Soldiers shoulder the risks...

... to protect civilians

Welcome back to our Substack Seminar on just-war principles!

If you are just joining us, I’d encourage you to look back on previous episodes, to gain a better sense of what we’re about and to learn the “ground rules” for this discussion. For the full experience, read up from the bottom of the segments listed here. But you don’t need to know everything, and you can always catch up later; we’re happy to have you join us right now!

Once again let me encourage readers (and listeners) to join in our discussion, asking your questions or making your arguments in the Comments section. I know from experience that this topic provokes lively and enlightening debates, and I’m waiting for our little Substack Seminar to reach what you might call a “critical mass.” As I explained a few weeks back, I’ve set aside the outline that I’d presented for our discussion, in hope of jump-starting those debates.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been exploring different aspects of the just-war demand for discrimination in the selection of targets, and non-combatant immunity. Stated briefly, the principle is that in war, participants must make all practical efforts to ensure that civilians are not harmed.

We’ve looked at that principle from different angles, asking different questions:

• Since some collateral damage is inevitable in any war, what are the realistic limitations on military actions? How much harm to civilians can be excused by military necessity? Does the “principle of double effect” allow strategists to plan an offensive knowing that civilians will be harmed, but reasoning that the harm is an unintended consequence of an otherwise justifiable (even perhaps necessary) action?

• Especially in democratic societies, where leaders are chosen by popular vote, do all citizens bear some responsibility for the country’s military actions? What about civilians who work in defense industries, or provide support for armies? Who qualifies as a non-combatant?

• Guerrilla warfare poses special challenges. Guerrillas hide among civilians, often masquerade as civilians, and try to recruit civilians to their cause. How can an anti-guerrilla force preserve the immunity of non-combatants, when civilians can’t be distinguished from the guerrilla fighters?

None of these questions allows for an easy answer; in every case there are tough moral judgments to be made. But the just-war approach insists that military officers cannot shirk those tough questions. The rules of engagement, the training of troops, and the strategy of the campaign should all reflect that commitment to discrimination in the choice of targets.

As a practical matter, this commitment nearly always implies that soldiers should accept risk— which may mean accepting casualties— rather than putting civilians at risk unnecessarily. This may be the stiffest moral test of the just-war approach.

Soldiers are expected to take risks; it is in the nature of their profession. We are saddened when we hear about soldiers killed in combat, but we are not surprised. To go to war is to accept the likelihood of military casualties. Anyone who enlists in (or is drafted into) the military services recognizes this reality; it is dangerous work.

Civilian life, by contrast, is not ordinarily dangerous. We are surprised to hear about members of the ordinary workforce who are killed by accidents on the job. Those deaths are not more tragic than the deaths of soldiers at war, but they are more shocking. Since a main purpose of just-war teaching is to ease the brutality and ferocity of combat, the principle of non-combatant immunity aims to preserve the peace and security of civilian life as much as possible: to preserve that sharp distinction between the world of war and the serenity of home life.

So in difficult wartime situations, when civilian lives might be at risk, we expect soldiers to take extra precautions— even at some cost to themselves— to protect the non-combatants. In practical terms this might mean:

• deciding not to bomb a military facility located in the center of a civilian neighborhood;

• holding fire when entering a Vietnamese village, despite suspicions that some of the villagers might be Viet Cong guerrillas, ready to shoot;

• refusing to consider a campaign that would entail massive civilian casualties, even if it would likely reduce the number of combat deaths among one’s own forces;

• conducting a house-by-house search for enemy troops in an urban setting, knowing that it will cost extra time and entail more casualties, if the alternative is an artillery barrage.

And so on. The point is that if we accept the principle of discrimination, we also accept the likelihood that more of our soldiers will die. Again, it is a stern test of our resolve to fight justly, to obey the principles of ius in bello.

True, as I suggested above, the soldiers signed up for dangerous work, and the civilians did not. But preserving non-combatant immunity, and accepting the added risks and costs that entails, means putting our people in danger, for the sake of people we do not know. That cuts against the grain of human nature.

Let me illustrate my point with a personal example. Some time ago, I had a visit from a friend who was an active-duty military officer with many years of experience in the field. As we sat on our deck with cool drinks in hand, I thought I might gain from his experience by learning a bit about elementary combat tactics. So, pointing to a stable in the corner of our property, I asked him: If you knew that a squad of enemy soldiers had holed up in that stable, and you had your own squad here, how would you plan an attack? I expected to hear something about flanking approaches or diversionary tactics, but my friend never went that far. He answered simply: “I’d call in an artillery strike.”

Of course! Why should he risk his own men in an assault, when he could use superior firepower to solve the problem.

But suppose I had stipulated that the enemy force was holding civilian hostages. Then the problem could not be solved by artillery. The solution probably would involve an assault, and my friend, if I had set him that challenge, should have planned the assault in a way such that the hostages would be safe— in fact, safer than the troops who were being sent to rescue them.

This may be a reasonable demand, but it is not one that we can expect military officers to accept instinctively. They know their own men, have shared experiences and confidences with them, know something about their private lives and their plans for life after military service. They have no such emotional ties to the civilians; they don’t know them. If the civilians die, the officer’s life will not be much affected.

Nor is this only a matter of emotional ties. We expect people to care most for those who are closest to them. Moreover we expect military officers to do their best to bring their men home alive. So unless military training thoroughly imbues officers— and enlisted men, for that matter— with a deep respect for the principle of non-combatant immunity, that principle will be widely ignored.

And unfortunately there is ample evidence that the principle has been widely ignored, particularly during the past century. Although weapons have become ever more precise, theoretically allowing for greater discrimination in the selection of targets, in practice the proportion of civilian casualties in wartime has been soaring. Rather than accepting more risks for themselves, military forces are imposing more risks on non-combatants.

However there is at least some evidence that the disregard for civilians has taken a toll on our consciences. In his book Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer points to the case of Air Marshal Arthur Harris— popularly known as “Bomber” Harris— who directed the British Bomber Command in its campaign targeting German cities during World War II. Harris was blunt and unapologetic about inflicting harm on civilians in the hope of shortening the war. Whether that strategy paid off is still in dispute. After the notorious fire-bombing of Dresden, Harris wrote a memo defending the raid, and explicitly rejecting the principle of non-combatant immunity. “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier,” he said.

But after the war, Harris— unlike other ranking officers— was not feted and knighted. Stung by criticism— he was now sometimes called “Butcher” Harris— he moved to South Africa. Walzer suggests that his unpopularity shows that the British people recognized the inhumanity of his approach: “He had done what his government thought necessary, but what he had done was ugly, and there seems to have been a conscious decision not to celebrate the exploits of Bomber Command or to honor its leader.”

Of course the pangs of conscience— if that’s what they were— did not extend too far beyond Bomber Harris. Winston Churchill, who had enthusiastically championed the campaign the Harris carried out, retained his status as a war hero.