Making Moral Targeting Decisions in War: The Importance of Principal-Agent Motivation Alignment and Constraining Doctrine*

Abstract

To ensure moral targeting decisions, national political leaders must accept the costs of monitoring in terms of time and money, and provide detailed direction, as well as oversight to ensure objectives are clear and subordinates carry out directions. Military officers must ensure that their motivations align with those of their principals, and they must ensure that constraining doctrine for planning and executing operations is followed. The process of aligning motivations with respect to desired outcomes, and the process of planning strategies according to doctrine together lead to moral targeting decisions. By following the processes of getting war plans approved according to published US doctrine, a deliberate dialogue is followed with direction and feedback through several steps of planning and approval that result in multiple people working on a product that results in a sort of corporate ‘buy-in’. Through case studies of Desert Storm (the first Gulf War), Operation Allied Force (NATO's war against Serbia), and the US War on Terror (Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns), I find that only in the War on Terror were moral targeting decisions made. Furthermore, they were the only case studies wherein both constraining doctrine was present and principal-agent motivations were aligned with respect to objectives.

Keywords:

• Morality
• targeting
• principal-agent motivations
• just war

Notes

1. From 1965 to 2001, 122 articles relating to ethics, or morality in warfare issues (that span the spectrum from jus ad bellum to jus in bello), were published in defense journals worldwide. Of these, US military officers wrote 61. Thanks to Ms Diana Simpson, Air University Library for the search assistance.

2. James Turner Johnson, in Morality and Contemporary Warfare, eloquently states that ‘the denial of a distinction between combatants and non-combatants is wrong, both morally and in international law; and the direct, intentional targeting of noncombatants as a means of waging war is an even more fundamental violation of the justice that moral tradition and law seek to protect’ (124).

3. Author was 363 Tactical Fighter Wing Mission Planning Cell Intelligence Chief during Desert Storm, the Gulf War of 1991. He led the officers and enlisted who planned all combat missions and debriefed the fliers upon their return from their missions.

4. Air Force officers in multiple interviews in Montgomery, Alabama, and Washington, DC (the Pentagon). Officers asked that their identity remain anonymous for purposes of this research. Interviews were carried out in June 2002, as well as during Operation Allied Force when the author worked on the staff of the Air Force Doctrine Center

5. ‘Checkmate’ is the Current Operations Division of the Operations Directorate on the Air Staff; HQ USAF/XOOC.

6. ‘Skunkworks’ is the Strategy Division of the Plans Directorate on the Air Staff; HQ USAF/XOXS.

7. The two relevant US doctrine documents when Iraq invaded Kuwait were JCS Pub 26, Joint Doctrine for Theater Counterair Operations (from Overseas Land Areas), dated 1 April 1986, and Joint Pub 3-0 (test pub), Doctrine for Unified and Joint Operations, January 1990. Neither document guided US forces in targeting to achieve national objectives or to take into account a proportionality–necessity balance. The only conceivable objective was total victory by defeating the enemy's army.

8. Several inconsistent versions of objectives were given to US planners. These came from the President, NATO Secretary-General, Secretary of Defense, as well as military staffs. See United States General Accounting Office, GAO-01-784, Kosovo Air Operations: Need to Maintain Alliance Cohesion Resulted in Doctrinal Departures, Washington, DC, July 2001 (p. 20), Department of Defense News Briefing, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, 23 March 1999, available on-line: www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar1999/t03241999_t0324sd.html, as well as ‘President Clinton Address to the Nation Regarding NATO Air Strikes Against Serbia’, 24 March 1999, available on-line from http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/3/24/8.text.1, accessed 13 April 2000, and Transcript of press conference given by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and SACUER General Wesley Clark, 1 April, 1999 in Brussels, Belgium, accessed 1 Oct 2003 at http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/s990401c.htm.

9. ‘Integration of Air and Space in Operational Planning’, briefing to AF Doctrine Symposium, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1 March, 1999. Officer requested his name be withheld.

10. The process of building up the target list to the 2,000 targets General Clark demanded of the staff became known as ‘T2K’ and for many people became the sole focus of their work. Personal interviews with Colonel Scott Bethel, then Chief of Targets Intelligence, NATO Headquarters Intelligence Directorate. Series of interviews between April 1999 and Jun 2002.

11. Three major doctrine documents had been updated since Allied Force. Joint Publication 1, Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States, Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 14 November 2000, Joint Publication 0-2, Unified Action Armed Forces (UNAAF), Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 July 2001, Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations, Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 September 2001.

12. Chief, Target Development, Headquarters, US Central Command, personal interview with author, 6 November 2003. Officer cannot be named due to the nature of his position and the ongoing operations in his theater of operations.

13. Chief, Target Development, US Central Command.

14. In his personal papers, Clark discussed what he perceived the Administration's attitude to be towards the Serbian threat. ‘That's the flavor of it. “It's not like this is a really serious problem”. It's like, “Hey, let's jerk this guy's [Milosevic's] chain”. [Then,] “Okay, we can't stand [it] anymore, it's too embarrassing politically”’, Clark said, adding: ‘I don't take it that way. I take it as a very serious threat to European security’. See R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘Clark Papers Talk Politics and War’, Washington Post, 7 February 2004 (p. A01).