‘Dying Was Never a Preference’ – Post-War Ethical Discourse (PWED): Casualty Aversion and the War Legitimizing Projects

ABSTRACT

Modern case studies are presented to show how the idea of war in Western societies is legitimized through an ethical script by which war and warfare result in few losses to both sides. A Post-War Ethical Discourse model is used to describe the prevalent postwar condition of casualty aversion, by which modern leaderships attempt to convince the public of the need to justify the idea of military empowerment and to legitimize the idea of war, through technological revolutions and doctrines aimed at assuring that the next war will be more precise and more ethical, distancing soldiers from the battle field and thereby resulting in less casualties to both sides. The paper illustrates this condition by analyzing events that took place after World War 1, World War 2 and the Vietnam War, as well as an Israeli case study.

KEYWORDS:

• Military ethical communities
• casualty aversion
• normative ethics
• policy narrative
• post-war ethical discourse
• legitimacy crisis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Huge thanks to Yael Nachumi for professional editing of the article, as well as to the two reviewers for their wise insights.

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