Military Values and Moral Relativism

Abstract

That there exists disagreement on what is right and what is wrong does not mean that we have to embrace the position of the moral relativist. One could say that the military has a role in addressing flagrant violations of human dignity on the macro level: it is increasingly used for the promotion of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, sometimes among people who do not yet count these things among the values of their culture. But how does that translate for the men and women on the ground? And how do we prepare them? Militaries traditionally found the answer to that last question in providing clear rules. That emphasis on rules makes sense in many aspects, most of all because it provides both military personnel and outsiders, say the local population in a mission area, with some security regarding the way they are treated. Such a confidence in the salutary power of rules has its downsides, though, for instance that rules are impotent when no one is around and lack the flexibility necessary in today’s missions. Also, rules are often more about inducing people to refrain from unethical behavior than about motivating them to behave humanely. But perhaps the most important drawback of an overreliance on rules is that it can impede the ability to see the moral aspect of what one is doing (or not doing), while that ability is evidently an important prerequisite for morally sound decision making. Soldiers should have some leeway in that decision making to keep them from committing so-called ‘crimes of obedience.’ Making good use of this leeway presupposes a virtuous disposition, and many militaries hence see a virtue based approach to ethics as an important complement to rules imposed from above in their effort to make their personnel behave ethically.