Moral Philosophy as a Force Protection Measure

Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our third annual student writing contest by sending us their thoughts on strategy.

Membership in the profession of arms is a tightrope walk. Just warriors manage a delicate balance between respecting human life and taking it. This is no new phenomenon, but instead has been a fact about war from the beginning. We judge Achilles, but not for killing Hector; that was his soldierly duty. There was a hope, though, that even in death, Achilles might honor Hector’s life. This was not to be. In defiling Hector’s body, Achilles dehumanized his enemy and fell to one side of the tightrope. The warfighter—even the modern warfighter—who makes this error compartmentalizes the violence she causes so effectively that she can no longer see the horror in it. She can become so successful in her efforts to avoid seeing her enemy’s humanity that she can no longer see humanity in noncombatants either. Failing in this direction comes at a heavy price. By dehumanizing her enemy, the warfighter who approaches war in this way risks sacrificing her own humanity on the battlefield. She transitions from just warrior to mere killer.

C.S. Lewis, author of “"The Necessity of Chivalry” (Britannica)

But one can deviate too far in the other direction too. Respect for the life of the enemy, after all, can make it difficult for the just warrior to take it. This too is a risk the professional warfighter faces. If one errs in this direction, the enemy soldier’s humanity so dominates the warfighter’s field of view he forgets the defenseless need a defender, and that he is morally justified—and perhaps morally obligated—in killing to protect them. If the warfighter falls to this side of the tightrope, he safeguards his humanity but at the cost of justified mission objectives. The just warrior must maintain the delicate balance—one that requires constant attention and occasional repositioning and one that produces an exhausting tension between respecting life and taking it. In describing the medieval chivalric code, C. S. Lewis went even further, suggesting not a balancing act but a paradox. “The knight...is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”[1] This is, whether we like it or not, something like the tenuous position members of the profession of arms are asked to hold.

One wonders whether we, the U.S. military, have done enough to prepare warfighters for this balancing act. Have we done enough to show combatants that doing violence to prevent violence generates a moral tension? Any binary, black-and-white approach to the morality of war will lead warfighters to lean too far to one side of the tightrope or the other. If one leans too heavily on the platitude that enemy combatants are simply “bad guys,” “pure evil,” or that they “deserve to be killed,” then one will likely fall toward the first extreme. But if one relies upon the simple claim that one ought not to take human life—that thou shalt not kill—then one falls toward the other. The moral complexity of killing in war defies the good-versus-evil maxims we often use to describe it. This is not to say that killing is not justified in war, nor that some enemy combatants—perhaps particularly in some recent coalition campaigns—haven’t typified evil. Killing in war is often justified, and, when it is, it is often morally obligatory. But there is more to the story than this, and the delicate balance that the profession of arms demands of its members requires them to give a more thorough account than the maxims allow. War and killing—even just war and justified killing—are tragic. As Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes has put it, “The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing.”[2] Have we done enough to teach our service members how to deal with the moral tragedy of killing in war?

I argue that moral philosophy—that is, the systematic study of ethics—should play a formal role in the life of the combat unit. This is not just because the study of ethics might prevent atrocities and moral failures, though it might do that too. Instead it is because the moral contours of justified lethal force are complicated, and understanding them is crucial to the wellbeing of those who engage in it. Chaplains and operational psychologists have an important role to play, but there is a crucial gap between these disciplines that can be filled only by those who have devoted time and energy to the study of moral philosophy. This paper is both a call for, and a description of, the study of ethics in the trenches.

MQ-9 Reaper firing a Hellfire missile. (USAF Photo)

The crew did exactly what they were asked to do and performed their duties well. The strike submitted both to international humanitarian law and to the dictates of the just war tradition. The strike was legal and it was just. The crew stayed on the scene to conduct the battle damage assessment. The hellfire missile had done considerable damage to the target’s body and his limbs had been scattered around the scene. The son of that high-value individual—a boy who had just lost his father in a gruesome and violent attack he could not have predicted—returned to his late father’s body. Slowly and methodically, he began to pick up the pieces and put them back together in the shape of his father. The Reaper pilot, a father with a son about the same age as the boy on the screen, said, “I can’t watch this.” He asked another pilot to take the controls and left the cockpit.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that if ethics has any value in a warfighting organization, its value is forward-looking. For example, Deane-Peter Baker has argued for ethicists embedded in the military unit that can serve both as subject matter experts and role models. These “Joint Ethics Development Initiative graduates” (according to his own abbreviation, “JEDI warriors”) will be on hand to “enhance ethical performance” in the unit.[4] What I am after here is something quite different. A fighter squadron, an infantry battalion, or a ship’s company that pays close attention to ethical questions is less likely to suffer from ethical failures. This might be true, and I mean to take nothing away from that particular role of ethics. Though I am as interested as anyone else in preventing ethical failures, the question falls outside the scope here. Instead, I am concerned with the often-overlooked role that ethics should play as a force protection measure against moral injury.

Military members can suffer moral injury when they witness or participate in actions that “transgress deeply held beliefs that undergird [their] humanity.”[5] The difficulty is that it is not obvious which acts should be considered “transgressive acts.”[6] Jonathan Shay coined the term, moral injury, in his 1994 Achilles in Vietnam.[7] When he introduced the concept, he grounded it in the betrayal a service member can experience by the actions of a superior or of the military institution. Moral injury that results from having been betrayed locates the moral agency in the person or group of people who do the betraying. Of note, Pauline Shanks Kaurin argues along similar lines. She wants to maintain Shay’s definition and suggests some of the effects referred to as moral injury in recent work result instead from moral perfectionism, moral luck, or moral uncertainty.[8] While she is surely right that some so-called cases of moral injury are in fact the results of these disparate causes, recent work in empirical psychology suggests that the causes for moral injury are much broader than the betrayal Shay supposed. For instance, one can experience moral injury as a result of one’s own actions. As Drescher et al. helpfully suggest “combat is one of the very few experiences where trauma exposure comes not only through being the...victim of violence...but also through inflicting...violence and destruction upon others.”[9] By participating in an action that transgresses one’s deeply held beliefs about humanity, one exposes oneself to moral injury.

If moral injury is defined in this way, though, it is not immediately clear what it might have to do with the Reaper pilot introduced above. If moral injury can result from participating in transgressive acts, then at first it would seem as though moral injury will result only from moral failures—that an act that transgresses one’s deeply held beliefs about humanity must also transgress a moral standard. Or perhaps at the very least, moral injury results only when one’s actions, inadvertently even if justifiably, harm an innocent person—as is the case when a military action causes civilian casualties. According to a number of recent studies, however, combatants can experience moral injury even when the acts they commit are morally justified. The psychological evidence suggests that even justifiable killing in war—cases like that of the Reaper pilot above—can amount to a transgressive act.

The Reaper crew’s target in the case above was morally liable to be killed—that is, by lethally threatening innocent people, he had given up his right not to be killed.[10] On common just war grounds, the Reaper pilot has not done anything morally wrong. Yet, the surprising psychological finding is that combatants in cases like these can indeed suffer moral injury for killing an enemy combatant. In fact, in Sheila Frankfurt’s study of moral injury among combat veterans, “killing an enemy combatant” was one of the most common transgressive acts identified by participants. Of those who experienced a transgressive act in Frankfurt’s study, 31% identified “killing an enemy combatant” as the transgressive act.[11]

The source of moral injury in these cases is independent of moral failure. Michael Gross goes so far as to say that “moral injury in the wake of permissible killing is puzzling. It should not exist. But it does.”[12] The solution to this puzzle depends upon the myriad contours of the moral landscape. Killing is morally bad, even when it is right. The moral badness of killing even combatants who are liable to be killed is one of the many moral costs that make war tragic. That moral badness can cause moral injury.[13] But the common colloquialisms among combatants—that he was a “bad guy”—lacks nuance. It is difficult for combatants to conceptualize combat killing in the nuanced way required to defend against moral injury without the tools made available by moral philosophy.

If we choose artificially to view the morality of war through the binary lens of the morally black-and-white, we unwisely leave behind perhaps the best apparatus for providing battlefield care to the morally injured. If so, the only care we can offer to the Reaper pilot above is the insistence that he did the right thing—however strong his inclination to the contrary. We can reaffirm that the high-value individual was a “bad guy” and “deserved to die”—but this does little to salve the wound. Or, if we choose the alternative, we might tell him that “war is hell” or that “it comes with the job.” But this will likely exacerbate his injury.

I propose instead to admit the moral landscape is precipitous, and if we are to navigate it safely, we will need the proper tools and a well-trained guide. “War,” as John Stuart Mill famously said of the U.S. Civil War, “is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”[14] If we view war through the black-and-white lens, our only options are to admit that all killing is pure evil or to insist that justified killing in war is pure good; and neither claim can survive the lived experience of the warfighter. Instead, the just warrior sallies forth with eyes wide open as to war’s ugliness; and yet does so for the better peace for which the war is fought. Moral philosophy’s two-fold value to the warfighter is its critical reasoning and fine shading of the moral questions—both of which are necessary to reconcile justice and mercy, which are often mutually exclusive in the lived experience of the just warrior.

To that end, I propose the adoption of moral philosophy at the unit level as a force protection measure. Commanders should be prepared to ensure some members are trained, whether formally or informally, to lead unit members through the rugged moral landscape of war. The remaining space here will not permit a syllabus. By way of example, though, I point to three distinctions from moral philosophy that might bear on the Reaper pilot’s approach to what he has done and what he has seen.

Defending the Defenseless

For members of the profession of arms, the motivation for our violence matters. In his memoir from the Second World War, philosopher J. Glenn Gray says, “The fighter is often sustained solely by the determination not to let down his comrades...Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale.”[15] For millennia, combatants have returned from war and repeated variations on the claim that “it's about the person next to you.” This remains true today in many combat units. But in the multi-domain battlespace in which warfighting elements become more and more distributed, warfighters often will not directly perceive the threat to their fellow combatants. In the high-value-individual strike above, the Reaper pilot cannot reasonably claim that he did it “for the person next to him.”

The strike was justified because it was done in defense of others. If the high-value individual was a justified target, it can only have been because he posed a threat to someone, somewhere—whether it was to U.S. persons in a terror attack that had not yet taken place, or to Afghan civilians through in his role in the destabilizing insurgency. If warfighters like the Reaper pilot above are to defend against moral injury, they must be equipped to identify that which justifies their violent actions. They must be equipped to map the causal chain from the violence they impose upon the enemy to the defense of the defenseless.

Distributive Justice

In our ordinary language, we often talk of “bringing the terrorists to justice,” but this is misleading. Another distinction crucial to understanding the morality of the violence we cause is that between retributive and distributive justice. On a retributive justice view, “it is intrinsically morally good—good without reference to any other goods that might arise—if some legitimate punisher gives [guilty parties] the punishment they deserve.”[16] Retributive justice might be the language of politicians and pundits, but it is neither the language of international humanitarian law nor of contemporary just war theory.[17] There is therefore no need to attempt to justify violence in war as a pure, or intrinsic, good. International law and contemporary just war theory are built instead upon distributive justice. War is going to result in terrible harms. Those who participate in war have legal and moral obligations to try to distribute those harms toward combatants and to spare noncombatants.[18] In a crucial sense, just combatants do not kill because they can, nor certainly because they want to. They kill because it is the only way to defend the innocent—they kill because they must.

The Reaper pilot in the case above must grapple with the difficult truth that he killed a fellow person and even that he created orphans and a widow. He has done a terrible thing. And yet, morally speaking, it was the least terrible option. To allow his target to continue to prosecute attacks against the innocent, the pilot would not only have permitted innocent people to be killed, but he would also have permitted their innocent loved ones to be orphaned and widowed. Distributive justice leaves us with the uncomfortable proposition that just warfighters must do ugly things to prevent uglier ones. This is one moral cost of membership in the profession of arms.

The Moral Remainder

Third and finally, warfighters should become acquainted with the moral remainder. This is closely related to the discussion of distributive justice above. Because justified killing in war is justified on distributive grounds, there is almost always a moral remainder. Doing the right thing—defending the defenseless—comes at the cost of doing terribly violent things. In the end, that violence is justified. Moral philosophers say it is “all things considered” justified. That is, were it not for the extenuating factors, killing would not be justified. It is justified only when properly considered in light of all the facts. The moral badness of killing remains—thus, a moral remainder—as one part of the all things considered justification for killing to save life. This moral remainder is the burden members of the profession of arms willingly bear. This is one part—sometimes a small part, but sometimes a substantial one—of the sacrifice members of the profession of arms make on behalf of the citizens they serve. If just warriors are eventually to leave the profession whole, they must come to recognize this moral remainder they will bear; and the earlier they recognize it the better. This moral remainder is an important part of meaningful service—and not a personal failing. Recognizing this moral remainder early might help to prevent the long-term negative effects that might otherwise result.

“The Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone” by Auguste Rodin (Tate Museum)

The revelation that moral injury can result even from justified killing in war should give us pause. If this is so, then David Wood is right when he says that “to be in war is to be exposed to moral injury.”[19] It is not enough to say that to defend against moral injury, one should avoid committing atrocities—nor even that avoiding collateral damage is sufficient. Instead, front line leaders should invest in and apply the tools made available by moral philosophy to prepare their subordinates to traverse the moral landscape.

Jean Jacques Rousseau once lamented the abstraction of moral philosophy when he said, “Ah barbarous philosopher! Come read us your book on a battlefield!"[20] But if we are to mount an effective defense against moral injury, perhaps that is precisely what some moral philosophers will have to do.

Joseph O. Chapa is a Major in the U.S. Air Force and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. His areas of expertise include the Just War Tradition, military ethics, and especially the ethics of remote and autonomous weapons. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

[1] C. S. Lewis, "The Necessity of Chivalry," in Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, ed. Lesley Walmsley (London: HarperCollins, 2000).

[2] Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to War (London: Corvus, 2011), 13.

[3] This story was recounted to me by a pilot who was in the squadron at the time. This story is also mentioned in Dave Blair and Karen House, "Avengers in Wrath: Moral Agency and Trauma Prevention for Remote Warriors," Lawfare, no. Nov 12 2017 (2017).

[4] Deane-Peter Baker, "Enhancing Ethical Performance in Military Forces through Embedded Excellence," Scientia Militaria 42, no. 2 (2014).

[5] Shira Maguen and Brett T. Litz, "Moral Injury in Veterans of War," PTSD Research Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2012): 1.

[6] “Transgressive act” is Sheila Frankfurt’s term. I use it because it is more succinct than the alternative, “acts that transgress deeply held beliefs.” See Sheila Frankfurt, "An Empirical Investigation of Moral Injury in Combat Veterans," ed. Patricia Frazier, et al. (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2015).1.

[7] Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam : Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, 1st Scribner trade pbk. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2003).

[8] Pauline Shanks Kaurin, "Healing the Wounds of War: Moral Luck, Moral Uncertainty, and Moral Injury," The Strategy Bridge (2018).

[9] For the Drescher et al quotation, see Drescher, et al., Kent David Drescher et al., "An Exploration of the Viability and Usefulness of the Construct of Moral Injury in War Veterans," Traumatology 17, no. 1 (2011): 8. For other recent psychological studies on moral injury, see e.g, Frankfurt, "An Empirical Investigation of Moral Injury in Combat Veterans."; Maguen and Litz, "Moral Injury in Veterans of War."; Shira Maguen et al., "The Impact of Reported Direct and Indirect Killing on Mental Health Symptoms in Iraq War Veterans," Journal of Traumatic Stress 23, no. 1 (2010); William P Nash et al., "Psychometric Evaluation of the Moral Injury Events Scale," Military Medicine 178, no. 6 (2013); Shira Maguen et al., "The Impact of Killing in War on Mental Health Symptoms and Related Functioning," Journal of Traumatic Stress 22, no. 5 (2009).

[10] There is an on-going debate among just war theorists as to whether this is true of combatants on both sides or whether only combatants who participate in an unjust war are morally liable to be killed. That is a nuanced debate that need not concern us here. I have intentionally phrased this claim in terms that might appeal to participants on either side of that debate.

[11] In Frankfurt’s study, 102 participants identified a transgressive act. Of those, 32 listed “killing an enemy combatant” as a transgressive act. Frankfurt, "An Empirical Investigation of Moral Injury in Combat Veterans," 22.

[12] Michael L. Gross, "Military Medical Ethics: A Review of the Literature and a Call to Arms," Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 22, no. 1 (2013): 2.

[13] I argue for this claim more rigorously elsewhere. See Chapa, “Reasons not to kill in war,” PhD diss., (University of Oxford, forthcoming 2020).

[14] John Stuart Mill, The Contest in America (Boston: Little, Brown and company, 1862), 31.

[15] J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors : Reflections on Men in Battle (Lincoln, Neb: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 40.

[16] Alec Walen, "Retributive Justice," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, 2016).

[17] There is a strong retributivist strain in medieval and early modern just war theory, most notably in Augustine and Grotius, but that abated as the modern period progressed into a secularization of international law and political theory.

[18] Precisely which people are liable to suffer these arms is, again, a point on which contemporary just war theorists disagree.

[19] David Wood, What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars (Hachette UK, 2016).

[20] I discovered this quote in Janina Dill and Henry Shue, "Limiting the Killing in War: Military Necessity and the St. Petersburg Assumption," Ethics & International Affairs 26, no. 3 (2012): 311, 31. For the original quote, see Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Christopher Kelly, The Plan for Perpetual Peace, on the Government of Poland, and Other Writings on History and Politics, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Works. English. 1990 (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press : University Press of New England, 2005), 61.