Ethics of warfare
The ethics of warfare explore the moral principles governing conduct during armed conflict, highlighting the complexities and contradictions inherent in the practice of war. At its core, warfare is viewed as organized violence sanctioned by the state, which raises questions about the morality of killing in combat versus the general moral prohibition against taking human life. Historical perspectives, such as the concept of a "just war," have evolved to provide frameworks for justifying military action under certain conditions—these include having a legitimate authority, just cause, and proportionality in the use of force.
The ethical considerations surrounding warfare have been shaped by various philosophical and religious traditions, with notable contributions from figures like Augustine and Aquinas, who grappled with intentions and justifications for engaging in combat. Over time, the principles of chivalry in the Middle Ages and the legal frameworks established through international agreements, like the Geneva Conventions, have sought to protect noncombatants and preserve human rights during conflicts. Despite these efforts, the challenge remains to reconcile the realities of warfare with ethical standards, especially in light of historical atrocities and contemporary violations of international law. The ongoing dialogue about the ethics of warfare reflects the persistent struggle to balance national interests, humanitarian concerns, and moral imperatives in a world where the effects of conflict are profoundly far-reaching.
Ethics of warfare
In its simplest form, ethics can be defined as conduct that conforms to accepted professional standards, a system of moral principles applied to a specific aspect of life. Morality consists of actions deemed right or wrong by a person of conscience.
Obviously, in the matter of warfare, some conflict exists. Both written and unwritten laws in most states teach that violence is morally wrong in most situations. According to this, it is morally wrong to kill another human being. However, war is organized, institutionalized violence sanctioned by the state, and the ethics of warfare teach that it is morally right to kill another combatant in battle.
Early wars pitted one soldier against another, primarily in hand-to-hand combat. Unwritten laws protected noncombatants from harm. As the technology of warfare advanced, simple rules of warfare became muddied and called for more definitive codes of conduct as well as dealing with the question of the morality of war itself.
Just War
The earliest Christians subscribed to the tenets of the Gospel on loving one’s enemies and turning the other cheek. However, when, with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 c.e., Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the church became a powerful force throughout Europe. It began using torture and violence against its enemies, the “infidels.” War became a way of life among “Christian” countries, and a theory of a “just war” was developed to rationalize it. Strongest among the theorists of a just war was Augustine. With the repeated attacks on Rome by barbarians, Christians reasoned that a refusal to fight would undermine the power of the state.
Augustine’s De civitate Dei (413-427; The City of God, 1610) justified the Christians’ participation in war. He noted that in the Old Testament, God commanded men to go to war and that command justified the war. He said Christ’s command to “turn the other cheek” would not hold if one’s neighbor were in danger. The Christian could justifiably intervene between a victim and his attacker out of love. He viewed the soldier in killing his enemy as the servant of the law.
Simply put, Augustine’s just war requires the action of a legitimate authority and a good motive. It is not necessary that the authority be virtuous, and the motive may be generally “to do good and avoid evil.” Even the threat of war might be seen as a good motive.
However, such a rationale has questionable implications for ensuing wars and especially wars of the twentieth century. Augustine does not seem to tie his justification of war to the actual conduct of war, which is essential in treating the ethics of warfare.
In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas further added to the idea of a just war by dealing with the intention. If one’s intention is to save life even by taking the life of another, it is not immoral or unlawful.
The question arose later whether both sides in a war could be just. In the sixteenth century, Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria said if both sides were right and just, it would be wrong to fight the war. Therefore, both sides could not be considered just. Although since that time, the League of Nations Covenant, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the London Charter, and the United Nations Charter called for forbidding initiation of war, the theory of just war has prevailed.
Catholic bishops clarified the notion of the just war in their pastoral letter on war and peace, which called for the following conditions for a just war: just cause, competent authority, comparative justice, right intention, last resort, probability of success, proportionality (“the damage to be inflicted must be proportionate to the good expected”), and discrimination (“the lives of innocent persons may never be taken directly, regardless of the purpose alleged for doing so”).
Chivalry and the Crusades
The rules of chivalry, developed during the Middle Ages, were among the most exacting and rigid rules of conduct. Chivalry encompassed a strict code of conduct in love and war for knights of the era. It was strongly influenced by Christianity but was rarely lived up to. These rules included willingness to follow moral conscience, to defend one’s values, to defend all weakness, to refuse to retreat, to wage war against all enemies, to obey all orders that did not conflict with justice, and the willingness to be a champion of right and good. Although theoretically the code of chivalry brought some order to the chaotic feudal medieval times, the theory and practice of chivalry in warfare were often worlds apart.
The Crusades (1095–1272), which began as a “Holy War” to wrest Jerusalem and the Holy Places from the “infidels,” illustrate the gap between the theory and practice of chivalry. During the fall of Jerusalem, which began the night of July 13-14, 1099, the crusaders killed all inhabitants with no regard to age, sex, or religion. All Jews and Muslims were either slaughtered or driven out. The main challenge to the ethics of warfare is the killing of innocents. However, in the minds of the crusaders, Jews, Muslims, and Turks, whether civilians or combatants, were considered “evil,” and therefore apt targets.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Efforts
Efforts toward ethics of warfare focused on the promotion of world peace. Before World War I (1914–1918), the czar of Russia called for two conferences, in 1899 and 1907, held in The Hague, Netherlands. Twenty-six countries, including the United States, sent delegates to the first; forty-four countries were represented at the second. The conferences aimed at reducing or limiting arms and formulating a plan to settle disputes by arbitration. They further proposed rules that enumerated the rights of neutral countries and banned attack of undefended towns, the use of poison gas, and aerial bombs. Because none of these were ratified by all participants, they were not considered binding and both conferences were virtually ignored during both world wars.
World War I created extreme death and destruction throughout Europe. Because world states had become more and more interdependent, the global effects of warfare prompted leaders to set down legal obligations to forestall warfare. These, however, proved ineffective in the face of increasing aggression.
As a result of global awareness of these factors, the League of Nations emerged with its covenant, which became part of the Treaty of Peace. Theoretically, it marked the demise of the legally unrestrained right to go to war, unrestrained use of force, and competitive buildup of arms. However, the issue of a state’s sovereignty became a barrier, and many countries interpreted Article 10 of the covenant as outlawing neutrality and ignoring the idea that this provision did not apply to nonmember states. Although President Woodrow Wilson had crafted the treaty, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it.
The Preamble to the U.S. Army Manual sets out rules protecting both combatants and noncombatants from unnecessary suffering and safeguarding certain fundamental human rights of persons falling into the hands of the enemy, particularly prisoners of war, wounded and sick, and civilians.
The Geneva Conventions
The four Geneva Conventions, drawn up after World War II, replaced earlier agreements, also known as the Geneva Conventions. They provided for humane treatment of prisoners of war. Signed by 188 nations, they banned torture, execution, forced displacement, and destruction of civilian buildings and facilities.
In 1977, two articles were added to the conventions. They required that children under age fifteen should not be taken into battle and that soldiers more than eighteen years of age should go into hostilities before younger combatants; second, that children under age fifteen should not be recruited. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, was delegated to judge violations of the conventions.
During the wars of the twentieth century, many nations were found to be in violation of the conventions. The countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including the United States, have been charged by the International Tribunal with violations in their more than five thousand bombing missions in Kosovo in the late twentieth century. The charges included “willful killing; willful causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity, and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”
Warfare in the Twenty-First Century
One of the major issues of ethics in warfare that has arisen in the twenty-first century regards the use of drones, unmanned aerial combat vehicles that carry weapons such as missiles. The US military has made extensive use of drones to carry out attacks on enemy combatants in the Middle East, but concerns have arisen regarding the number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. In 2009, the nonpartisan think tank Brookings Institution reported that US drone strikes in Pakistan had killed ten civilians for every one militant. After a US drone strike in Yemen in December 2013 killed members of a wedding party, Human Rights Watch published a report on the legality of the strike, which concluded that there was no evidence the members of the wedding party were an imminent threat to anyone's life and that "in the absence of an armed conflict, killing them would be a violation of international human rights law." In June 2015, forty-five former members of the US military issued an appeal to drone pilots to refuse to carry out their missions, arguing that these missions were in violation of both international law and principles of human rights.
Another form of controversial warfare that has gained in population in the twenty-first century is information warfare, the use of information technology (such as computers) to gain an advantage over an opponent. This may include hacking, monitoring electronic communications, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks intended to cause a website or network to go down, among other tactics. One of the main concerns regarding information warfare is the possibility of violating the right to privacy of civilians suspected and of civilian organizations being targeted by governmental cyberattacks. Information warfare also gained attention during the 2016 presidential elections in the United States, when it was discovered that Russian hackers, suspected to be working for their country's government, had attempted to influence the outcome of the election through selective leaking of confidential documents.
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