Towards a Humanitarian Military Ethics: Moral Autonomy, Integrity and Obligations in the British and German Armed Forces

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian operations may pose challenges to which armed forces prepared for warfighting seem rather ill-equipped. It is the aim of this article to examine in what way military ethics should be adapted to humanitarian tasks. Two ideal types of military ethics are defined here: warfighting and humanitarian. The warfighting ethic is supposed to maximise the utility of the military in war and combat and to that end utilises the virtues of loyalty and honour. In contrast, humanitarian obligations require to a larger extent the development of personal integrity and an ability to follow one’s own conscience. The adaptation of military ethics is demonstrated in the case studies of the UK armed forces and the German Bundeswehr. Whereas the moral code of the UK armed forces remains anchored in the principles of the warfighting ethic, the case of the Bundeswehr presents a military ethic closely approximating the humanitarian ideal type.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanitarian military ethic
• British armed forces
• German armed forces (Bundeswehr)
• integrity
• Kohlberg

Notes on contributor

Tomas Kucera is an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague. He studied international relations and security studies before receiving a doctorate at Aberystwyth University for a dissertation dealing with the relationship of liberal ideology, defence policy and the organisation of armed forces. His research interests include the sociology of security, the organisation of armed forces in society and ethics of armed conflicts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Tomas Kucera http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8091-3624

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Charles University Research Programme “Progres” – Social Sciences: From Multidisciplinarity to Interdisciplinarity.