Document created: 27 April 03
Air University Review, January-February 1976

Military Ethics In a Changing World

As a junior officer—and before that as a senior Army brat (teen-aged)—I took part in bull sessions where a favorite topic was "the military mind." Was there such a thing as "the military mind"? If so, how did it differ from the civilian mind?

As a "junior colonel," I found that the semantics had changed. The topic for debate was whether or not the military was a profession. In view of the spate of writings on military professionalism over the past fifteen years, we are inclined to forget that the very term "military professionalism" was virtually unknown until Professor Samuel Huntington's landmark work The Soldier and the State, published in 1957. *

* One of the first published references to "military professionalism" by a military professional was my "Challenge to Military Professionalism" in Foreign Affairs, January 1964.

Now there seems to be a consensus, both inside and outside the military, that there is a military profession. Thus, today, the topic for debate in the professional military schools has become: Is there such a thing as a "professional military ethic"?

My answer is: "Yes. If there is no ethic, there is no profession."

There is in fact a general recognition of the existence of a military ethic which differs from a personal ethic or from the ethics of other recognized professions.

It is not just ethics that makes the military profession unique. Professor Huntington, for example, points out that there are three characteristics of any profession: expertise, corporateness, and responsibility. All three of these characteristics have aspects which uniquely define the military profession. But what about professional military ethics? Simply speaking, ethics is encompassed in the characteristic of professional responsibility.

All systems of human ethics have some common elements; at the same time there are some elements that make the military ethic unique.

The military, of course, is a public service profession, and a public service profession establishes certain values that are different from those of professions that are not part of the public service.

It is true that all professions have a responsibility to the public and to society, but the public service professions are more sharply defined in terms of their responsibility to duly established civic authority.

Still, the military as a public service profession differs from other public service professions. First of all, the military profession deals with matters of life and death—life and death of individuals and life and death of nations. This leads to a special emphasis within the military ethic on the value of the organization as opposed to the value of individual survival. Another important distinction is that the military profession sanctions the use of violence, which is not permissible in other situations (except to a certain degree in such organizations as the police forces). Some analysts have described the military professionals as experts in the management of organized violence. The fourth factor is that the military professional works for a monopoly. Unlike the military, a lawyer can change his law firm without changing his profession. A doctor can change hospitals or go into private practice. Even a city or state employee can change jurisdictions without affecting his professional status. A military officer, however, cannot quit the military and still follow his profession—except perhaps to become a soldier of fortune. This is a minor exception in that the demand for soldiers of fortune is relatively small and usually confined to a few subspecialties of the military profession. In any event, barring that exception, a military man cannot quit his nation's armed forces and still follow his profession.

These unique factors lead the military to emphasize certain principles. Not all these principles are exclusive to military ethics, but they are especially emphasized in the ethics of the military profession. These factors have also led many people, both in and outside the military, to think of the ethics of the military as being higher than or morally superior to those of other professions such as business, law, or the press. 

For example, there is a long tradition that an officer's word is his bond. His signature is not to be given lightly. There is widespread acceptance of the idea that a certain action may constitute "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" even though it violates no specific law or regulation. Making a false official statement, orally or in writing, is in violation of the military ethic whether or not the statement is a sworn one and whether or not the crime of perjury is involved. The military ethic requires that the officer be above quibbling; "guardhouse lawyer" becomes a term of derision. From his earliest days as a cadet, the officer is expected to accept the consequences of his act or failure to act. He is so indoctrinated that often the only acceptable answer is: "No excuse, sir."

It is true that many professions tend to have a higher view of their own ethics than do outsiders. Nevertheless, there is a generally high respect of the United States public for the U.S. military—a respect that is not always extended to foreign military. This generally high respect of the U.S. public for the military stems from the great respect for what they think of as the military ethic.

There are, of course, a number of well-publicized recent events that have caused doubt to be cast on military ethics—events that have, in fact, eroded public support for the military profession. Nevertheless, there is still a high level of public respect for the U.S. military as compared to many other U.S. institutions now being criticized.

In its simplest—perhaps oversimplified—form, the military ethic is well stated by the West Point motto: duty, honor, country.

But there is more to it than that. Philosophically, military ethics are founded on a pessimistic view of mankind. Without a pessimistic view of mankind, there would be no necessity for a military establishment to protect the country. Many of the severest critics of the military (for example, those who favor unilateral disarmament) start with a basically optimistic view of the nature of man—that is, the basic view of man's innate goodness.

The concepts of duty and honor put an extremely high premium on mission, especially unit mission—a premium not reflected in most of the more traditional professions. This emphasis can cause some problems. Overemphasis on mission can lead to the age-old ethical problem of subordination of means to ends. It leads to familiar but questionable practices too frequently winked at simply as a way of life in the military: moonlight requisitioning (the notion that a really good supply officer must be a thief at heart); inflated OER's (an officer must look out for his subordinates); or unit parochialism ("my" outfit is always the "best").

Military ethics also puts a great premium on obedience, basically because the lives of people, the lives of nations, are at stake. The military man is indoctrinated with the slogan: "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die." The military man is also imbued with the idea: "Don't just stand there, do something"—the idea that vigorous pursuit of a less-than-perfect plan will bring better results than a lackadaisical pursuit of a better plan. By contrast, there is the bureaucratic or diplomatic approach: "If we delay long enough, maybe the problem will go away."

The military man believes that once a decision is reached he should salute smartly, say "Yes, sir," and then try to carry out that decision as vigorously as though that was what he had originally recommended to his boss. At the same time the military man takes pride in his manifestation of obedience, the critics say that military people are simply yesmen who tell their boss what they know he wants to hear.

The concept of military obedience is qualified by the requirement that the orders must be "legal" orders. This, of course, causes the problem of who is going to decide whether they are legal orders or not. As a matter of practice, the burden of proof is on the recipient of those orders and not on the giver. Thus the recipient has the difficult problem of whether or not to obey an order when no decision has been reached in a court of law as to whether or not it is legal.

The military ethic puts a premium on loyalty. This, like the premium on obedience, raises a question: one must weigh the importance of the mission and organization or unit as opposed to that of the individual. Loyalty ought to carry the obligation of not being a yesman—the obligation of giving the best advice possible prior to a decision's being made—and, once the decision is made, of carrying it out loyally. In this respect the military profession gets very high marks in comparison with some of the other public service bureaucracies. The premium on loyalty, of course, does raise the issue of loyalty to whom or to what level of the organization.

These traditional pillars are still today essential elements of the structure of military ethics, but they have been subjected to severe strains by the impact of events since World War II.

First of all, we have seen, during the last thirty years, the progressive erosion of the authority of the commander and the progressive erosion of the concept of military paternalism, combined with the expansion of the rights of the individual in uniform. These trends initially accompanied the large influx of citizen soldiers during World War II, which brought about a conflict between the ethic of the average or ordinary citizen and the ethic of the military profession. The trend continued as a result of the long-term continuation of the draft, and more recently as a result of the need to attract large numbers into the volunteer force.

Immediately after World War II the Doolittle Board, reacting to widely alleged abuses in the military system, greatly expanded the rights of the individual serviceman and confined or restricted the authority of the commanders. We have seen over this period of time successive revisions to the court-martial system, including challenges by civil courts on the constitutionality of some of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. At the same time we have seen a progressive centralization of authority, which has been made possible by continuing advances in communication—all of these tending to erode the previous authority of the commander.

We have seen continued and expanding Congressional interest in individuals and Congressional interest in the advice that subordinates render to their superiors—leading, in fact, to legislation that President Eisenhower characterized as sanctioning "legalized insubordination." This legislation highlighted the issue of loyalty to military and civilian superiors in the chain of command versus constitutional and legislative responsibility to Congress, especially in those cases when original military advice has been overruled by a superior. Thus the military professional may often find himself in the difficult and delicate position of being asked to explain and justify to a Congressional committee his original recommendation as opposed to the contrary decision made by a lawfully authorized superior.

There is the related issue of going along with the decision made by a superior officer, requesting reassignment, or, in the classic Stonewall Jackson tradition, submitting one's resignation. It is part of the military folklore that if one does not go along he can always resign, but people who say that too easily, too flippantly, ignore the fact that resignation separates the military man from his profession, unlike resignation in another profession. The military professional does not enjoy the flexibility of other professionals. Resignation is often considered but only very rarely submitted.

Other changes contributing to the progressive erosion of the authority of the commander include the proliferation of all sorts of councils—airman councils, NCO councils, junior officer councils, racial councils. These have been combined with a proliferation of methods for legally bypassing the chain of command—that chain of command which traditionally the military has thought of as being the inviolate necessity to effective discipline and effective action in war. This is not to argue against these changes but simply to point out that there is a price tag for their adoption.

Another factor that has had a significant effect in the last twenty-five or thirty years is the war crimes trials following the Second World War. The Allied position on war crimes was consistent with the military ethic, that is, the concept that orders need not, indeed should not, be obeyed if they are illegal. There is also the obligation for the military profession to observe the laws of war with respect to prisoners of war and noncombatants. There is the recognition that the sanction of the use of violence by military professionals requires that they limit that violence to "reasonable force." Certainly the U.S. military shared the opinion of the American people on the heinous nature of the Nazi crimes against humanity. Nevertheless, the War crimes trials were disturbing, unsettling, to the military profession the world over. Military professionals were concerned about whether the courts really had jurisdiction. They were bothered by the ex post facto nature of the trials and punishment. Many military professionals thought that the trials placed an unfair burden on the military in trying to resolve the ethical issue of obedience and loyalty versus legality. It led many to the cynical conclusion that the moral to be learned from the war crimes trials was that the U.S. military had better never lose a war.

A third major factor impacting on military ethics since World War II was the Korean War. Accompanying the Korean War was the spread of the concept of limited war, which had a profound impact on the ethics of the military profession as well as all the other aspects of military professionalism. Most American military people, especially at the outset, found it extremely difficult to accept the goal of a limited objective (restoration of the status quo) versus victory. This was, in part, a matter of training and education, but a moral question was involved too: How can a commander morally send men to their possible death if victory is not the object for which the war is being waged? Thus while most, but by no means all, of the military accepted the right and the duty of President Truman to exert civil control over General MacArthur, many also felt that victory was a more moral goal than limited war with its limited objective of restoring the status quo.

Many military people were also disturbed by a war that was not a war but a police action—a war that did not follow what they had been led to believe was the Constitutional process of declaring war—a war that led to the involuntary recall of thousands of Reservists simply for a police action or a war not declared by Congress.

Hardly had U.S. military personnel adjusted intellectually and emotionally to the necessity of a limited war in a nuclear age when they suffered the trauma of guerrilla wars and wars of insurgency. The U.S. experience of the American Indian wars and the guerrilla war in the Philippines had largely been buried in the institutional memory, in part because of the great traumas those experiences had caused in the U.S. military profession in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was also the fact that regular forces simply do not like guerrilla wars because regular forces are ill suited to wage these "dirty little wars" that do not follow the rules of "civilized warfare."

Guerrilla wars and wars of counter-insurgency introduce ethical questions that the professional military man would prefer to avoid if he could. There is the question of treatment of noncombatants. In a guerrilla war, how can you tell who is a noncombatant? What is "reasonable" force by a modern military unit when confronted by an unsophisticated guerrilla force? How does the traditionally recognized practice of reprisals square with humane treatment of noncombatants? In the aftermath of Vietnam, early involvement of U.S. forces in future guerrilla or counterinsurgency adventures seems unlikely. However, the continuing spread and effectiveness of terrorism seem likely to pose similar difficult ethical problems for both the military profession and the society of which it is part. Will Western governments be able to provide the protection against terrorism to which their citizens are entitled, without destroying the fabric of Western society and culture?

Throughout the period since World War II there has been a continuing debate on the morality of war and the specific methods of waging war. This debate is by no means a new one; it goes back at least to the Middle Ages. But it is a debate about which a pragmatic U.S. military had not worried very much before World War II. In effect, the military professional's attitude was that if Congress declared war it was a just war. This attitude has been complicated since World War II, however, by the issue of the war crimes trials and by the question of the morality or immorality of the World War II objective of unconditional surrender. It has also been complicated by questions on the morality of bombing, especially the bombing of civilian populations but also bombing in general.

During the war in Europe the bombing issue was usually addressed in terms of relative military effectiveness rather than morality, although there was the underlying thought that the most effective militarily is also the most moral in that it results in shortening the war. Thus the question was whether the Royal Air Force's night bombing of industrial and population centers was more or less effective in shortening the war than the American strategy of precision daylight bombing. Undoubtedly the American capability for more precise bombing made the precision bombing concept more appealing to American leaders while satisfying the moral injunction of seeking to avoid unnecessary casualties to noncombatants.

In the strategic bombing campaign against Japan, however, the apparent limited effectiveness of the early precision bombing tactics soon gave way to the fire-bombing of Japanese industrial cities. It was argued that this was the most effective way of attacking Japanese war industry, which was decentralized into thousands of small cottage industrial home-workshops. Destroying the Japanese industrial war machine would save many American lives, an objective that would have been lost in invading the Japanese home islands. After the war it became apparent that the earlier precision attacks had been more effective than was realized. Hence the issue continues in historical terms as to which should have been the preferred method of attack.

Interestingly, unrestricted submarine warfare had been a great moral issue in World War I and was responsible, in part, for the early enthusiasm of the American public for that war. By and large, submarine warfare died out as a moral issue during World War II. There was, however, continued interest during that war in avoiding gas warfare, an interest since heightened by development of nerve gases and biological warfare.

Also out of World War II came the issue of the morality of nuclear weapons because of their indiscriminate nature, their impact on noncombatants, and the follow-on death and injury by radiation (as opposed to being killed outright by conventional bombs or bullets). Ironically, one of the results of moral aversion to the use of nuclear weapons has been the widely accepted concept of deterring nuclear war primarily through a capability for assured destruction of hostage noncombatant civilian populations.

All these issues on the morality of war were capped by the general public revulsion to the Vietnam war amid debates as to the fundamental morality of the U.S. engagement—the revival of the issue of war crimes intensified by the anti bombing campaign conducted by Hanoi; the charges of indiscriminate use of air and artillery fire; the use of gas, napalm, cluster bombs, and defoliation; the morality of actions by some of our Special Forces, the Lavelle affair, My Lai, and so on. In some quarters it was argued that the individual soldier, the individual airman, ought to take it upon himself to decide whether or not the war was just and hence whether or not to fight it. Not only was the individual citizen to make this decision but also the individual military man wearing a uniform. It is ironic that many of those who argued this case most strongly were strongest also for civilian control of the military.

A final factor impinging on military ethics is the increased politicalization of the military establishment since World War II. Many post-World War II analyses led to a much greater emphasis on the fact that war—or any use of military force—must be subordinate to political objectives. Thus the United States came to abandon the concept of peace or war, to recognize that war should not be left just to the generals but that neither should peace be left wholly to the diplomats. The postwar era evolved into a long-lasting cold war situation, which continually emphasized the intimate relationship between international politics and the military. Conceptually, the United States abandoned the goal of unconditional surrender in wartime in favor of limited war for limited objectives.

One of the characteristics of this post-war era was a pervasive influence of the military in American society unlike anything at any time in our previous history. In the years immediately after World War II many of our top civilian leadership positions were assumed by those who had been military heroes during the war. Unlike the situation after previous wars, the United States was faced with a continuing heavy impact of the defense budget on the nation's peacetime economy. The United States maintained large standing forces unprecedented in peacetime. All these factors caused military issues to become important political and economic issues in the United States—issues in which the military professional frequently found that he had to take sides and in the process of which the profession became politicalized.

The importance of the American military in our society, as compared to its importance before World War II, has also led to a greater socialization of the military, thus leading to a greater likelihood of conflict between the ethics of the military profession and the ethics of American society at large; leading also to the possible confrontation of the military profession and other professions that cut across both military and civil life.

The politico-military nature of the post-World War II security arrangements led to NATO, SEATO, CENTO, mutual security agreements with a wide variety of nations around the world, and foreign military aid. Most of these military arrangements and procedures were created especially for political and economic purposes rather than being military objectives in themselves. Nevertheless, the military establishment, as implementers of foreign policy, became deeply involved in the explanation of, and the defense of, the nation's foreign and economic policy—and at a time when bipartisan foreign policy became more partisan. It is always difficult, of course, to draw the line between policy and implementation, and as a result there was a significant erosion of the military ethic that emphasized the importance of being nonpolitical or apolitical.

Taken together, these post-World War II events have had a dramatic impact on the traditional simple soldier's code of duty, honor, country. Many professionals yearn for new, up-to-date beacons—a military version of the Ten Commandments. The development of a restated Code of Conduct after the Korean War experience is illustrative of that yearning, as well as of the difficulty of stating a simple, understandable code, valid for all seasons.

The important thing is not the inability of the military profession to issue a modern Ten Commandments or a revised version of the fighting man's bible. The important thing is that the military profession is aware of the problem and is determined to grope toward a solution that is morally right, militarily sound, and socially consistent with the ethics of the American nation.

Major General Robert N. Ginsburgh, USAF (Ret), (USMA; Ph.D., Harvard) is Editor-in-Chief, Strategic Review. His last military assignment was Deputy Director, Joint Staff. Previous assignments included Air Force Director of Information and Chief of Air Force History. He also served at West Point, the Council on Foreign Relations, Air University, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, State Department, National Security Council, and NATO. He is author of U.S. Military Strategy in the Sixties (1965) and editor of U.S. Military Strategy in the 70s (1970) and The Nixon Doctrine and Military Strategy (1971). He is a graduate of the Air University's three professional schools, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and National War College.

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