Virtue and Applied Military Ethics: Understanding Character-Based Approaches to Professional Military Ethics

ABSTRACT

Military ethics seeks to provide practical guidance for the resolution of real ethical problems associated with the conduct of military operations. In doing so, it must reflect how actual persons give and take-up reasons when deliberating what actions to take. The Just War Tradition, for example, provides deontological and consequentialist considerations soldiers should take up when considering how to conduct operations. Sometimes, unfortunately, soldiers may find themselves in tragic situations where principles and consequences provide no clear guidance. To fill that gap, a full account of military ethics requires an account of virtue, which focuses more on the agent than the act and can provide resources necessary to avoid, or failing that, resolve, otherwise unresolvable ethical dilemmas that can arise during military operations. This point does not mean virtue ethics supersedes or assimilates other ethical approaches. Rather it means that in the context of a process aimed at establishing reflective equilibrium, it provides important beliefs, judgments, and ways of thinking about applied ethics that are critical not just to building a robust, maximally coherent equilibrium but also to maintain it. These resources are especially critical when one is faced with the kind of tragic situations soldiers confront in war.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtue ethics
• deontology
• consequentialism
• ethical reasoning
• Rawls

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. This article reflects the author's views and not necessarily that of the US Government.

Notes

1 There is much discussion of whether, by virtue of the social contract, states are obligated or simply permitted to defend their citizens against acts of aggression. If they are obligated, then that state’s combatants are obligated to conduct military operations, though any particular operation may or may not be obligated, prohibited, or permissible depending on other considerations.

2 There are, of course a variety of Just War theories that may not include all these elements or include others. Jeff McMahan, for example, argues that under certain circumstances, noncombatants responsible for an act of aggression may be targeted (McMahan 2009, 214).

3 Michael Walzer defines military necessity as courses of action that are “necessary to compel the submission of the enemy with the least possible expenditure of time, life, and money” (Walzer 2015, 144). Formulated this way, the principle is arguably morally neutral. Under Just War Theory, for military necessity to count as a moral imperative, the submission of the enemy must itself be necessary to defend the rights of others. However, it is generally the case that soldiers believe their cause to be just, so for the purposes of applied military ethics, soldiers will typically experience military necessity as a moral imperative, which sets conditions for the kinds of moral dilemmas taken up in this discussion.

4 Regarding combatant rights, Walzer argues that combatants give up their right to life in order to obtain the right the kill. If that were the case, there would be no dilemma. The soldiers would be obligated to accept all risks and costs associated with this situation. Dubik, however, argues that while soldiers accept risk by taking on the role of soldier, they do not give up any rights. McMahan, also makes a similar case, arguing that soldiers fighting for a just cause do not give up their rights and their deaths may be considered murder. If that is the case, then there is a conflict between what Dubik refers to as due care towards noncombatants and due care towards combatants. These principles align with noncombatant immunity and force protection as articulated here (Walzer 2015; Dubik 1982; McMahan 2009).

5 This is a minimalist view. I am not excluding the possibility that ethical consideration should extend to non-human beings.

6 The video clip may be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ms3NPVMJg.

7 Olsthoorn does not justify the virtues he lists in the terms described above, though he does discuss how they fit in with the martial enterprise. He sees this list as descriptive of military practice, based on a review of military ethics related literature (Olsthoorn 2011, 7). This point suggests one does not need to consider the list as complete.

8 I owe this point to an anonymous reviewer.

9 This research is ongoing and these results are preliminary. Results will be published in full separately at a later date.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

C. Anthony Pfaff

C. Anthony Pfaff (Colonel, US Army, Ret.) is currently the research professor for Strategy, the Military Profession and Ethic at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, a Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University. While on active duty, he served first in the Infantry and then as an Army Foreign Area Officer for the Middle East. Dr. Pfaff has served as Director for Iraq on the National Security Council Staff and on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff advising on cyber, regional military affairs, and the Middle East. Dr. Pfaff has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Economics from Washington and Lee University; a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Stanford University, with a concentration in Philosophy of Science; a Master of Science in National Resource Management from the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy; and a Doctorate in Philosophy from Georgetown University.