Making the Military Moral by Don Carrick James Connelly David Whetham

Author:Don Carrick, James Connelly, David Whetham [Don Carrick, James Connelly, David Whetham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472412164
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

The concept of moral expertise

Military personnel are professional where they demonstrate competency and expertise in carrying out their professional duties to provide a service to society that society cannot otherwise provide for itself. The concept of duty, derived from moral service and purpose, presupposes knowledge and understanding of the expert requirements of that service: that which needs to be known and those skills to be developed. Case et al. (2010: 3–4) identify four major areas of professional military expertise in their discussion of the US Army – military-technical, political-cultural, human development and moral-ethical. The Ethic inhabits this latter realm, which directs the military in its deployment of the rest of its expert knowledge in order for it to ‘fulfill the fundamental duty of the profession to fight wars and conduct operations morally’, in accordance with the expectations of the people and the requirements of domestic and international law.

What separates the military profession from all others has been bluntly expressed by Toner (1995: 22–23): ‘in addition to killing and being prepared to kill, the soldier has two other principal duties … some soldiers die and, when they are not dying, they must be prepared to die’.10 In being prepared to inflict harm and take life, and to accept the ‘unlimited liability clause’ of giving their lives for their country, military professionals cross the most fundamental of moral premises, the right to life. But they must do this in accordance with the values and interests of the society that they support, and those moral principles that underlie them. The ‘license’ to cross these moral boundaries is dependent on clearly defined constraints on what are deemed morally permissible behaviours in relation to necessary moral ends, which establishes high expectations of moral knowledge and skills in the prosecution of professional activity.

It is in the realm of moral expertise that the question of professional autonomy is most clearly raised. The military, as a profession, defined in part by its ability to make judgement within its area of expert knowledge and skills, has a duty to provide those it serves with expert advice on the use and threat of force. In moral terms this involves resisting obedience to those civil proposals and policies that promote the unprincipled use of force (what Cook (2004: 63) describes as ‘a high manifestation’ of military professionalism) and exposing them to policymakers through expert and plain-speaking guidance (Cook 2013, 33–44). However, public confidence, not least in the UK and US, in the appropriate utilisation of expertise and knowledge by military professionals has been challenged by reports of inappropriate government lobbying by senior and retired officers, and questionable military relationships with the media and defence industry (Haynes and Pitel 2012: 9), facilitated in the latter case by the ‘revolving door’ of appointments for retiring military officers in the private sector. Clarity on the acceptable utilisation of professional knowledge is part of society’s bargain with the military and is underpinned, for liberal democracies at least, by the public’s belief in the ‘apolitical and non-partisan ethic of service’ and ‘the principle of civilian control’ (Moten 2010: 17).

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