Military Ethics and Leadership At Lower Levels - Research Paper Example

Military Ethics Abstract This paper touches on various topics surrounding ethics within the military, with particular focus on the U.S armed forces and their history of unethical actions in conflicts past and present. This article finds that there have been various immoral actions performed by high and low ranking officers alike. Other topics include the effectiveness of article 15 on troop morale and the complex ethical situations that the military might face, specifically, the practice of torture. The conclusion is that the U.S should join the International Criminal Court (ICC) and look at the example of the Canadian Military which emphasizes the importance of morality and ethics in the armed forces. Military Ethics In recent years, the U.S military have been involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in this current age of technology and media, the civilians back home have begun to get a sense of what happens on the frontline. However, sometimes this means that the dark side of the military is exposed, in particular, the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, which can damage the reputation of the armed forces. Whilst many might believe that ‘Military ethics’ is a sort of an oxymoron, because of the amount of violence that is involved in the job, an organization like the army certainly needs a sense of morality otherwise the consequences can be disastrous. In this essay, I will examine the kind of values that are installed by the military into the troops and how some of these values can raise a conflict of interest. The breakdown of ethics in recent wars by the U.S military will be analyzed and the unethical actions of higher and lower ranking officers will be looked at and discussed. At this point I will briefly talk about the ethics of torture because of the recent controversies and infamy of the subject. Another topic covered in this paper is nonjudicial punishment within the armed force’s ranks and the advantages and disadvantages of such a process along with the effect it may have on morale. Evaluation of these subjects lead me to my final and concluding paragraph where I state my belief that the lack of ethics in the army can possibly be resolved by teaching officers, particularly junior officers, about the importance of ethics and how these changes may come about. Firstly, I will define the values that each soldier should have according to the U.S military, these are “Loyalty, Respect, Duty, Selfless service, Honor, Integrity, Personal courage (LRDSHIP)” (McCann & Pigeau, 2000, p. 129). Whilst these values may help keep discipline high and develop leadership skills, they could still lead to some unethical actions, for example, loyalty to your fellow soldiers could mean lying to cover up a non-attendance at formation. Another potential conflict of interest could be caused by the value of Duty, which is defined by McCann & Pigeau (2000) as “fulfilling your obligations”, this will cause a conflict of interest if part of the soldier’s duty is to follow orders from higher ranking officers that could be considered immoral by some. However, the value of Integrity would mean to do the morally right action, or as defined by McCann and Pigeau (2000) “To do what is right, legally and morally”, which shows that soldiers should do the ethical action in all situations. As we can see, some soldiers may be confused as to how to act when following these values and there seems to be no easy solution to answer this dilemma. One possible resolution could be to place more emphasis on one value then the others, so in order to make sure that soldiers will always do the ethical action, one would say that integrity would trump all the other values. Still, this would have problems of its own since there would be difficulties in which value should take importance over the others and also placing less importance on the others may see soldiers neglect that value altogether. If the decision is left to the discretion of the commanding officer, then soldiers may get more confused if one commanding officer's emphasis on one value is then different to another. The other response to this question could be just to re-write these values and start again with a more consistent set of principles, I believe that a less complex set of values and principles would reduce the conflicts of interest between these army values. While in a perfect world, soldiers would attempt to keep to these standards as best they can, in recent times it would seem there has been a general breakdown in the level of ethical standards kept by the soldiers. If we take World War Two as the starting point, we can see that the U.S military personnel were not very ethical during their occupation of Japan, “rape and other crimes committed by U.S soldiers were rampant from the first day of the occupation” (Tanaka p.116). Whilst some might argue that the Japanese Military were guilty of doing the same thing does not excuse the U.S troops from doing the same unethical actions. There are again many accusations of rape concerning the U.S involvement in the Korean war, Kim (2003) has evidence of this, “Korean police were generally unable to arrest Americans, even if they had committed serious crimes, such raping or killing Koreans because there was a special agreement … to protect American soldiers and their families living in Korea” (p.85) In fact, Lind (1999) goes as far as to say “rape and looting have been committed by U.S troops in every American war” (p. 246). We can also see examples of unethical behavior by the U.S military in more recent wars, in particular Iraq and the infamous pictures taken from inside Abu Ghraib prison which showed American soldiers beating and humiliating the prisoners. So as we can see from the examples just given, there seems that there has been no decline in the ethics of the military, rather, there seems to be a certain immorality running throughout the military. However, it would be wrong to use these bad, unethical actions performed by the minority of U.S troops to taint the entire reputation of the U.S armed forces when there is a large proportion of troops that genuinely do want to help out the local population of civilians. Still, it is difficult to really obtain a really reliable measure of what the ethics are really like amongst the lower ranking troops, this is because some actions may be unreported or even censored before the information gets widespread coverage. Nevertheless, whilst the unethical actions listed above are performed by lower ranking soldiers, there are also other actions that darken the U.S military's reputation further. Examples of these are the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam and Afghanistan (Napalm and White Phosphorus), the use of torture in Vietnam and Iraq, along with the disproportional amount of civilian deaths in various conflicts. While these actions may have been performed by soldiers in the field, I believe that it is the higher ranking officers who are more to blame for these kind of immoral actions, because it is the duty of the soldier to follow orders, as mentioned before, so what can a soldier do if the very actions he is asked to perform are immoral? I believe the answer to this question is to instill ethical values into the commanding officers, in order to set an example to the lower ranking soldiers and to make sure that unethical orders are never ordered in the first place. Another question raised at this point is why the people responsible for giving such orders were not reprimanded for such immoral actions, the reason is that they were on the winning side hence ‘victors justice’, whereby the victorious side of the war gets to give out the punishments. This would mean, since the U.S military has not lost a conflict they have entered, their troops have not been held accountable for their actions. In this next section, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of article 15, or nonjudicial punishment, within the military. Article 15 punishments “provides commanding officers the authority and procedures to impose disciplinary punishments for minor offenses without a court martial” (Rush, 2006, p. 339). Whilst a nonjudicial punishment does not count as a criminal conviction, it will still appear on the soldier’s military file which could potentially harm any ambitions of promotion up through the ranks. As a result, this kind of punishment may help to deter ambitious soldiers who are looking to further their career from misbehaving, it also has an advantage in being relatively quick and easy process for punishing soldiers who commit quite minor offenses. In these minor offense cases, we can see why nonjudicial punishments are very useful for maintaining morale, discipline and respect for commanding officers amongst lower ranking soldiers. This is because the only other options available for the officers in charge would be a court martial, which many would consider too harsh, especially as it would qualify as a criminal conviction, or to do nothing and let a minor offense go unpunished or simply use non punitive measures, which could cause a break-down in discipline. An example of the kind of action that would be considered for such punishment could be disrespecting a superior officer, although the scale of the punishment is usually dependent on the scale of the crime. However, this kind of punishment could also have some negative effects to it as well, mainly, the control and authority it gives to a commanding officer could lead to an abuse of this power. An officer who is quite strict and who would use this kind of punishment might cause the morale of his troops to lower and also might cause a rift between the lower ranking soldiers and the commanding officers. This kind of punishment would also be more favorable to these kinds of officers because of the ease of the whole process. It might also be criticized on the grounds that the whole procedure of nonjudicial punishment is not very democratic and the lower ranking soldiers do not get full legal protection, which may also cause a sense of injustice amongst the troops lowering morale. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the practice of torture has been used by the U.S military in conflicts as recent as Iraq and the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. The use of torture has been condemned by nearly every state in the world and is against international law and against human rights, something which democratic countries should hold in the highest regard. So how is it that the U.S military, representing one of the most democratic countries in the world, is found to be using torture as part of their interrogation techniques? I believe that this is because the guidelines of what is considered torture are not very clear, as Amstutz (2005) puts it “the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate coercion may be unclear at times” (p.163). Although he goes on to say that there are certain practices that there is a consensus amongst the countries that certain torture methods are despicable. The events that went on at Abu Ghraib cannot be justified under any circumstances and I certainly will not attempt to justify them here, however, I will look at a different scenario that demonstrates the complexity involved within the ethics of torture. Whilst the constitution of a liberal democracy may endorse the protection of human rights, if there was a threat to the people who live in this democracy, some may find it hard to consider a terrorists civil liberties over there own lives,” the constitution is not a suicide pact” (Clancy, 1996, p. 260). A simple example of this is a 'ticking time bomb' situation, if there was a nuclear device in a crowded city which was set to go off in a few hours time and the terrorist who had planted or made the bomb had been apprehended, would the use of torture in this state of affairs be morally wrong if it saved the lives of thousands or even hundred of thousands of lives? There is no easy answer to this question but it raises questions about if there are certain cases where torture of any kind is acceptable so long as it gets the job done and saves lives. By attempting to kill innocent people, could a terrorist forfeit their human rights giving the green light to use any coercive measure in order to obtain information? This is, however, a dangerous path that could lead to the erosion of civil liberties and also the torture of one who is perhaps innocent, if torture was acceptable in certain situations, there would have to be very strict guidelines on when it is acceptable and then methods that are most effective as well. This last section will look at possible future role that ethics in the military might have plus the certain methods that could help make the armed forces more ethical and the consequences of having a truly ethical military. Many people might believe that there are no ethics in the military, after all, the main job of the soldiers is to fight and this usually results in somebody being killed, also, with the previous actions of the U.S military as mentioned previously, there is no hope of bringing ethics into such an organization. The benefits of having an ethical army could be that there would not be a problem with bullying within the ranks, because obviously bullying would be an unethical action and if the soldiers knew that such actions would not be tolerated at any level then morale amongst the troops would almost certainly increase. An obvious advantage of having an ethical military would be that the atrocities mentioned in the second paragraph would never happen again since the soldiers would know and understand the moral implications of their actions. There are a few suggestions on how to make an association like the military become ethical, the first idea would be to try and teach the lower ranking soldiers about ethics, not only about which actions are unacceptable and immoral, but also why they are unethical and the teaching of the philosophy behind ethics. The implications of this being that rather than just telling soldiers not to do a certain action but the reasons why they should not do it and the philosophical side may help them to look at things from a different viewpoint. The second idea is for more severe punishments for those who continually display unethical behavior, for example, as we mentioned previously in this paragraph about bullying, if a soldier is continually found bullying colleagues then they would have no part in an ethical army. However, the most effective resolution would be to get higher ranking officers and junior officers to take courses in ethical leadership, this would be more efficient than teaching regular soldiers and give the lower ranking troops an example to follow and also make sure that no unethical orders would ever be given, such as to bomb civilian buildings and so on. This idea is already being implemented by the Royal Military College of Canada who has courses for junior officers in leader ship and ethics that cover “ethical theories, moral philosophy, ethical decision-making processes, moral and ethical dilemmas and codes of conduct pertaining to military service” (Robinson, De Lee, Carrick, 2008, p. 72). These courses aim to give young officers “leadership values and obligations required of officers such as personal integrity and respect of human dignity” (Robinson et al, 2008, p72). I would imagine that this kind of ethical leadership would hopefully improve the morale and discipline throughout the ranks of the armed forces and make the violence committed in past conflicts something that is never to be repeated again. Another way to have a more ethical armed force is to make sure that every officer is accountable for their own, and their troops, actions in a conflict. This has been attempted in the past with the creation of the Hauge convention and the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite the U.S military’s refusal to join the ICC, perhaps showing its wish for victor’s justice. There may be one slight problem with a nation having a truly ethical army, which is that if it is asked to go to war, there will be some lengthy debate and even refusal over whether the conditions to go for war are ethical or not. Although, if a war is fought for the wrong reasons, perhaps it would be a good idea for the armed forces to be ethical, since there can not be a war without an armed force. Despite the violence involved with being in the military, and the history of disgraceful behavior from both higher and lower ranking soldiers in past wars and conflicts, I believe that it is because of those things that ethics needs to be an important part of the military. I have also discussed that the values the armed forces try to introduce to the troops can be contradictory in places and would need to be replaced by more consistent and easier to follow principles. The example that the Canadians’ have set by teaching junior officers about ethical leadership is an important step in getting the military to become more moral, although the U.S armed forces can take a huge step forward just by joining the ICC where individuals will be held more responsible for their actions, so hopefully the crimes of the past committed by troops and generals alike, will never happen in the future. References Amstutz, M., (2005) International ethics: concepts, theories and cases in global politics Rowman and Littlefield: Maryland Clancy, T., (1996) Executive orders New York: G.P. Putnam Hinds, M., (1999) Vietnam: the necessary war New York: Free Press Kim, C., (2003) Korean Shamanism: the Cultural Paradox Hants: Ashgate Publishing Ltd McCann, C., & Pigeau, R.,(eds). (2000) The Human in Command, New York: Springer Robinson, P., De Lee, N., Carrick, D., (2008) Ethics Education in the Military Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd Rush, R. S., (2006) NCO Guide. Pennsylvania: Stackpole books Tanaka, Y., (2001) Japan's Comfort Women. New York: Routledge Read More