Address: Centre for Applied Philosophy and
Public Ethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010,
Australia
Phone: +61
3 8344 3419
Email: jwo@unimelb.edu.au
The modern military refers to itself as a
profession. Like other
professions, the military’s claim to professional status is based on the belief
that the military serves an important moral good – the protection of national
security − that justifies the military’s special permission to kill enemy
combatants, destroy enemy cities and send military personnel to their deaths.
In this paper I argue that the military’s status as a profession gives rise
to a conception of professional integrity that not only justifies but requires
disobedience in cases where the military is ordered to participate in actions
that violate the laws of war – disobedience based not on conscientious
objection but on commitment to the military’s guiding values. However in reality such
disobedience almost never occurs. In most liberal democracies the military
obeys the civilian government’s orders regardless of the justness of those
orders. There is an inconsistency between the military’s role as servant of the
civilian government and the concept of professional integrity that follows from
its claim to be a profession. This inconsistency raises serious doubts about the military’s professional
status and undermines the claim that the military serves a important moral
good. Unless
the military is willing to take seriously the implications of professional
status for when disobedience of orders is justified, it cannot claim to be a
morally honourable profession.
Introduction
The modern military refers to itself as a profession.[1] Like other professions, the military’s claim to professional status is intended to indicate both that the military serves an important moral good – the protection of national security − and that the military is governed by high moral and legal standards. Military personnel are expected to be more than competent at their work; they are expected to be people of good moral character.
Given the extraordinary violence of military action, we must take the military’s claim to be a profession very seriously indeed. We certainly want the military to be governed by high professional standards. Without professional status the military would be no better than a mercenary army. What are the implications of the military’s claim to be a profession?
In this paper I
address two interrelated aspects of this question. First, what conception of
professional integrity follows from the military’s status as a profession? Second, what are the implications for
institutional and individual disobedience that follow from this conception of
military professional integrity? I argue that by claiming professional status
the military is committed to a concept of professional integrity that not only
justifies but morally requires disobedience on an institutional and individual
level in cases where the military is ordered to participate in actions that
violate the laws of war – disobedience that is not a form of conscientious
objection but instead is justified by reference to the military’s guiding
ideals. The fact that in most
liberal democracies the military never does disobey orders from the civilian
government reveals an inconsistency in the military’s claim to professional
status and a tension between the military’s claim to be a profession and its
role as servant of the civilian government. Unless the military is willing to
take seriously the implications of professional status for institutional
disobedience, it cannot claim to be a morally honourable profession.
Before continuing it is important to be clear about the distinction between disobedience on the grounds of professional integrity and conscientious objection.
What is professional integrity? Professional integrity can be either a “thick” concept that not only delineates correct professional behaviour but also encompasses the ideal character traits that would enable professionals to best serve the ends of their profession[2] or it could be conceived in a more minimal form, as simply a concept of good professional behaviour that best serves the profession’s guiding aims. Regardless of which version is adopted, the concept of professional integrity serves two important functions. It serves the positive function of clarifying the virtues and/or behaviour that are most appropriate for professionals in relation to the ends of their profession and, as Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking argue, it serves the negative function of setting limits on such behaviour by providing grounds on which professionals should refuse to provide their services. There are appropriate limits to what a professional should do within their professional role and those limits are at least partly set by the governing ideals of the profession.[3]
Such refusal of service on the grounds of professional integrity is importantly different from conscientious objection. Conscientious objection is the refusal to provide a professional service on the grounds that to do so would violate deeply held personal moral and/or religious views. However a professional who refuses her services on professional grounds does so because she believes that the act required violates certain professional values rather than her own personal values. For example, a doctor might refuse to agree to a patient’s request for euthanasia not because performing euthanasia conflicts with her religious or personal views, but because it conflicts with her beliefs about what as a doctor she should do. She might believe that performing euthanasia violates the legitimate goals of medicine, particularly the goal of promoting patient health.[4]
Legitimate refusal of service based on a conception of professional integrity is also importantly distinct from what a professional might legally be permitted to do. In some countries it may be quite legal for doctors to perform euthanasia at a patient’s request. In several countries it is legal for a lawyer to reveal a rape victim’s past sexual history in court[5] and in some countries soldiers are permitted to torture people suspected of terrorism. The fact that certain actions are legally permitted within a professional practice does not mean that those actions serve the profession’s stated values.
Oakley and Cocking argue that reference to this idea of professional integrity not only sets out grounds for refusal of professional services but also provides grounds for criticising professionals who provide their services when doing so seems to violate professional ideals. Professionals do not just have moral permission to refuse when asked to provide their services in a way that violates the guiding ideals of their profession; they sometimes have a positive moral duty to refuse. If professionals use their professional expertise in ways that violate the ideals of their profession they are guilty of far more than failing to live up to high standards: they have betrayed the ideals of their profession and the public welfare that their profession exist to protect. For example, the Nazi doctors who experimented on and murdered prisoners and the doctors who participated in torture sessions in Latin America were not merely failing to exercise the option to refuse their services when they had grounds for doing so; they were using their medical skills to actively violate medicine’s guiding ideals. One of the many reasons why these doctors are particularly blameworthy and why their actions are so horrendous is because they were doctors, who should have been motivated by a concern of patient health. The participation in the abuse and killing of prisoners is a double betrayal; a betrayal of the patient and a betrayal of the doctor’s professional duty and professional values – a corruption of the proper ends of medicine.[6]
In the military, the distinction between refusal of service on professional grounds and conscientious objection has largely been ignored. The vast majority of examples of refusal of service are portrayed as examples of conscientious objection, whether they are objections to serving in the military at all, or a refusal to serve in a particular military action.[7] This gap in the literature has resulted in a failure to analyse the concept of professional integrity in the military, and a failure to address the question of when disobedience is justified on the grounds of commitment to the military’s professional ideals. Given the destruction caused by military action, the use of military force bears a particularly high burden of moral justification and so refusal of service on professional grounds in the military could in some cases be a positive moral duty.
Applying the concept of refusal of service on professional grounds to the military will require us to establish the military’s guiding ideals as a profession, as it is these ideals that will establish the grounds on which military professionals can and indeed should refuse their professional services. If we understand professional integrity in the military to be a conception of excellent professional functioning (relative to the different roles and ranks in the military) the purpose of which is both to guide the behaviour of military personnel and to serve as an ideal to which they can strive, then such a conception will also provide guidance about when it would be inappropriate or immoral to provide the military’s professional services.
In order to develop an account of professional integrity in the military, we must first establish the military’s regulative ideal – the conception of professional excellence that best serves the ends of the military profession and that guides professionals in developing good professional character traits.[8]
It seems prima facie plausible to grant the military the status of a profession. According to most plausible theories of professional ethics, the military fulfils the criteria of a profession. Like the universally acknowledged professions of law and medicine, the military holds a monopoly on the provision of its services,[9] and the military’s professional roles require specialised and high-level training and the exercise of judgement, reflection and wisdom at all ranks.[10] Furthermore, the military, like other professions, maintains that military personnel must be more than merely competent at their work; they must be people of good moral character.[11] Modern descriptions of the ideal military professional include a list of virtues (for example, loyalty, honour, and integrity) that has remained largely unchanged despite the many rapid changes to the technology of warfare in the last century.[12] Good character is claimed to be crucial in the military because of the unique nature of the military’s special permissions – which include permission to kill enemy combatants, destroy cities and send military personnel into extremely dangerous situations. Even military personnel at the lowest ranks are bound by the values of the military profession – a soldier who is untrustworthy, immoral and disloyal endangers not only herself but her fellow soldiers as well. Military personnel of all ranks are therefore expected to develop not only the technical expertise relevant to their role but also moral character traits such as duty, patriotism, and integrity.[13]
Yet the criterion of professional status that is most important for determining the grounds for refusal of professional service is the criterion that a profession must serve an important moral good, or at least an important human need.[14] In the case of medicine, for example, it is by reference to the guiding ideal of health that some doctors refuse to participate in voluntary euthanasia. Similarly, we can imagine a lawyer refusing a client on the grounds that to accept that client’s case would violate the ideal of justice, which is claimed to be the guiding ideal of the legal profession – the moral good the protection of which the profession exists to serve. The claim that a profession should serve a significant moral good is important because reference to such a moral good can be used to justify professional actions and roles that would otherwise violate ordinary or broad-based moral constraints. For example, it is by reference to the ideal of serving justice that adversarial defence lawyers defend sometimes controversial witness examination practices. If such practices did not in fact serve the end of justice, it would be hard to provide an adequate justification for them, given the suffering that harsh witness examinations can sometimes cause the witness.
In the case of the military, it is absolutely essential to establish that the military serves an important moral good, given that the military claims special moral permission to use lethal force on a massive scale. If the military does not serve an important moral good, it would be difficult indeed to justify the level of destruction that military actions typically involve.
What is the moral good or human need that the military profession serves? According to military rhetoric, the military’s claim to be a morally justified profession rests on the belief that the use of military force is necessary for protection of the nation – the community of citizens. Such an end seems obviously morally important. Indeed common-sense morality, international law and Just War theory all operate on the assumption that the defence of the national community is defence of something morally valuable. So if the primary role of the military is the protection of the nation, then it would be plausible to claim that such an end was morally valuable. However, the end of the military institution is not simply national defence. In the majority of cases the military is used in situations that have little to do with national defence. As Martin Cook points out:
…the military exists to
serve the will of the political leadership of a particular state. The military
will, at times, be employed for less-than-grand purposes in the service of the
state…Only rarely do militaries…fight in wars that genuinely defend national
political sovereignty.[15]
It is true that the military profession is duty-bound to protect and further the security of the nation but only as interpreted by the civilian government of that nation.[16] The guiding motivation of the military, as an institution, is to serve the civilian government regardless of the justness of the government’s defence policies. This means that the end of the military profession is not national defence per se but to serve the civilian government by carrying out the government’s defence policies, regardless of their justness, even if those policies have little to do with national defence and even if those policies endanger the nation. The decision to use military force is ultimately a political decision and the military’s role is to advise on how military force can be used most effectively, not on whether using military force is politically or ethically justified in the first place.[17]
The military’s role as servant of the state raises serious problems with the claim that it serves a morally important human need. While protecting the nation is arguably a morally important goal – one that is necessary for a flourishing human life − it is more difficult to locate moral value in obedience to the government, since governments may or may not be committed to morally justifiable policies and practices. Indeed, governments may pursue policies that could run counter to or even endanger the interests and wellbeing of the nation; the government’s interests may be distinct from, and in some cases counter to, the nation’s interests. This means there is the possibility of conflict between the military’s role as agent of the government and the goal of protecting the nation.
The upshot of this problem is that in order for the military to maintain professional status and the special moral permissions that follow from that status the military’s obedience to the government must be conceived of not as an end in and of itself but as a means to protect and defend the nation, where such protection is further constrained by the laws of armed conflict. While subordination to the civilian authority is vital, such subordination could plausibly be overridden if the state ordered the military to engage in actions that seriously endangered the physical or political life of the nation. This conflict is most obvious in the US military, where officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies”[18], an oath that involves more than a vow to obey the current civilian authority; it involves a commitment to the moral and political values embodied in the Constitution.[19] But even in Australia it is possible to imagine a government whose military policies were harmful to the nation. This would most obviously occur in the case of an illegal coup, but it is also possible that a particular government policy (when the government itself is legitimate) might run counter to what could be construed as the best interests of the nation. For example, in Australia some commentators have argued that Australia’s involvement in the current war in Iraq has actually increased the risk of terrorist activity in Australia.[20]
It seems that the only way to rescue the military’s claim to be a morally important profession serving an important human need is to set limits on the military’s subordination to the civilian government. While the military must obey the civilian government, that obedience must be constrained by consideration of the greater good of the nation. Furthermore this constraint is supported by the fact that the military profession in most Western countries accepts the constraints on military behaviour imposed by the laws of war and treaties such as the Geneva Conventions.[21] The right of a nation-state to maintain a military force does not imply carte blanche in how that force is used. Nor is the military permitted free rein in how it carries out its missions. Just as a defence lawyer may not use illegal means to defend her client, so the military must obey the laws of war in carrying out military actions. In theory, therefore, it seems that the military’s professional status gives rise to a conception of professional integrity that would permit disobedience (at both an institutional and individual level) of political authority in those cases where the political authority ordered military actions that would severely endanger the wellbeing of the nation or that would require military personnel to perform illegal actions.[22]
If we take
seriously the military’s claim to be committed to the protection of the nation
and to the moral principles underlying the laws of war, then this commitment
gives rise to a conception of military professional integrity that sometimes
requires military disobedience, both at the individual level and in relation to
the civilian authority.
Constraints on the behaviour of military personnel in relation to jus in bello laws are evident not only in military rhetoric but in the legal requirements that govern the behaviour of military personnel. In most countries military personnel have a legal duty to disobey orders that violate the laws of war. The Australian Defence Force website, for example, states that the description of the good officer includes the following: “He/she complies with directives, orders and policies in a positive and mature manner, but challenges and reports unethical/ illegal orders or behaviour”.[23] Similarly the United States West Point Military Academy Cadet Disciplinary Code, while stating that “Orders are given with the expectation of compliance both in spirit and in letter”,[24] also emphasises the importance of judgment:
Cadets are expected to exercise good judgment at all times. These include situations not covered by instructions or cases in which orders are obviously illegal or inappropriate.[25]
The requirement that military personnel refuse obviously illegal (and immoral) orders is relatively uncontroversial, and I will not discuss it in much detail here. However, the concept of professional integrity I discussed earlier permits a wider range of disobedience than it currently accepted in most military forces. While it is generally accepted that military personnel should disobey orders that violate jus in bello moral rules, it is less widely accepted that they should refuse orders that violate jus ad bellum considerations.[26] However, according to my view, if military personnel are ordered to participate in a military mission that violates the military’s professional ethical commitments, then they not only have permission to refuse to participate in such actions; they have a positive moral duty to refuse to participate, on the grounds that participation would involve violation of the very moral values that the military profession is supposed to be committed to. An order to participate in an unjust war might count as a legal order but would, under my account, be an order that individual military personnel would be justified in disobeying. Furthermore such disobedience would not be a form of selective conscientious objection because it would not be based on the individual soldier’s personal moral or religious views, but instead would be based on the individual soldier’s commitment to the military profession’s regulative ideal. Military personnel therefore could (and should) legitimately refuse to obey orders if those carrying out those orders would seriously violate the military’s professional ideals.
Military
disobedience to civilian authority on professional grounds has sometimes been
discussed in the literature in military ethics, but only in relation to
tactical or strategic matters. Samuel Huntington, for example, has argued that
military officers would be justified in refusing a statesman’s direct order
only in cases where the obeying the order would require the officer to execute
an “absurd military action.”[27]
Given the military profession’s area of professional expertise is in the
execution and formulation of military strategy, Huntington argues, military
officers are justified in refusing orders that directly impinge on their area
of expertise. However, Huntington argues that officers are not justified in
refusing orders on the grounds of concerns about the political wisdom of those
orders – politics being outside the realm of the military’s professional
jurisdiction,[28]
and in cases of doubt about the morality and legality of a proposed military
action, military officers cannot claim greater moral expertise than the
politicians they serve (although they do not have less expertise). Furthermore
the military officer has “special responsibilities towards the political system
and toward the society as a whole” which means that the officer should give
priority to obedience,[29]
“only rarely… will the military officer be justified in following the dictates
of private conscience against the dual demand of military obedience and state
welfare.”[30]
Yet here Huntington makes the mistake of assuming that a military officer’s objection to orders on moral grounds must be a matter of “private conscience”. On the contrary, I argue that such objections can be a matter of professional conscience arising from the military professional’s commitment to the laws of war and the moral good that the military claims to serve. Ordered to engage in a war that is patently unjust and/or illegal, the military officer has a professional obligation to refuse to engage in such a war, just as the doctor has a professional obligation to refuse to provide her services when to do so would violate the central commitments of medicine (for example, by assisting at torture sessions). Because the military’s profession status is grounded on a commitment to moral values (and must be so committed if it is to maintain its moral status as a legitimate profession), it is plausible to characterise knowledge of the moral basis of the laws of war and just war theory as part of the military professional’s professional expertise.
Yet the consequences of adopting this view of military professional integrity are extremely disturbing. If the military is permitted – indeed obliged - to refuse to carry out the orders of the civilian government when those orders violate the military’s ethical commitments, doesn’t this mean that the military would be violating the civil-military distinction and becoming directly involved in politics? The importance of maintaining a sharp distinction between political authority and military force is widely recognised and deeply entrenched in western civil societies, and there are sound reasons for this distinction, arising from the very legitimate fear of what a well-armed and powerful military force can do if they believe they may legitimately take part in the political arena.
The most obvious and striking examples of military involvement in the political process are military coups, where the military not only disobeys but overthrows the civilian leadership and assumes control of the state. In such cases the military often justifies its actions by claiming that the current leadership was failing to protect the interests of the nation.[31] But this does not imply that the military is in fact justified in taking power and the subsequent behaviour of military dictatorships indicates that the military is not to be relied upon to protect the interests of the nation (at least not when in power).
While military dictatorships often arise out of the military’s belief that they could protect the national interests better than the current civilian government, the military’s adoption of ultimate power is a clear case of the formation of an illegitimate state; one formed without the consent of the governed, and such coups cannot be considered justified instances of military disobedience. Nor can military coups be justified by reference to the military’s guiding ideals. The military’s professional ideal does not allow room for the military to overthrow a legitimate government or for the military to formulate and carry out defence policies independently from the civilian government. To do so would be analogous to the legal profession refusing to carry out the laws set by the state and deciding that in fact, they know best what is in the interests of justice and which laws should be made and enforced.
Yet there is a clear difference between refusing to carry out an order and actively overthrowing of the political authority. It is possible to find a middle ground between the military blindly obeying the state and the military taking over the state. If it is a profession, the military should not a mere tool of the government but must be reflective about how its professional expertise is utilised. Therefore the military is justified in disobeying an order from a legitimate state if that order would require the military to seriously violate military’s professional ideals.
Indeed, there are some real-life examples of military forces refusing to obey the civilian authority. During 1989 the Romanian Military, after having previously obeyed orders to fire on protestors in several regions, refused outright to obey Nicolae Ceausescu’s orders and went on to play a central role in his downfall.[32] More recently, the Army Chiefs of Staff in Britain refused to go to war in Iraq until they were assured that the war was legal. While this concern could be simply a wish to avoid future legal prosecution, it is also arguably a genuine concern that the military forces in the UK be used only for legal wars.[33] In both these cases, the military did not undermine or overthrow the political process. Instead, they attempted to ensure that their professional expertise was used in the correct way. Such disobedience is a mark of professional integrity, not a sign of military usurpation of political power.
The conception of professional integrity that follows from the military’s claim to be a profession clearly sets limits on appropriate professional behaviour and in some cases requires institutional and/or individual disobedience of orders. By claiming to be a profession the military is binding itself to a set of professional ideals that limit when and how its professional expertise should be used.
The military claims to be serving an important moral good, a moral good that justifies the military’s special moral permissions to perform acts of great destruction and to endanger the lives of military personnel. As a profession the military must abide by strict moral standards and must minimise the harms of war as much as possible. If the military is a profession then the military has a positive moral duty to refuse to provide its services when providing its services would violate the guiding ideals of the military profession and the laws of war. Yet in most Western countries military disobedience on an institutional level is unheard of and disobedience on an individual level is very rare and is usually characterised as a form of conscientious objection, and often followed by the dismissal or resignation of the individual in question. Despite military rhetoric, in reality it seems that subordination to the civilian government is held to be the military’s most important role. If the military is genuinely committed to the moral good it claims to serve, and genuinely committed to the laws of war, then there is a greater scope for military disobedience then has been previously recognised.
NOTES
* This paper draws on material published in my book Torture and the Military Profession (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), in particular Chapter 3.
[1] For some examples, see the website of the Royal Military College Duntroon <http://www.army.gov.au/rmc/>, and the Australian Defence Force Academy <http://www.defence.gov.au/adfa/>. In these sites (and in many others) there are references to developing “professionalism”; to creating “professional officers”; and to the military as a profession. Most books on military ethics also refer to it as a profession.
[2] This is the approach
taken by Justin Oakley and Dean Cocking in Virtue
Ethics and Professional Roles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002). Oakley and Cocking derive a virtue-ethics based account of professional
ethics based on the concept of a regulative ideal – the conception of
professional excellence that best serves the ends of the profession and that
guides professionals in developing good professional character traits. See p. 27
for their detailed discussion of the concept of a regulative ideal.
[3] Oakley & Cocking, p. 83.
[4] Oakley & Cocking, p. 83
[5] Oakley & Cocking, p. 125.
[6] Oakley & Cocking, p. 81.
[7] There have been several notable cases of Israeli soldiers (usually reservists) refusing to serve in particular military missions. For a discussion of conscientious objection in the Israel Defence Forces, see Ruth Linn, “Soldiers with Conscience Never Die- They are Just Ignored by their Society. Moral Disobedience in the Israel Defence Forces,” Journal of Military Ethics 1 (2002): 57-76.
[8] Oakley and Cocking, p. 27.
[9] Paul Camenisch, “On Being a Professional, Morally Speaking,” in Moral Responsibility and the Professions, eds. Bernard Baumrin and Benjamin Freedman (New York: New Haven, 1983), p. 43. Michael Bayles makes the same point in “The Professions,” in Ethical Issues in Professional Life, ed. Joan C. Callahan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 28.
[10] Bayles, p. 2.
[11] The common-sense conception of the good lawyer and the good doctor is not simply a conception of technical ability but a highly moralised conception, and so professionals are expected to be under a more intense moral spotlight than other workers (Camenisch, p. 45).
[12] Samuel Huntington, for example, claims that “the standards of professional military competence apply in Russia as in America, and in the nineteenth century as in the twentieth”, “Officership as a Profession,” in War, Morality, and the Military Profession 2nd Edition, ed. Malham M. Wakin (Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), p. 2. For an example of a list of military virtues, see the web page of the Royal Military College Duntroon, Australia. Accessed at <http://www.defence.gov.au/army/rmc/tigger/!comweb/rmc/sites/rmc/load.asp.872.html>
[13] Anthony E. Hartle, Moral Issues in Military Decision Making, 2nd Edition, (University Press of Kansas, 1989), p. 12.
[14] It is widely accepted that to count as a profession an occupation must do more than provide a service that satisfies a desire: at the very least it must provide a service that is central to the functioning of modern human society (Oakley and Cocking make this point, as does Michael D. Bayles, “The Professions,” in Ethical Issues in Professional Life, ed. Joan C. Callahan (New York: Oxford University Press. 1988), p. 28.)
[15] Martin Cook, “Moral Foundations of Military Service,” Parameters, 30 (2000): 117-29, p. 118.
[16] The importance of the military’s subordination to the civilian authority and the political neutrality of the military are evident from the procedures in place to ensure that the military does not have an undue influence on politics or on defence policy. For example, in Australia the Minister of Defence is a civilian position, and serving officers are not permitted to run for political office. For a discussion of the relationship between the military and the government, see Lance Betros, “Political Partisanship and the Military Ethic in America”, Armed Forces and Society 27 (2001): 501-523; Douglas L. Bland, “Patterns in Liberal Democratic Civil-Military Relations”, Armed Forces and Society 27 (2001): 525-540; and Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control”, Armed Forces and Society 23 (1996): 149-178.
[17] Martin L. Cook, “The Proper Role of Military Advice in Contemporary Uses of Force,” Parameters 32 (2002/2003): 21-33, p. 26. This is not to suggest that the military could not attempt to persuade the government to adopt alternative courses of action if it felt that the government’s policy was likely to be ineffective or dangerous. However, once a policy decision is made, the military is expected to carry out the policy in the most efficient manner.
[18] Hartle, p. 47.
[19] Hartle, p. 50.
[20] For example, an FBI counter-terrorism expert claimed that Australia’s alliance with the US and its involvement in Iraq has made it a more obvious target for terrorist attacks (“Terrorist attack on Australia inevitable, warns FBI expert”, Sydney Morning Herald, March 16, 2004).
[21] There is a vast literature on just war theory. For a detailed discussion of jus in bello and jus ad bellum, see James F. Childress, “Just-War Theories: The Bases, Interrelations, Priorities, and Functions of Their Criteria” in War, Morality, and the Military Profession 2nd Edition, ed. Malham M. Wakin (Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), 256-276, Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3rd Edition (New York: Basic Books, 2000), and Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion (eds), Moral Constraints on War: Principles and Cases (United States of America: Lexington Books, 2002).
[22] There are other forms of conflict between the military and the political authority. Carl Ceulemans and Guy van Damme discuss four ways (based on Huntington’s views) in which the military and the political might conflict: conflicts between military obedience and political wisdom, between military obedience and military competence, between military obedience and legality, and between military obedience and basic morality (see Carl Cuelemans & Guy van Damme, “The Soldier and the State: An Analysis of Samuel Huntington’s View on Military Obedience Towards Political Authority,” Professional Ethics, 2002,. 10(2,3, & 4): 7-22). It is the fourth form of conflict that I am concerned with in this paper.
[23] Royal Military College, description of
first-class graduate. Last accessed 23 September 2003 at <http://www.defence.gov.au/army/rmc/first_class.htm>.
Italics mine.
[24] United States West Point Military Academy Cadet Disciplinary Code. Accessed at <http://www.usma.edu/uscc/sacsp/usccsop/usccreg351%2D2/ch04.doc>
[25] United States West Point Military Academy Cadet Disciplinary Code. Accessed at <http://www.usma.edu/uscc/sacsp/usccsop/usccreg351%2D2/ch04.doc>
[26] Jeff McMahan has recently argued convincingly against that the traditional idea that soldiers are not responsible for the justness of the wars in which they fight. See McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114 (July 2004): 693–733.
[27] Ceulemans & van Damme, p. 12.
[28] Ceulemans & van Damme, p. 13.
[29] Ceulemans & van Damme, p. 15.
[30] Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Harvard: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1957), p. 78.
[31] Countries that have suffered military coups were nearly without exception in extreme civil disarray prior to the military takeover. Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Burma, and Spain were all undergoing severe economic and social upheaval prior to the military takeovers. For a discussion of the conditions that lead to military coups, see Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and other Group Evil (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1989)
[32] Stefan Sarvas, “Professional Soldiers and Politics: A Case of Central and Eastern Europe,” Armed Forces and Society 26 (1999): 99-118, p.103.
[33] See Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff, “Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start,” The Observer, Sunday 29 February 2004. Available from http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1158859,00.html.