Military ethics deals with moral and ethical principles underlying the activities of a military system in a democratic state. The challenges and threats facing Western societies place decision makers in complex situations that require moral and professional decisions regarding the use of military forces. Most countries in the democratic world relate to ethics as morality, focusing on developing moral character and instilling virtues.
The aim of the values and principles of military ethics is to help find the balance between the duty to protect the country and its democratic principles, and the use of the military in actualizing national security needs to defend its citizens. In practice, recognition and understanding of ethical norms and adherence to them should help commanders shape an ethical climate and culture in their units and ensure professional behavior both in routine times and in times of combat.
Over the last decade, new combat technologies have challenged the discourse of military ethics. This new is now present on many platforms, most of them nonmilitary – political, social, cinematic, media and academic.
The importance of the Israeli case
It was in the early days of Zionism, when pre-state Israel began to be preoccupied with its defense, that the issue of morals and military ethics was first addressed.
The social structure in Israel affords special status to human life and the moral legitimacy of military action. Israel constitutes an example of a democratic state that is in constant security conflict and conducts political, media, and legal debate surrounding issues of military ethics. The IDF concept of ethics presents challenges to decision makers who must constantly apply careful consideration in order to minimize the risk to the soldiers.
This special issue presents a broad prism, taking a close look at the reciprocal relations between the military and society with a unique reference to the ethical dimension.
The articles present different perspectives of the gap between what is ethical and worthy and reality in the field. They challenge basic assumptions regarding the connection between security and morality and contrast them with the IDF concept of ethics.
The special issue contributes to understanding global processes that other military systems in democratic countries are facing.
Warfare Doctrine and Technology in the face of Military Ethics and Military-Society Relations, by Akiba Bigman and Udi Lebel, examines how the use of military force and the shaping of military doctrines adapt themselves to dominant ethical notions and limit themselves according to what the authors call “normative ethics” and on rhetorical ways in which discourse leaders justify the need for the idea of war after wars that have been etched as “cultural traumas.” The article explains how ethical discourse serves not only to limit and moderate the use of military force but also how military systems perceive it as a barometer that serves them in accumulating the legitimacy to apply the use of force.
The Ethics of Psychological Warfare – Lessons from Israel, by Tsuriel Rashi and Ron Schleifer, looks at how discourse shapes the consciousness, the public opinion, and the psychological warfare. While most treatment of military ethics deals with its relevance to domestic warfare, this article illustrates how the study of ethics also serves disciplines as yet unaddressed by the study of ethics. The article assesses the challenges and dilemmas facing democratic countries in their use of psychological warfare and for the first time offers proposals for ethical rules toward that end by way of an Israeli test case.
Standardization violates the principle of justice in the treatment of culturally sensitive military, by Ben Asher Smadar, Israel Shorek and Eldad Shidlovsky, links ethics to the study of loss in the context of the treatment of bereavement in a minority group whose fighters lost their lives during their military service. The article presents the lack of recognition of cultural differentiation of unique groups serving in the IDF army in the context of customs of bereavement and culturally sensitive treatment of the soldiers’ widows. It argues that a standard devoid of context, story or particular reference is merely a technical threshold rather then a proper moral threshold. It further claims that there are social contexts in which standards will be a prerequisite for generating justice but may never, logically, be sufficient. As a result of these understandings, recommendations will be made for building a culture-sensitive outline of care for bereaved families.
Cinematic Discourse of Military Ethics: Fictional Film as a Military Ethic Agent, by Dana Masad, links ethics, military-society relations, cinematic research and television drama. The article addressing how organizations shape ethical discourse about themselves in order to preserve their hegemonic status. Using the concept of “military ethical washing,” the researcher presents how, in this era of Liberal -Militarism Condition, armies execute a double move: intensifying the public debate on the morality of fighting while at the same time intensifying Military De-Politicization, namely – distancing the military from critical discourse in the public sphere.
The “Outing” of Lethality: Using Lethality to Legitimize Military Violence in Israel, by Ofra Ben Ishai, links means of combat, public opinion, and ethics discourse. It examines ethical discourse as expressed in the talkbacks on articles covering military use of lethal weapons. The article indicates the normalization of addressing military lethality through the use of consumerist marketing methods, especially micro-targeting. This response strategy invites different audiences to interpret military violence, thereby becoming its agents of legitimization. The article clarifies how dealing with ethics is relevant and worthy of being examined using methodologies from mass media.
The final article, Between Ethics [Education] and Practises, by Tzippi Gushpantz, examines how ethics education is actually addressed in Israel’s military organization. It demonstrates where ethics discourse does or does not take place within the IDF, while relating to what is happening in other military systems in the western world. The article illustrates the difference between spontaneity and the sporadic nature of the treatment of ethics (the real) and the establishing of the treatment of ethics (the ideal) and its influence on organizational culture and climate in military systems.
How senior decision makers deal with ethics is relevant and as important today as it ever was. Government systems, militaries and organizations are fighting today not only to thwart terrorism and crime, but to thwart the leakage of terrorist values and crime into their society. Therefore, the preservation of ethics and morals is a first and foremost interest.
Deviations from the rules of ethics and professional norms do not occur in a vacuum. They are revealed time and again in systems that have adopted a code of ethics and declared the importance of values and norms, but are, in practice, mainly oriented toward tasks and performance. Deviations also occur to preserve their hegemony in public discourse. They happen to good managers and commanders who did not know how to assimilate the ethical rules into managerial thinking or to those who are unaware of their responsibility to reduce the gap between what is declared and what is done in practice.
’Responsibility,’“reliability,” “integrity,” “human life” are not just items on a list in the code of ethics, and it is not right to talk about their significance episodically or when some disaster or failure occurs. These declared values must be instilled and become an integral part of the profound, yet routine, thinking and decision making of any senior commander and of any leaders.
I hope that this issue will provoke interest within the research community and among decision makers in the sphere of the study and development of ethics, which is so significant for the fine line between democracy and security. Dealing with the ethics of decision makers is important today as ever in order to overcome organizational blindness.