It cannot be the primary source of that
ethic. Only after discovering the
primary source of our ethic can we discern what degree of influence culture can
have on our ethic.
Law
is a little more challenging. Since the
military itself is a product of law (i.e., the Constitution) and since its
relationship to the people is a matter of law (again, the Constitution), it
would seem inevitable that law governs the ethics of our profession. And yet I hesitate to assume that it does
play such a substantial role. Why I
resist this cannot be fully explained yet.
The best I can do now is to foreshadow some points I have yet to
make. First, it doesn’t seem possible
that ethics writ large could derive from law.
On the contrary, it seems certain that law derives from morality. It reflects those elements of morality which
are so indispensable to the existence of a civil society that we are willing to
enforce them with severe sanctions.
Despite Martin Luther King Jr.’s assertion (and St. Augustine’s before
him) that “an unjust law is no law at all,” all formal law generates
obligation. And yet, if a law is wrong,
then our obligation to it remains a legal one only. The weight of our moral obligation may compel
us to refuse it[17]. If the law is right, then our moral
obligation to do those acts prescribed by law is supplemented with a legal one.[18]
Determining
that morality writ large does not derive from law is not sufficient to
demonstrate that professional morality does not derive from law. After all, if both law and professional
morality derive from morality writ large, then perhaps professional morality
does so via the medium of specific legal arrangements. I am quite receptive to this suggestion. It acknowledges that professional ethics must
derive from the same substance as do ethics in general. But before embracing it wholesale, I caution
that the laws through which our professional ethics derive must themselves be
ethically permissible. And I further
caution that law is fundamentally a cruder instrument than is ethics. Law is subject to imperfections which we
presume moral principles to be immune to.[19] When law and ethics come into genuine
conflict, I take it that our ultimate obligation is to ethics, not law. The very definition of ethics makes it
impossible for us to interpret ethics as wrong and law as right in such
conflicts.
The
problem with seeing oaths and creeds as a source of our professional ethic is
that they presume to reflect our
ethic. They couldn’t be both the source
of and a reflection of our ethic. Again,
as I did with law, I must make some allowances here. Insofar as promises generate moral
obligations and our oaths constitute the most solemn of promises, they surely
generate moral obligations. I am willing
to admit this, but I restrict it to the arena of only those acts which were
already morally permissible. In other
words, I take it that an oath to do a morally permissible act makes that act
now morally obligatory. Similarly, an
oath to refrain from certain morally permissible (but not obligatory) acts
would make performance of those acts morally wrong. But I don’t imagine that an oath to do a
morally impermissible act could make it permissible. Neither can I imagine that an oath to refrain
from doing a morally obligatory act could make it acceptable to refrain.[20]
If
oaths and creeds cannot form the basis of our professional ethic, we might ask
whether ethos can. We find ethos
an increasingly common topic element of discussions of our ethic today,
presumably because of the prominence of the Warrior Ethos in the Soldier’s
Creed. Predictably, it can do no more
ethical work than can oaths and creeds.
Given the similarity of the term ethos
to ethics, I fear that many readily
conflate the two. Aside from a shared
etymological heritage, ethos and ethics have little in common. Ethics
is the study of right and wrong. It
derives from immutable characteristics of human nature. Ethos
reflects the spirit of an organization, or the spirit that an organization
seeks to inculcate among its members. It
derives from the shared attitude or goals of the organization. There is no tie between the two terms such
that an ethos need be ethical. And even an ethos that seeks to be ethical is subject to scrutiny to determine
whether it is in fact so. Ethics itself is not subject to such
scrutiny. It would make no sense to ask
whether ethics is ethical. What we seek
when we pursue a professional ethic is a better understanding of the principles
which should determine our conduct,
not the spirit or mentality which does
influence our conduct.[21]
The Professional
Military Ethic and the Identity of the American Soldier
Conspicuously
absent from most discussions of our professional ethic is significant direct
attention to the role our profession plays in society. Morality imposes certain requirements upon
each of us. The exact nature of those
requirements is a product of our individual roles and abilities. Since most humans have many roles and
abilities in common, morality imposes similar requirements on all of us. But to the extent that our individual roles
and abilities differ even slightly, we each incur slightly different
responsibilities (or maybe degrees of
responsibility).[22] A profession constitutes a group of people
unified by their distinctive role and abilities. Naturally, then, members of a profession will
have moral obligations which differ in part from those of the rest of
society. These obligations will reflect
the unique role and abilities of that profession. And since the unique abilities of a
profession are generally a product of its unique role, we can likely focus on
just the role a profession fills in society to explore its moral obligations.
Without
saying a lot more about this here, I take it that a professional role generates
moral requirements approximately the same way a promise does. Acts which are otherwise morally
impermissible cannot be made morally right by virtue of one’s professional role
any more than immoral acts can be made obligatory by making a promise to do
them.[23] This is a controversial assertion which I do
not undertake to defend here. I simply
suggest that adopting a professional role constitutes an implied promise to
society that they can expect certain performances from you.[24] And insofar as professions generally have a
monopoly on certain performances, the fact that all others are restricted from
those acts makes it even more important that the professional performs those
acts he has implicitly professed he would.
The
American soldier is commonly taken to carry four unique identities, or
roles: 1) a servant of the nation, 2) a
warrior, 3) a leader of character, and 4) a member of a profession.[25] For any of these identities genuinely to
spawn any moral commitments requires first that these identities be morally
acceptable. For this reason, I suggest
that we revise our identity as a “warrior” to instead be a “just warrior.” The term “warrior” is roughly equivalent to
“fighter.” It isn’t clear that there are
any ethical implications to being a warrior other than to not do it very often,
since war seems generally to be a pretty bad thing. But if we clarify the role as being a “just
warrior,” then we can more readily see that the role is morally acceptable and that
certain moral principles will govern that identity.
I
suggest that this framework – viewing our professional ethic in terms of our
professional identity – facilitates our investigation into the moral
commitments of our profession.
Reflection on the ethical implications of each component of our
composite identity will reveal moral principles which should guide the conduct
of our profession. Further reflection
upon those principles will yield secondary moral principles. Reflection on the points of intersection
between the four different elements of our composite identity may well yield
further primary moral principles of our profession just as reflection on the
points of intersection between primary principles will yield additional
secondary principles. To be clear, the
moral principles which govern our profession are not up to us to choose. They are a product of morality writ
large. They are an application of
transcendent moral values to our particular professional role, or identity.
Without
attempting to flesh out the fundamental moral principles associated with each
identity, I will briefly explore some of those associated with the first
identity listed above – servant of the nation – as an example of how this
framework facilitates inquiry. Before
doing so, I want to recap the characteristics of a functional expression of the
military ethic as explored above, in order to show how this approach satisfies
each. First, an expression of the
professional military ethic should espouse professional moral principles, not
dictate specific acts. The range of
possible behaviors simply defies codification.
And command of the right principles enables the professional to
recognize right action on his own.
Second, an expression of the ethic should be viewed as dialectic, not a
final verdict. As a subset of ethics
writ large, the ethic is not ours to create.
Our task is to investigate what morality requires of those in our unique
professional position. Any expression of
our ethic should reflect that inquiry and be amenable to reformulation as our
understanding grows.[26] This dialectic is essential both because
ethics itself is an inquiry and because this kind of dialectic is an essential
part of improving moral judgment.
Finally, an expression of the ethic should accommodate study at varying
levels of complexity, to reflect the diverse population encompassed by our
profession.
Returning
now to our example, we first consider whether the professional identity of
“servant of the nation” is morally acceptable.
As long as the nation remains morally legitimate,[27]
it doesn’t appear that there should be any problem with being a servant of the
nation. So we next consider the moral
obligations of professing oneself a servant.
The most obvious requirement is that one must actually serve. More specifically, one who professes to serve
incurs an obligation to serve effectively.
(At a minimum, one must serve more effectively than those who do not
profess to serve or else one can hardly be said to be serving). Reflecting further on our calling as servants
of the nation, we inquire what capacity we have been called to serve in.[28] Our overarching requirement is to support and
defend the Constitution. So that becomes
a second fundamental moral principle associated with this identity. Additionally, since servants serve on behalf
of another (the very nature of service requires this), it appears likely that
as servants of the nation we incur some kind of further responsibility to
represent those we serve. In other
words, we need to conduct ourselves as representatives of the American people.
These
three fundamental moral obligations seem to be readily derivable just from
reflecting on what it means to profess oneself a servant of our nation – we
must 1) serve effectively, 2) support and defend the Constitution, and 3)
represent the American people. After
discerning these fundamental moral principles, we can further reflect on each
of these to derive secondary principles of our profession. For example, by reflecting on what it takes
to serve effectively, we will discover such further moral obligations as: develop competence in our professional
skills, develop the character necessary to employ those skills appropriately,
promote efficient use of the resources entrusted to us, and prioritize mission
accomplishment over personal welfare. By
reflecting on what it takes to support and defend the Constitution, we can
readily discern a further requirement that we become familiar with the
Constitution – not just the contents of the document itself, but the system of
government that document establishes and the moral principles which underpin
that arrangement. Once familiar with
that document, we have a moral requirement to sustain – among other things –
the civil-military relationship prescribed therein. By reflecting on what it takes to represent
the American people, we can discern some degree of obligation to adopt the
values of our nation, at least to the extent that our national values are
morally acceptable. We can further discern
a responsibility to speak truth to the American people.
This
simple exercise reveals how reflecting on our professional role or identity can
help us to discern the fundamental principles associated with our profession
and how further reflection reveals secondary principles associated with the
profession.[29]
By reflecting on the other three
identities – just warrior, leader of character, and member of a profession –
and perhaps even the cross-section of these identities, we can further explore
the fundamental ethical requirements of our profession. As I worked through this example, you likely
experienced thoughts of “Wait a minute; not so fast there – that doesn’t really
follow” or “But there’s still more to be said.”
This reaction reflects the dialectic nature of ethics (i.e., the study of morality, not morality
itself). This reaction marks the
starting point for the kind of dialogue necessary both to improve our
perception into our ethic and to engrain this ethic in the hearts of our
professionals.
Given
the complexity and comprehensive scope of ethics, finding a way to organize any
discussion of our professional ethic is nearly as big a challenge as is
discerning the ethic itself. And without
a meaningful way to organize discussion of what we already presume to know
about our ethic, we are handicapped in what further discussion and
investigation we can have into our ethic.
I believe that this model – viewing our professional ethic as a product
of morality writ large, as determined by our professional role – aptly
addresses both problems. It lends
insight into the very nature of our ethic and provides a coherent framework for
expressing and exploring that ethic. But
more than just being a handy framework for expressing our ethic, I take it that
this genuinely is the nature of our ethic.
Its adequacy as a model for presentation is a product of its accuracy as
a description or explanation of our governing ethic. With this insight into the nature of our
professional ethic itself, we can readily see how it is that many of the
discussions which purport to be about the professional military ethic are
really just discussions of one or more particular elements of that ethic. They are discussions of which primary or
secondary principles derive from our professional identities and/or how those
principles ought to be applied.
Expressing the
Professional Military Ethic
The
exercise above has really only shown how this approach to expressing our
professional ethic satisfies the requirement that the ethic be principle-based,
rather than action-based. It reveals the
fundamental structure of our ethic, but stops short of indicating how best to
organize and present the rich complexity I suggested is inherent in the ethic. Neither does it demonstrate how the dialectic
element I insisted was essential to our study of the ethic is to be
incorporated into our presentation of the ethic. And it doesn’t yet reveal how to capture the
varying levels of complexity I suggested any expression of our ethic must
reflect in order to be serviceable throughout the depth of our profession. Since these latter challenges pertain to
presentation, organization, marketing, etc., I depart from the field of
philosophical ethics to address them.
And rather than argue rigorously for a particular solution, I simply
offer a proposal which I suspect will be an intuitively plausible solution to
the challenges I have explored above.
I
suspect that the need for dialectic and exploration at varying levels of
complexity calls for a presentation of the ethic that leverages Web 2.0
technology and features. I see three
obvious advantages of an web-based presentation of our ethic. First, an internet-based presentation
facilitates ready dissemination across the spectrum of our profession. This is critical if the ethic is really to
take hold across the profession. The
profession must be able both to access it and to engage with it in a meaningful
way.
Second,
the internet accommodates rich, genuine dialectic better than any other forum I
can think of. Rather than merely
promoting an approved “party line,” this forum can readily display arguments
both for and against a particular candidate principle being part of our ethic,
particular applications of that principle being appropriate, a confluence of
principles as being interpreted a certain way, etc. Users can readily react to the discussion via
bulletin board, editorial, etc. They
can submit revision proposals to the ethic as conceived at that time. And a moderator can manage these submissions
to achieve appropriate balance between displaying excessive information on the
website and ensuring that the most coherent arguments are given audience.
Finally,
hyperlinked media is ideal for managing complex and abundant content at varying
levels of complexity. It can separate
discussion of our identity from that of the primary principles which stem from
those identities. It can separate
discussion of primary principles from that of secondary principles, discussion
of principles themselves from application of those principles. It can compartmentalize discussion of
individual aspects of the ethic so that they can be viewed in isolation or it
can invite more holistic discussion across the breadth of the ethic. Even more useful, users are free to pursue
topics (i.e., by clicking additional links) to whatever degree of complexity
corresponds to their existing level of understanding and interest. They need not engage more sophisticated
discussion until they discover its relevance and become able to understand
it. But those who are ready for more
robust exploration are welcome to either peruse what others have offered before
them or to submit their own proposals for how previously unexplored elements of
the ethic be understood.
Both
the need for dialectic and the complexity of ethics dictate that an expression
of our ethic be a community project. The
internet provides a perfect forum for achieving this. A full vision of the potential of this
project cannot be described in narrative alone.
So I instead simply cite the tremendous success and influence of another
similar web initiative. Those familiar
with the companycommand.army.mil and/or platoonleader.army.mil web sites will
recognize in my proposal something of the sense of community those projects
entail. They have truly harnessed the
“power of the profession” the way a professional military ethic initiative
needs to. In doing so, they have made an
invaluable contribution to the profession.
Rather than prescribing doctrine, these web sites provide means by which the insight and experiences of each Army officer are
available to all. They entertain both
pro and con arguments submitted by participants across the Army. They manage a tremendous load of dialogue
from users in the field while still enabling the individual user to explore
only that content of immediate concern to him or her (or that level of content
he is presently capable of understanding).
Our professional ethic is best presented in similar fashion. By harnessing the capacity of our profession
to explore and present our ethic, we can be certain that our profession will
own its ethic. Again, this is not to say
that the profession gets to determine what its ethic is, but it is to say that
any expression of the professional military ethic derived this way will reflect
the best judgment of the profession today.
As
a final thought, I highlight a couple of other benefits of publishing our ethic
(or our best understanding of it, accompanied by rich discussion) on the
internet. First, I suggest that the Army
has great need of formal ethics education at the institutional (i.e., TRADOC
school) and individual unit level. While
arguing this need goes well beyond the scope of my current proposal, I suspect
that all who have reflected much upon our ethic and engaged soldiers in such
discussion will find a huge gap between what soldiers feel are the ethical
implications of service and those which are likely to actually be. A professional military ethic web site could
readily facilitate that education. It
could provide ethics training resources for sponsors of such training and could
provide the research environment for them to achieve genuine expertise in this
area. Second, I note that it appears
unlikely that any other military in the world has made much more progress than
we have in discerning the ethical implications of military service. If we are careful in presenting and managing
discussion of our ethic, the benefits are certain to extend far beyond our own
Army, into both military professions abroad and academia in general. The potential here is truly unlimited.
NOTES