Air University Review, March-April 1981
Dr. James H. Buck
Revelations about Abscam (Arab Scam), the FBI’s "sting" operation involving corruption among congressmen, are but the latest in a series of incidents of ethical or moral lapses of wrongdoing. Within the past decade, two dozen other congressmen were charged with illegal acts. Continuing exposés of vice and not-so-petty corruption among public officials at every level of government result less in moral outrage and more in a vague sense of moral ill-being—a nonspecific malaise about morality and ethics, an uncertainty about the state of human conduct.
Although Mark Twain wrote a century ago that there probably is "no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress," it is unfair to single out public officials for unethical conduct. Others deserving mention include corporate personnel tied to bribes and other unsavory activity with foreign governments, corporations, labor racketeers, government bureaucrats, and military personnel engaged in or tolerated immoral and unethical activities in Vietnam and elsewhere.
Probably man’s conduct today is not more distant from his ideals that it was in earlier times. Yet, his awareness of transgression is heightened remarkably by the instantaneous visual coverage of Watergate, the media massage of Vietnam, Koreagate, and the constant drumming of the print media.
All professions are affected by unease about ethics (the intellectual concept of right conduct) and morality (the act of doing right). Lawyers seek to reestablish a reputation for integrity sullied by Watergate; doctors struggle with the ethical aspects of abortion, DNA experimentation, mind control, and test tube babies; and the courts have ruled that biotechnicians may patent novel liningorganisms which they invent, reasoning that life is largely chemistry, calling forth the counterargument that this is not so. In any event, ethics is being more widely debated lately; although one wonders if it is not like the weather that everyone talks about but no one does anything about.
However, the book, War, Morality, and the Military Profession does do something significant.* This splendid anthology provides the raw material for learning about ethics through logical grouping and graduated exposure to 31 authoritative and intellectually appealing articles be a variety of scholars. Edited by Colonel Malham M. Wakin, Associate Dean of the United Stated Air Force Academy (USAFA), Professor of Philosophy, and long-time teacher, this work was developed as a text for the ethics course required of all juniors at the USAFA. Throughout, it deals with the kinds of questions that are worth the attention of all professionals.
*Malham M. Wakin, editor, War, Morality, and the Military Profession (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979, $24.50), 531 pages.
Clearly, the military has engaged in some serious thinking about ethics over the past several years. This introspection has been diffuse, but two themes predominate.1 The first theme is an underlying personal dissatisfaction with the military’s status in society, coupled with a desire both to preserve a unique life-style and to strengthen the autonomy of the military within its professional sphere. The second theme is the concern with ethics, primarily the gap between professional ideas and professional behavior. Ethical and conflicts result when institutional demands and organization behavior are counterposed to individual ethics that reject careerism.
Concern with ethics is not new to military professionals. Historically, a hereditary military class, or more recently, corporate military groups have seen themselves as conservators of the crucial elements of a society’s ethics. Generally, the society has reciprocated and looked to the military as the moral exemplar. No doubt there are mixed opinions about the American case; maybe exemplar is too strong a word. Nevertheless, cheating at a service academy makes national headlines while academic chiseling goes unnoticed almost everywhere else. The American public may well believe military function so crucially involves moral integrity that any hint of dishonesty must become a matter of paramount concern. Certainly military officers insist on integrity; at the same time, some are obsessively watchful that their self-image is not tarnished by those who fail to measure up or by those who point out that the institution or their colleagues do not measure up.
Expectations for the professional military, as Professor Wakin points out in his introduction to War, Morality, and the Military Profession, are indeed demanding:
Military knowledge and competence are not enough; we insist that they be conjoined with courage, loyalty, obedience, subordination of the self to the greater whole, and most importantly, with moral integrity.
The virtues of loyalty, obedience, selflessness, and integrity are praiseworthy personal attributes for any endeavor, but they are not fundamentally necessary to all that passes for success in modern America. To the military officer, however, they are absolutely crucial to his professional function; and, hence, their exaggeration is imperative.
Professor Wakin argues correctly that this nonexclusive set of virtues is a major moral tie between morality and the military professions. The second major connection lies in the nobility of the profession: doctors save lives; lawyers preserve law and justice; the military protect and secure the institutions and quality of life in a morally sound nation.
The readings are grouped into two parts: (1) Ethics and the Military Profession and (2) War and Morality.
The first part includes samples of seminal civilian scholarship which has so informed the professional officer about his own state: writings by Samuel P. Huntington, Morris Janowitz, and Charles Moskos. A reading of these selections will hardly settle the seemingly interminable and emotion-charged arguing about professionalism, officership, leadership and management (Are these words really mutually exclusive?) and whether the military is evolving as occupation rather than a profession. What it will do is refine the parameters of discussion and provide the basic stuff for reasoned discourse about the nature and future of the profession. Three excellent selections by General Sir John Winthrop Hackett include "The Military in the Service of the State," wherein Hackett concludes that "the highest Service of the military to the state may well lie in the moral sphere." (p. 125) Separate treatment is given by various authors to the topics of "Integrity." "Truthfulness and Uprightness," "Duty, Honor, Country," "Loyalty, Honor, and the Modern Military," and to "Conflicting Loyalties and the American Military Ethic." Colonel Wakin’s enlightening chapter, "Ethics of Leadership," untangles ethos, ethics, and military honor; illuminates some of the complexities of obedience, loyalty, and moral commitment in terms of real cases (the Lavelle incident); evaluates the utility of formal written codes of behavior; and discusses the need to understand that one’s approach to ethics must go beyond the simple bifurcation between relativism and absolutism and to know that pragmatism and relativism are not identical. What we ask of today’s leader, Wakin writes, is that he be neither absolutist nor relativist but retain a balanced perspective that understands the full complexity which characterizes the interweaving of moral value with military function. We ask him to be that good man, that wise man, that the Greek philosopher could advise subordinates to find and imitate. (p. 216)
The second part of the anthology is about the morality of and in war. The morality of war has generally been dealt with historically, in the Christian world, in terms of the classical just war theory. This theory, essentially a set of criteria to judge whether a war is just or unjust, is critically reviewed in Donald A. Well's chapter, "How Much Can ‘The Just War’ Justify?" The theory holds that a war is just if it is declared by a legitimate national authority, is embarked on for a just cause, if fought with the right intention, and employs just means. Futhermore, the use of force must have some chance of success, else it is irrational. Wells doubts that war had moral significance in the past; he is certain that "today the just war justifies Armageddon if our hearts are pure, and this is to justify too much." (p. 270)
Other contributors deal with twentieth-century views of just and unjust wars (one might speak with equal accuracy of moral and immoral wars). To the pacificist, who is necessarily absolutist, all war is immoral. To F. R. Struckmeyer, defense against active attack is morally justified, as he points out in his chapter "The ‘Just War’ and the Right of Self-Defense." Richard Wasserstrom provocatively analyzes the assertions that warlike response to aggressive war is justifiable and that the initiation of war is never justifiable. Elizabeth Anscombe deals with the killing of the innocent and the principle of double effect in her essay "War and Murder."
Several chapters highlight the moral dilemmas inherent in war. Telford Taylor, Columbis University law professor, former brigadier general, and Chief U.S. Counsel for the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, writes about "War Crimes" and "Superior Orders and Reprisals." British philosopher R.M. Hare answers the question "Can I Be Blamed for Obeying Orders?" Richard Krickus examines the moral ambiguity and legal uncertainty about the use of chemical and biological weapons. A final chapter by Gregory S. Kavka explains "Some Paradoxes of Deterrence."
A marvelous amount of human intellectual energy has been spent in the quest for a world without war, and this elusive goal continues to engage the world’s political leaders. Some success has been achieved: at least the major powers of World War II have found ways, so far, to avoid making war on each other. Theoretically, a world without war is possible; actually, wars seem more frequent and more widely distributed geographically. So long as the probability of war exists, the professional military must be concerned with the moral and ethical dilemmas of war and in war.
Required reading for the military, War, Morality, and the Military Profession focuses attention on the serious ethical dimensions that invade and guide the thinking of military leaders. Careful reading and study of the more complicated dilemmas presented by this anthology can serve several important purposes. It can stimulate the moral imagination, help to dispel moral myopia, encourage sensitivity to the moral aspects of everyday life, develop analytical skills, aid ethical reasoning, and contribute to an understanding and toleration of the moral ambiguity which, by its very nature, composes the dilemmas of ethical reasoning and moral choices.
Dr. Wakin’s frequent observation that "the unexamined ideal its not worth dying for’’ is correct. Ethical dilemmas merit frequent and serious discussion profession by the military profession. The easier it is to discuss them now, in peacetime, the easier it will be to make sound ethical decisions in the face of wartime pressures.
The University of Georgia, Athens
Note
Contributor
James H. Buck (Ph.D., American University) is Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Georgia. He is coauthor of Comparative Politics, editor of The Modern Japanese Military System, and has contributed chapters to Civilian Control of the Military, Foreign Policy and US National Security, and Nonnuclear Conflicts in the Nuclear Age. Dr. Buck served on the faculty at the United States Military Academy and the Air War College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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