Introduction
In 2018, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published The Roots of Restraint in War, its groundbreaking empirical study on the factors that influence why soldiers comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) in armed conflict. It concluded that although national efforts to institutionalize IHL in military regulations and policies were necessary steps to achieve greater compliance with IHL, these steps alone were insufficient.Footnote 1 They needed to be coupled with a better understanding of the human factors at play when both individual soldiers and groups of soldiers are deciding whether to restrain their use of force consistent with IHL.Footnote 2
Acknowledging soldiers as ethical agents in their own right runs counter in certain ways to some traditional approaches to achieving IHL compliance. Militaries run on discipline and obedience to orders, and it is difficult to imagine a platoon sergeant, for example, having much patience with a junior enlisted soldier’s individual ethical decision-making process regarding application of IHL in the heat of combat.Footnote 3 Similarly, earlier work, such as the ICRC’s 2004 study The Roots of Behaviour in War, steeply discounted the role of ethical agency among military personnel and advocated for clear rules and orders to soldiers, with strict disciplinary measures to be used against them when they strayed.Footnote 4
The authors of The Roots of Restraint argued for a different path, one driven by data on the humanity of soldiers – how they actually learned about IHL and decided whether and how they should apply it. This approach recognized that although acceptance of IHL is universal, national cultural differences, military cultural differences and interpersonal dynamics within small units played a very important role in how IHL was understood and applied, including the significant impact of junior non-commissioned officers on enlisted soldiers’ attitudes and behaviours.Footnote 5 Importantly, the authors of the study recognized that these factors could be leveraged to the advantage of IHL compliance by embedding IHL principles into professional military identities that resonated with soldiers’ senses of professionalism and personal honour.Footnote 6
Although there are commonalities between IHL and military ethics, the two are not the same. IHL principles are implemented by specific and objective legal provisions, which are intended to be enforced according to other international instruments, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,Footnote 7 and domestic laws, such as national military penal codes.Footnote 8 In contrast, as one senior non-commissioned officer has assessed, “[t]he primary purpose of an ethics education is to provide individuals with the capacity to morally distinguish right from wrong when laws are no longer helpful”.Footnote 9
Van Baarda and Verweij have defined military ethics as relating to the “nature, content, validity and effect of morals in a military context”.Footnote 10 As such, military ethics have both a scientific component – that is, they lend themselves to study and examination – and an applied component,Footnote 11 where, based on the circumstances of a situation, there might be no right answer, yet a decision must be made. In such cases, the best possible result might in fact be the lesser of two evils.Footnote 12
Thus, military ethics is a broad field, spanning the full range of factors that influence military ethical decision-making, from curricula taught in a brick-and-mortar schoolhouse that deal with military professionalism to the impacts of battlefield stress that can cloud soldiers’ perceptions of tactical reality. IHL registers along this spectrum in the form of both principles and specific IHL provisions. One careful civilian observer of how and why soldiers make their ethical decisions has noted, however, that soldiers
are not driven by high-flying ideals when under tension in the areas of operation. In that situation, they operate within the context of a small combat unit. Moral choices under those circumstances primarily reflect loyalty to comrades [and] solidarity with the combat group.Footnote 13
Bearing in mind the impact of small-group dynamics, measures to institutionalize IHL in military organizations though education, training, regulations and policies, while necessary and proper, are not in themselves sufficient to achieve the internalization of IHL principles suggested by the authors of The Roots of Restraint.Footnote 14 Instead, this article argues that these principles must be better melded with military ethics, and that the purpose of this integration must be the development of ethical and moral decision-making skills and attitudesFootnote 15 amongst junior leaders.
In arguing for this, the present article will first review two efforts in the US military intended to develop troops along these lines, one doctrinal and educational, the other based on martial arts training. Next, consistent with the insights from the Roots of Restraint study, the importance of instructing leaders on behavioural ethics will be examined, particularly focusing on the impacts of sleeplessness upon ethical and moral decision-making under stressful conditions experienced by junior Norwegian military leaders. The article will then examine two important studies of ethical attitudes and behaviours in combat, one from the United States and the other from Canada, and suggest how the “Warrior Ethos” and creeds like it might be amended to include the norm of intervention to prevent comrades from violating IHL.
Next, the problem of resolving conflicts between competing positive values in ethical and moral decision-making will be addressed, looking at a lesson plan developed in part at the US Military Academy at West Point and at a survey of cadets there that used the concept of competing positive values to explore the role of socialization in the internalization of IHL norms. Finally, given the need to create and deliver effective and affordable instruction to help foster the skills and attitudes that lead to better ethical and moral behaviours, this article will focus on two curricula, one from a Swiss military academic setting and the other from a combat theatre involving US soldiers. These two programmes suggest paths forward in creating lean, multidisciplinary and adaptable lesson plans that could be useful in instructing junior leaders.
Leadership development and the ethical warrior
The militaries of liberal democracies make significant investments in teaching military ethics to their young leaders, although the national programmes often differ significantly from each other in their approaches.Footnote 16 What is common, however, is the coupling of military ethics instruction with leadership development efforts.Footnote 17 The US military services, particularly those which engage in land operations, take a similar approach. Among these efforts, two very different examples, one from the US Army and the other from the US Marine Corps, are useful to review in order to better understand their strengths and shortcomings, and what these factors mean in terms of building IHL compliance into a professional military identity.
US Army doctrine: Leadership development and ethical training
ADP 6-22: Theory
The US Army’s overarching doctrine on leadership and the professional military identity of being a soldier is set out in Army Doctrinal Publication 6-22 (ADP 6-22), entitled Army Leadership and the Profession. It grounds the concept of the Army profession in the shared identity of its uniformed and civilian members as trusted Army professionals who are “[h]onorable servants in defense of the nation”, “[e]xperts in the performance of duty” and “[r]esponsible stewards of the Army profession”.Footnote 18 Their decisions and actions are guided by the “Army ethic”, which is defined as “[t]he set of enduring moral principles, values, beliefs, and laws that guide the Army profession and create the culture of trust essential to Army professionals in the conduct of missions, performance of duty, and all aspects of life”. The Army profession and ethic guide service members in their exercise of leadership.Footnote 19
Army leaders are defined as persons of character, presence and intellect.Footnote 20 Having character means demonstrating the “Army Values”,Footnote 21 ethical decision-making,Footnote 22 and having a “Warrior Ethos”.Footnote 23 Displaying intellect includes exercising “sound judgement”.Footnote 24 Discussions of the Warrior Ethos and sound judgement are, however, rather limited. The Warrior Ethos has four principles, cast as declarative statements: they are “I will always place the mission first”, “I will never accept defeat”, “I will never quit” and “I will never leave a fallen comrade”.Footnote 25 The question of how to resolve potential conflicts between these principles – such as might arise if completing the mission required one to leave a fallen comrade behind – is not discussed.
The doctrine’s treatment of sound judgement is similarly brief, but it is geared towards resolving problems in practicable ways. It recognizes that experience can contribute to developing this ability, and that this will sometimes involve trial and error. It also recognizes that mentoring and coaching can help leaders develop this skill. Importantly, it recognizes as a bottom line that the exercise of sound judgement by leaders allows them to compare different possible courses of action in combat situations, and then choose, if not the best one, at least the least bad one.Footnote 26
The doctrine’s treatment of the Army Values and ethical decision-making is more fully explained. There are seven Army Values, and each is defined and explained. Loyalty is defined as “bearing true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and other Soldiers”.Footnote 27 Duty is defined as always doing one’s best when fulfilling one’s obligations. Respect is defined as treating people properly. Selfless service is defined as putting the interests of the country, the Army and one’s subordinates before one’s own. Honour is defined as always acting consistent with the Army Values. Personal courage is defined as confronting fear, danger and adversity, both physical and moral, and finally, integrity is defined as doing what is legally and morally right.Footnote 28
Noting that mere knowledge of the Army Values on the part of a soldier is insufficient to make that soldier an ethical leader, and that ethical choices are not always clearly right or wrong, the doctrine then provides a description of the ethical reasoning expected of leaders. Leaders are to apply multiple perspectives in resolving ethical concerns, including the “view that desirable virtues such as courage, justice and benevolence define ethical outcomes”, that organizational and legal norms provide standards to assess the situation, and that whatever decision “produces the greatest good for the greatest number” is the most favourable.Footnote 29 In ethical decision-making, leaders are expected to exercise a standard of care so that their orders are not vague or ambiguous, and have a responsibility “to research relevant orders, rules, and regulations and to demand clarification of orders that could lead to criminal misinterpretation and abuse”.Footnote 30
Structurally and logically, this doctrinal treatment of these topics has merit. The Warrior Ethos provides clear statements of fundamental actions that soldiers are expected to either take or avoid in manifesting the character of a professional Army soldier. The Army Values contextualize these actions, and the doctrine recognizes that mere knowledge of the values is insufficient to ensure ethical leadership. Instead, the complexity of real-life situations requires leaders to be mindful of multiple ethical perspectives in making the best decisions and to embrace the responsibility for reasoning their way through these challenges so that they give clear and correct orders.
FM 6-22: Implementation
Implementation of this high-level doctrine requires detailed subordinate doctrine to make it effective. For the US Army, this is found in Field Manual 6-22 (FM 6-22), Developing Leaders.Footnote 31 A review of this field manual highlights the challenges of actually making these concepts work together at a practical level, and suggests that ethical decision-making education and training might be better driven from the bottom up among more junior leaders than top-down from US Army headquarters.
FM 6-22 is comprehensive and logically and sequentially organized, covering the overall intent and purpose in developing leaders, the processes for setting the conditions for leadership development and for providing feedback to subordinates, and the importance of coaching, counselling and mentoring, with a section on self-development applicable to all leaders.Footnote 32 It devotes a full chapter of eighty pages to learning and developmental activities.Footnote 33 The final chapter provides detailed examples of tools and approaches to use in creating a leadership development programme.Footnote 34 From the perspective of developing ethical decision-making in leaders, however, the manual is surprisingly underdeveloped.
For example, the learning activity “Sound Judgment” recognizes the value of ethical reasoning in exercising sound judgement,Footnote 35 but nowhere in the manual is this process actually described. This shortfall becomes evident when reviewing related learning activities, such as “Discern Right from Wrong in Any Situation”. This activity begins with the statement that “[t]he Army relies on leaders of integrity who possess high moral and ethical standards”.Footnote 36 The learning tool for this activity identifies the manifestations of the ability to discern right from wrong as being consistently honest, performing tasks ethically and morally, and showing moral courage by being candid. The practice tip for the developing leader to build this capability is to “[o]bserve someone you feel exhibits this behavior well. Determine why you feel that way; emulate those behaviors.”Footnote 37
This is where the ethical momentum generated by the overarching Army leadership doctrine dissipates. Certainly, with some education and experience, any soldier could learn to consider multiple ethical perspectives, but this is only the first step. Unless one receives education and training on how to assess and assign relative weight to various perspectives, consideration of options in the abstract does not lead to defensible choices for taking action. Further, the tool that soldiers are given to achieve this level of ethical decision-making is to mimic another’s behaviour that seems virtuous, after they internally validate their own impressions of that quality. Apparently, acting in this way is expected to be sufficient to foster the sense of discerning right from wrong that the developing leader can then apply universally. As Pfaff has noted, however, “a simple habituation model of virtue will not be terribly helpful” in the military context.Footnote 38
Assessment
In assessing the US Army’s top-down approach to instructing soldiers in ethical decision-making using its virtues model, Magnell has recognized that it has certain advantages. Arguably, it does not require soldiers to engage in “extensive philosophical reflection in order to be useful”.Footnote 39 Further, relying on “a common statement of values is useful to ensure standardized instruction across the Army”.Footnote 40 Perhaps most importantly, from a content perspective, Magnell believes that “[t]he Army Values succeed as a statement of the Army’s expectations of Soldiers and, indeed, as an appropriate list of values for any individual”.Footnote 41
Magnell has also addressed what he sees as the major drawbacks of this approach. Among these is his concern that soldiers perceive its top-down nature as directed and academic, and that they therefore might not take ownership of ethical decision-making as being something relevant in their everyday military careers.Footnote 42 In addition, this approach assumes “that Soldiers [have] appropriate role models within their leadership to emulate” and that this will “[remove] most of the responsibility for ethical thinking on the part of the Soldier”.Footnote 43 Magnell assesses that “[e]ven though the intent of the Army Values is to develop Soldiers’ character to the point where ethical decisions are immediate, they only give guidance to Soldiers in making easy decisions, not hard ones”.Footnote 44
Magnell therefore proposes a three-step approach to better focus ethical decision-making development at the soldier level. First, he advocates the use of dialogue and discussion by unit leaders at all levels up through the brigade level to discuss ethical requirements in operational settings. Second, he urges that the insights and knowledge gained by soldiers at all levels be shared throughout the US Army. Third, he states that the Army’s ethical model should then incorporate this information and analysis. This, Magnell believes, will enhance unit commanders’ role in setting the ethical standard amongst their troops and in leading by example, and increase buy-in on the part of soldiers because it recognizes their agency in proper ethical decision-making.Footnote 45
Magnell’s proposal is sound. As will be discussed later in this article in the discussion on an innovative battlefield ethics programme used by US forces in Iraq, the use of dialogue and discussion between leaders and the led has been associated with statistically significant improvements in troops’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviours related to IHL compliance. Magnell’s proposal to norm the insights and knowledge developed by soldiers as a result of their work with ethical decision-making across the force also has merit. The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to do this in an effective and economical way.Footnote 46 Incorporating this information into the Army’s ethical model, is, as Magnell proposes, worthy of consideration as the logical place to lodge it, but that begs the question of whether there is some systemic reason why it has not occurred yet. The current military ethics education system would need to be critically examined to first determine whether it is conceptually and structurally capable of absorbing this task.
This last point is relevant to the larger issue of incorporating IHL principles into military ethics in order to develop a professional identity among soldiers in which IHL compliance resonates. There is a risk that if a military organization were to simply assign this as a new task to existing structures without scrutinizing whether those structures first need to be changed themselves, this sort of innovative approach might quickly become smothered by institutional inertia. Against the backdrop of the US Army’s educational and doctrinal approach to military ethical development, it is now useful to consider an innovative US Marine Corps ethical development programme, using martial arts training as its vehicle, which does appear to have become institutionalized.
US Marine Corps: Marine Corps Martial Arts Program
Structure
The US Marine Corps has chosen a fairly unique approach to building the ethical character of young Marines with its Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). As an adjunct to the US Marine Corps physical fitness programme, the purpose of MCMAP is to “strengthen the mental and moral resiliency of individual Marines through realistic combative training, warrior ethos studies, and physical hardening”.Footnote 47 MCMAP awards different-coloured belts for accomplishing increasingly higher skill levels,Footnote 48 similar to certain recognized martial arts disciplines.Footnote 49 To complement the physical instruction, MCMAP uses “tie-ins”, or vignettes, “which focus on values-based decisions, such as responsible use of force, substance abuse” and social responsibility.Footnote 50 These provide opportunities for certified martial arts instructors and others to lead guided discussions with the young Marines.Footnote 51
The curriculum for MCMAP trainees to be awarded, for example, a brown belt – the second-highest skill level – is 132 pages in length and includes detailed descriptions of the techniques in which the trainees are to become proficient, what ethics are, and IHL.Footnote 52 The IHL section begins with a vignette which purports to be a statement made by a Marine Corps corporal in Vietnam in 1968, in which he waived his right to remain silent under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice. The corporal detailed how he and seven other Marines on a mission to ambush enemy patrols became involved in a firefight with between 100 and 110 North Vietnamese Army regulars. Purportedly, only three of the Marines survived, yet they took over two dozen North Vietnamese soldiers as prisoners.Footnote 53
One of the remaining Marines then executed a dozen of the North Vietnamese soldiers. The corporal booby-trapped the remaining North Vietnamese soldiers with fragmentation grades around their necks, which would detonate if they tried to escape. After an attack by other North Vietnamese troops, the corporal then purportedly executed the remaining captured North Vietnamese soldiers by shooting them all in the head. The corporal and his remaining comrades eventually linked up with an unidentified US Army unit.Footnote 54 The corporal concluded his description of the events by stating: “I’d do it again given the opportunity. I have no other statement to make at this time.”Footnote 55
Following this vignette, the instructor is directed to lead a guided discussion covering the nine “Basic Principles” of IHL,Footnote 56 which include “Marines do not harm enemy combatants who surrender” and “Marines do not torture or kill enemy prisoners of war or detainees”.Footnote 57 The key points identified for the instructor to address regarding the nine rules are cast in terms of the characters identified in the vignette. The statement in the vignette is implausible on its face, and this author could find no reputable corroboration for it.Footnote 58 Story-telling can be a powerful means to create identity within a group or culture,Footnote 59 and admittedly, some of the most compelling stories are not necessarily completely historically accurate.Footnote 60 For purposes of building ethical decision-making skills in military personnel with the goal of buy-in with a professional military identity, however, such stories should both make the proper point to the listeners and be factual.
Assessment
Precedent and practice suggest that the US Marine Corps’ approach to including military ethical development as part of physical military close-quarters combat skills development could be effective. Historically, philosophy figured prominently in the development of East Asian martial arts disciplines, as inspiration for particular disciplines, for biomechanical approaches to actual fighting techniques, and for the ethical development of practitioners.Footnote 61 Currently, the official websites for many East Asian martial arts associations prominently note the role of ethical development in the learning of martial arts disciplines.Footnote 62
Some research, however, suggests that there might be a significant underlying issue with MCMAP in terms of ethical development, which is that participation in the programme might be associated with decreased ethical reasoning skills over time. Siedlik et al. conducted an experiment with fifty-five newly enlisted Marines over a six-week period.Footnote 63 Starting immediately after a MCMAP bout, then three weeks later, and finally six weeks after the initial bout while the Marines were still in training,Footnote 64 the researchers administered surveys that assessed the Marines’ moral intention (how likely they would be to act in an unethical manner) and their moral judgement (how likely they would be to deem a comrade’s actions as appropriate).Footnote 65 The survey results suggested that the longer the Marines were in the training environment (presumably still participating in MCMAP), the more likely they were to act unethically and to view other Marines’ unethical acts favourably.Footnote 66
This is just one study, and it is therefore important to contextualize these results within the larger picture of ethical education and training in the US Marine Corps. Based on his research and his experiences as first an enlisted Marine and then an officer, Manzke has assessed that in general, the ethics training conducted by the Marine Corps for enlisted Marines is largely rule-based and focused on conduct, with less focus on ethical decision-making – that is, the driver of the conduct.Footnote 67 Regarding MCMAP, Manzke is himself a certified black-belt martial arts instructor, and he is sceptical of the ethical development vignettes used in the programme, seeing them essentially as an afterthought.Footnote 68 What he believes would be helpful in the ethical development of enlisted Marines is the establishment of permanent ethics training at the unit level that includes instruction and practice on emotional control during ethical decision-making under conditions of high stress – that is, behavioural ethics.Footnote 69
Behavioural ethics and sleepless Norwegians
Todd and Tripodi argue that instruction on behavioural ethics, or how and why people make ethical decisions, is an underappreciated area of military ethics education, which tends to focus on normative and applied ethics.Footnote 70 They assess traditional approaches to ethics instruction as resting heavily on a basic assumption: that “increasingly complex moral reasoning will lead to better moral decisions”.Footnote 71 A number of researchers are critical of this assumption – Regan and Mullaney advocate for a greater role for emotion in military ethics instruction,Footnote 72 while Messervey et al. note that stress affects the same parts of the brain that handle reflective moral judgements, and that military personnel are likely to be making intuitive moral decisions in combat conditions.Footnote 73 One stressor that has recognized impacts on the quality of decision-making is lack of sleep.Footnote 74
Live role-players on the live fire range
Working with Norwegian military cadets, researchers have conducted important research into military decision-making, including ethical decision-making, under conditions of acute stress, specifically sleeplessness and physical fatigue. In a study published in 2001, researchers observed forty-four cadets, broken down into groups of eight or nine, during a week-long combat training course. All cadets already had at least two years of military training and service prior to joining the Norwegian Military Academy and were in their middle 20s. During the first five days of the course, the cadets were denied sleep.Footnote 75
On the fifth night of the exercise, the cadets were told they would engage in a live-fire scenario requiring them to attack a small camp area that included very realistic human-like figures as targets. The camp area was poorly lit, but there was enough light to make out the “figures”, who were actually living humans. As the scenario began, a cadre member accompanied each team’s appointed team leader to an observation site on a hilltop overlooking the camp area to reconnoitre the situation. While the team leaders observed the camp area, the human role-players in the camp remained motionless.Footnote 76
Once the team leaders had finished their visual reconnaissance, they returned to their teams to organize their attacks. The teams then moved to the hilltop observation site and positioned themselves to attack. Once the teams were in position, the role-players began visibly moving around the camp area. Only after the teams were able to observe that there were living people at the camp area was the order to fire given.Footnote 77
Of the forty-four cadets, twenty-six (59%) sought to fire their weapons, which unbeknownst to them had been rendered unserviceable by the training cadre prior to the scenario. In a debrief after the exercise, over half of the cadets who tried to fire their weapons stated that they saw nothing unusual about the camp area.Footnote 78 Eleven cadets pulled their triggers even though they noticed something unusual about the camp area, such as moving people. Of the eighteen cadets who did not try to fire, sixteen noticed that the role-players were alive,Footnote 79 but only one attempted to inform their teammates that they should not fire because of this. During the debrief, many of the cadets expressed surprise that the remaining fifteen had not acted to intervene.Footnote 80
There are three points from this study that soldiers should know about their decision-making in a sleep-deprived and fatigued state. First, their motor skills, such as advancing on a position and firing their weapons, will not degrade as quickly as their reasoning skills will. Second, degradation of reasoning skills under these circumstances was not uniform among the cadets – certainly, they likely all realized how tired their comrades were, but what they would not have known is that sleeplessness had significantly degraded the reasoning skills of half their number. Third, and perhaps most important, even those cadets who did recognize that there were living people at the camp area and did not shoot were apparently not able to take the next step and warn their comrades not to shoot.
Planning process duration and quality
A second study, published in 2005 and based on observations of Royal Norwegian Naval Academy cadets in similarly stressful training, showed similar results. Over the course of four different years, ninety cadets with a mean age of 23 were required to plan a rescue operation during a week-long ranger training. As with the cadets in the first study, the naval cadets were almost completely sleep-deprived, received little food, and endured heavy physical exercise.Footnote 81
The plans developed by the sleep-deprived cadets were evaluated by expert planners, along with plans developed by a control group of cadets who were well rested. The sleep-deprived cadets took 46% longer than the rested cadets to develop their plans, and their plans were assessed by the experts to be of lower quality than the rested cadets’ plans.Footnote 82 Interestingly, however, the sleep-deprived cadets made fewer procedural errors in crafting their plans, and more of them requested additional information about the soldier they were supposed to rescue.Footnote 83 Further, the sleep-deprived cadets’ assessments of the quality of their plans were closer to the experts’ assessments of their plans than were the rested cadets’ assessments.Footnote 84
The sleep-deprived cadets in this study were able to perform a complex cognitive military task. It took them longer than the rested control group, and their plans were not as good as those of the control group, but they were still able to follow the process on which they had been trained to come up with workable plans, and they were able to fairly accurately assess the quality of the products they had generated. It would be important for soldiers to understand that sleeplessness impacts cognitive performance unevenly across the range of reasoning tasks expected of soldiers in stressful situations, and that this likely applies to ethical and moral decision-making as well.
Downshifting ethical reasoning methodologies
A study published in 2010 was based on observations and surveys of fifty first-year cadets at the Norwegian Army Academy and forty-two cadets at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy in a combat simulation exercise. The mean age of the cadets was slightly over 24 years, and all of them had had at least one year of military service prior to joining the schools.Footnote 85 The researchers evaluated the cadets’ ethical decision-making processes both in a rested state and then in a sleep-deprived state towards the end of the exercise, and also had the cadets assess what they believed their levels of tiredness to be each time, on a scale ranging from one (“feeling active, vital, alert or wide awake”) to seven (“no longer fighting sleep, sleep onset soon, having dreamlike thoughts”).Footnote 86
Each time they were evaluated, the cadets had to resolve five ethical dilemmas. The researchers presented the cadets with twelve arguments and then asked them to identify the four arguments they found to be most important to them in helping them to resolve the dilemmas. Based on the cadets’ rankings of the arguments, the researchers determined whether the cadets’ reasoning methodologies fit within one of three styles: post-conventional (principled, the highest level), conventional (maintaining norms, or rules-based) or personal interest (self-serving or transactional moral thinking).Footnote 87
Post-conventional reasoning is the use of different ethical perspectives to evaluate a situation in order to determine the best solution to that situation.Footnote 88 This is what the US Army leadership development doctrine discussed at the beginning of this article identifies as the favoured approach for its personnel to take in making moral judgements.Footnote 89 It is reasonable to expect, however, that any given population of military personnel will display a mix of the three categories of moral reasoning styles. For example, a 2020 study by Agarwal, Williams and Miller of 132 senior military and civilian students at the US National Defense University into whether one semester’s attendance at the school changed students’ moral reasoning approaches (it did not) revealed that the intervention group was composed of 21% who preferred the personal interest style, 40% who preferred the conventional style and 34% who preferred the post-conventional style.Footnote 90
The researchers for the 2010 Norwegian study found that certain ethical reasoning methodologies changed as a result of the stress experienced in the combat simulation: many of the cadets who used a principled ethical decision-making approach in a rested state downshifted to more of a rules-based approach when sleep-deprived. Importantly, however, there was no statistically significant increase in the use of personal interest-style moral reasoning.Footnote 91
The researchers concluded that while higher-level moral reasoning might decrease because of sleep deprivation in combat situations, its practitioners would not necessarily “regress into pure self-centeredness when faced with moral challenges that may involve the life and welfare of others”.Footnote 92 Accordingly, the researchers noted the value that rules of engagement and standard operating procedures have “as simplified rules for making decisions in complex scenarios”, because these rules often contain moral positions and considerations that can still “provide a basis for sound moral judgment”.Footnote 93 This would be useful information to impart to junior leaders, so that they can recognize that both they and their soldiers may undergo changes in the ways in which they make their ethical and moral decisions under stress.
Protective factors
In addition to educating soldiers on the negative impacts of sleeplessness on their ethical reasoning skills, it would be important to also identify for them three things that appear to have a protective effect: good leadership, unit cohesion and emotional intelligence. In yet another study of sleep-deprived Royal Norwegian Navy cadets, this one from 2019, researchers found that perceptions of good leadership by the cadets helped mitigate the negative impacts of sleep deprivation on performance.Footnote 94 As for unit cohesion, in a 2015 study, Zheng et al. conducted surveys of 338 deployed US military personnel and found that high levels of ethical leadership resulted in greater unit cohesion; this mitigated the impacts of emotional exhaustion, or burnout,Footnote 95 which is often associated with sleep issues.Footnote 96
Regarding emotional intelligence, in a 2007 study, Killgore et al. examined twenty-one active-duty military personnel with a mean age of slightly over 25 years who were allowed little or no sleep over two full days.Footnote 97 The researchers found that when presented with moral dilemmas that registered highly with the subjects in terms of emotional arousal and personal immediacy, the subjects had statistically significant greater difficulty in recognizing appropriate resolutions in a sleepless state than in a rested state.Footnote 98 This deficit was not apparent in subjects who scored highly in an emotional intelligence assessment, however – for them, their sleep-deprived evaluations of the appropriateness of different ethical resolutions remained largely unchanged from their rested baselines.Footnote 99
Killgore et al. defined emotionally intelligent individuals as those who are “effective at monitoring their own emotions and the emotions of others, able to discriminate among subtle aspects of those emotions, and skilled at applying that information effectively to make decisions and guide behavior”.Footnote 100 Importantly, work in this area suggests that one can build one’s emotional intelligence by developing four key skills: self-awareness of one’s emotions, self-regulation of one’s emotions, social awareness (the ability to “read the room”), and finally relationship management, which is working well with others and showing empathy.Footnote 101
Assessment
These studies of ethical decision-making and other related forms of decision-making by sleep-deprived Norwegian cadets are highly relevant to the larger point of incorporating IHL principles into a professional military identity that resonates with soldiers. First, these studies were conducted over a period of time with subjects of just one nationality, who were themselves very similar in terms of age and prior military experience, and while it is unknown whether the results of these studies would translate across different nationalities and different military cultures, they do establish a solid baseline against which soldiers in different countries could be tested. Second, if validated, these studies would be useful in constructing military ethical development and decision-making criteria lesson plans for soldiers. If such curricula are only keyed to the cognitive domain of a well-rested troop, they are not likely to generate the intended effects in the field. Finally, the results of some of these studies show the importance of personal qualities among soldiers that traditionally might be discounted as so-called “soft skills”, such as empathy, to military ethical decision-making. US Army leadership doctrine, for example, lists empathy as one of the character traits expected of a leader, along with discipline, humility and manifesting the Warrior Ethos,Footnote 102 and both officerFootnote 103 and non-commissioned officer leadersFootnote 104 recognize its importance.
Ethical attitudes and behaviours in combat and the Warrior Ethos
The US Army Warrior Ethos, described earlier in this article in the section on US Army leadership development doctrine, is an example of a statement of professional military identity that likely resonates with soldiers on an emotional level. With slight amendment, it could potentially become an effective vehicle for helping soldiers to internalize the core principles of IHL as part of their professional identity. To better understand how this might work, it is useful to review two surveys of soldiers who were or who had recently been in combat theatres, one from the United States and the other from Canada. Taken together, the results of the two survey projects suggest that including the duty to intervene if a soldier sees a comrade about to act in a manner inconsistent with IHL into the Warrior Ethos could leverage the bonds of comradeship at the small-unit level in an effective manner.
United States: Mental Health Advisory Team Reports IV and V
Recognizing the stress that combat was placing on US troops, starting in 2003 in Iraq and continuing through 2012 in Afghanistan, high-level US commanders requested assessments of combat unit troops’ mental health and well-being. Mental Health Advisory Teams (MHATs) conducted anonymous surveys of troops and focus groups to contextualize the surveys’ findings.Footnote 105 As requested by the US commanding general in Iraq in 2006, MHAT IV and MHAT V specifically included in their surveys an unprecedented battery of questions asking troops about their attitudes and behaviours regarding what were termed “ethical issues”, but which would be understood by IHL lawyers as lapses of IHL standards. The impetus behind the request was the general’s concern with troops’ behaviour after the killing of twenty-four civilians by a US Marine Corps patrol in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November 2005.Footnote 106
It is useful to focus on the report from MHAT V, because the survey questions regarding unethical battlefield behaviour were asked of troops deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.Footnote 107 The respondents were asked a total of twenty-one questions, divided into four areas: attitudes regarding the treatment of insurgents and non-combatants, battlefield ethical behaviours and decisions, reporting ethical violations, and battlefield ethics training.Footnote 108 An example of a question regarding battlefield ethical behaviours and decisions was how frequently the respondent had “[i]nsulted and/or cursed non-combatants in their presence”. For reporting ethical violations, troops were presented with a statement and then asked to state their degree of agreement or disagreement with it – for example, “I would report a unit member for the mistreatment of a non-combatant”.Footnote 109
There were only a small number of statistically significant differences between troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the MHAT V study, one example being negative verbal behaviour towards non-combatants, with almost 30% of the troops in Iraq reporting this infraction versus almost 37% in Afghanistan.Footnote 110 In comparison, in response to the question of whether they had physically struck a non-combatant when it was not necessary, 5% of the troops in Iraq reported that they had done so, as did almost 4% of the troops in Afghanistan. These numbers were not good, but what was particularly troubling were the statistics regarding the reporting of unethical violations.
The MHAT V report for Afghanistan noted that “[s]oldiers’ willingness to report unit members for unethical behaviors almost certainly runs counter to the strong sense of bonding that occurs among unit members during the deployment”.Footnote 111 This reluctance to report violators was consistent in both Afghanistan and Iraq. For example, only 43% agreed that they would report a comrade for “injuring or killing an innocent non-combatant”.Footnote 112 This represented a serious disconnect between the instruction that US Army legal advisers provided to soldiers and the reality of what the soldiers actually believed they would do. Reporting violations is one of the Army’s ten Soldier’s Rules for implementing IHL.Footnote 113
However, in a recent study on assessment in IHL education and training, the present author suggested a possible opening to address this problem in the delta between the low rates of substantive violations that soldiers self-reported and the high rates of hypothetical non-reporting. The soldiers obviously knew what the correct standards were and largely disciplined themselves to meet those standards. If the small-unit interpersonal dynamics could be adjusted to view violators as endangering the unit’s mission and law-abiding comrades, then perhaps the stigma associated with reporting would be reduced.Footnote 114 In hindsight, this is probably not practicable given how strong the bonds of small-unit comradeship can be. The more practicable answer likely lies in the work done by Therrien and Messervey surveying Canadian Armed Forces personnel returning from combat tours in Afghanistan.
Canada: Human Dimensions of Operations Survey
The Human Dimensions of Operations Survey was administered to five different task forces deployed to Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010, generating 2,512 responses.Footnote 115 These iterations of the survey included questions on battlefield ethics informed by the US MHAT IV and MHAT V surveys. These survey questions differed from the MHAT IV and MHAT V questions on one very important point: instead of just asking the respondents whether they would report unit members who committed violations, the Canadian surveys asked whether the respondents might or would report or intervene to prevent violations.Footnote 116
Across the range of these report-or-intervene questions, large majorities of the respondents from each task force agreed that they might report or intervene in the event of violations.Footnote 117 Further, more agreed that they might or would intervene than that they might or would report.Footnote 118 For example, in response to the question of whether they might or would report an incident to stop Canadian soldiers from mistreating non-combatants, between 73% and 92% agreed. Between 85% and 97% agreed that they might or would intervene to stop mistreatment.Footnote 119
The surveys also asked questions that were designed to reveal the degree to which respondents were influenced by intra-unit loyalty. Three of the questions purposefully pitted IHL principles against aspects of intra-unit loyalty – for example, “I would report breaches to the CF [Canadian Forces] Code of Conduct and the Law of Armed Conflict even if it meant I would be subject to retaliation from fellow soldiers”.Footnote 120 Three of the questions did not place positive values in conflict with each other – for example, “All detainees should be treated with dignity and respect”.Footnote 121
The Canadian troops reported higher agreement with the statements of IHL than they did with the statements that pitted IHL requirements against loyalty. Further, the higher the rank, the greater the level of agreement with both types of statements.Footnote 122 Junior enlisted troops were the least likely to agree with either type of statement, but non-commissioned officers in general agreed more than the younger troops.Footnote 123 This suggested to the researchers that over time, “military ethics training, professional development, and socialization may have a positive impact and judgment and behavior”.Footnote 124
This study also suggests that the inclusion of a norm of intervention in the US Army Warrior Ethos, also cast as an affirmative statement of professional military identity, might be practicable and both logically and emotionally complementary to the existing statements of which it is composed. For example, the statement “I will never leave a fallen comrade” could perhaps be complemented by “I will help my comrades remain ethical warriors”. Even if this happened, however, there would still be a need to better develop soldiers to be able to resolve the conflicts between positive values that will invariably occur.
Resolving conflicts between competing positive values
In addition to his concerns noted earlier in the section on US Army leadership development doctrine, Magnell also assessed that the doctrine did not provide “an effective methodology for helping Soldiers resolve ethical dilemmas involving two actions that both could be considered ethically correct”Footnote 125 – for example, if they were “faced with a conflict of Loyalties, or a conflict between the values of Duty and Respect”.Footnote 126 Ethical decision-making when competing positive values are at play is the driving concept behind a discussion-based lesson plan developed by a team of historians, educators and lawyers at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Resnick Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the US Military Academy at West Point, and the innovative research conducted by Bell on the impact of socialization on the uptake of ethical norms among cadets at West Point and in the US Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programme at civilian US universities.
Ordinary Soldiers lesson plan and leadership development
The US military service academies and ROTC programmes at different US universities have addressed the question of competing positive values through the use of a historical case study lesson plan entitled Ordinary Soldiers.Footnote 127 The case study concerns an incident that took place in occupied Belarus in October 1941, when the commander of a German reserve infantry battalion gave a clear, unambiguously illegal order to each of his manoeuvre company commanders: kill all Jews in your area of operations.Footnote 128 The first company commander complied immediately. The second company commander, a veteran of World War I, considered the order and then declined it, telling the battalion commander he was not going to burden his soldiers with such executions. The third company commander, also a World War I veteran, initially sought to avoid carrying out the order, but when the battalion runner brought him the order confirmed in writing, he directed the company’s first sergeant to have some soldiers carry out the order, while he busied himself with administrative matters.Footnote 129
The Ordinary Soldiers lesson plan is flexible, but it relies heavily on placing students in small discussion groups to consider different aspects of the case study,Footnote 130 including the apparent conflict between two examples of the US Army value of loyalty.Footnote 131 The commander of the third company appeared to recognize that the order was wrong, but in the end showed his loyalty to the battalion commander by having the first sergeant enforce it. The company commander who rejected the order, however, was loyal to his code of honour and professionalism and to his soldiers by not ordering them to commit an illegal act.
In 2017, a US Army battalion commander stationed in Germany decided to make the Holocaust the overarching theme for the battalion’s revamped leadership development programme. The new programme began with the battalion officers and non-commissioned officers working through the Ordinary Soldiers lesson plan and culminated in having almost all the unit officers and sergeants participate in a staff ride to visit the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz in Poland. The battalion leaders remained at Auschwitz for two full days.Footnote 132
While there, the battalion leaders took part in guided tours of the camp, seminars organized by the memorial site curators, and visits to local museums that documented the atrocities committed by the Nazis at Auschwitz. In the evenings, the battalion leaders ate together and then participated in sessions led by the battalion chaplain reflecting on what they had experienced and felt as they toured the different sites. On the return trip to battalion headquarters, the staff ride participants toured the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, where the trials of the major Nazi leaders were held after World War II.Footnote 133
A couple of weeks after the staff ride, the battalion chaplain conducted a voluntary, anonymous survey of the battalion leaders who had been on the ride. Slightly more than half of the forty participants responded. Some 85% concurred with the survey statements that they were now more aware of different techniques they could use to make more sound ethical decisions, and more aware of how their ethical decisions impacted their peers and subordinates;Footnote 134 82% of respondents found the staff ride to be the most impactful part of the battalion’s leadership development programme, and agreed that it had improved their understanding of their obligations to set and enforce value-driven standards. Importantly, 92% of respondents agreed that the programme had increased their sense of unit cohesion.Footnote 135
Building ethical attitudes through socialization
The resolution of competing positive values was the basis for Bell’s recent study that compared the impacts of socialization of US military cadets at the US Military Academy and in ROTC programmes at different US universities with their civilian peers at twelve universities with regard to internalizing norms of restraint in applying force in armed conflict. This comprehensive study included surveys and interviews of over 1,000 respondents, and it led Bell to two important conclusions: first, that military socialization processes themselves can lead to cadets favouring norms of restraint in choosing potential courses of action that could result in harm to civilians, and second, that these young officers-to-be understood restraint in the use of force “as part of a costly trade-off with other vital, competing goals, balancing civilian protection with the value of military advantage, and, more significantly, force protection”.Footnote 136
Bell’s survey construct was simple and elegant, and it required respondents to make choices that revealed their preferences regarding three distinct norms: military advantage, which is related to mission accomplishment; protection, or conservation, of the military force; and the protection of civilians.Footnote 137 To determine preferences between military advantage and civilian protection, respondents were asked whether they agreed with the statement, “During combat operations, it is justifiable to intentionally kill a civilian when it is necessary to accomplish the mission”.Footnote 138
Preferences between force protection versus civilian protection were assessed by asking the respondents whether they agreed with the statement, “During combat operations, it is justifiable to intentionally kill a civilian if it will save the life of a soldier”.Footnote 139 Finally, to determine respondent preferences between force protection and civilian protection from a slightly different perspective, respondents were asked whether they agreed with the statement, “I would risk the safety of members of my unit to limit ‘collateral damage’ deaths of civilians on the battlefield”.Footnote 140
The survey results for respondents’ preferences regarding military advantage or civilian protection showed a statistically significant shift toward favouring civilian protection among the US Military Academy cadets between their first and final years at the academy. The ROTC cadets also showed a significant shift in this direction, but it was weaker than among the US Military Academy cadets. Civilian students, however, showed no statistically significant shift over the course of their time at university.Footnote 141
For the second statement, asking whether the respondents agreed that it was justifiable to sacrifice a civilian’s life if it resulted in saving a soldier’s life, the US Military Academy cadets switched from weak agreement with the statement in their first year at the academy to disagreement in their fourth year. The ROTC cadets, however, reported weak agreement with the statement throughout their time at university, as did their civilian peers.Footnote 142
Similarly, regarding the respondents’ preferences on risking unit safety to better avoid collateral damage to civilians, the US Military Academy cadets evidenced a statistically significant increase in their preference for civilian protection over the course of their time at West Point. Their fellow ROTC cadets, however, and the civilian peers of the ROTC cadets, reported no statistically significant shift during their time at university.Footnote 143 To put these findings in context, there were no statistically significant preference differences between first-year US Military Academy cadets and first-year ROTC cadets on any of the statements they were asked to assess.Footnote 144
The surveys that Bell administered also collected demographic information about the different survey cohorts. First-year US Military Academy cadets and ROTC cadets were statistically identical across all demographic variables.Footnote 145 Further, the shifts in cadet preference did not appear to result from the increased instruction in law (including IHL) that US Military Academy cadets received versus ROTC cadets, nor from the experience of a university education itself.Footnote 146 Based on this data, and the information he obtained from the interviews he conducted with cadets, Bell concluded that the survey results likely reflected the intensity of the socialization process that accompanied a US Military Academy education versus that experienced by ROTC cadets attending civilian universities. In particular, interviews with US Military Academy graduates highlighted the impact that interactive training formats such as “ethics simulations, Leader Challenge discussions, and engagement with combat veterans” had on their ethical development.Footnote 147
The intense socialization that US Military Academy cadets undergo appears to have positive effects in developing young military leaders to better internalize norms of civilian protection in their ethical decision-making. This socialization comes with a high monetary cost, however. The US Military Academy is very well resourced, and its operating costs have attracted negative attention for decades.Footnote 148 For 2003, the cost of educating a US Military Academy cadet was estimated to be $616,600 for four years (in 2025 dollars).Footnote 149 Conversely, the cost of educating a US Army ROTC cadet at a civilian university in 2018 was estimated to only be about $217,300 in 2025 dollars for four years.Footnote 150 This level of investment at the US Military Academy would not likely be sustainable for many; there must be ways to achieve positive and enduring results more cheaply.
Effective and affordable ethical decision-making instruction
Efforts to secure meaningful and positive changes in the quality of soldiers’ ethical decision-making and in their attitudes and behaviours, so that these become more consistent with the norms of IHL, must be affordable to be sustainable in the long run. Two very different ethical training programmes – one conducted in an academic setting in Switzerland, the other in the middle of intense combat in Iraq – show that a large amount of money is not a prerequisite for providing high-quality ethical learning among military personnel.
Ethical decision-making study, Swiss Military Academy
In 2011, a group of Swiss researchers published a case study on an intensive ethical decision-making lesson plan that they had developed and piloted with a total group of 132 officers. The intervention group consisted of forty-six officers enrolled in a training programme at the Swiss Military Academy in Zurich, with a mean age of just over 28 years. The control group for the study consisted of eighty-six captains and majors who were attending command and staff courses for militia officers. The mean age of the control group was a little older than the intervention group, at about 31.5 years, but they were comparable with the intervention group otherwise. Twenty of the intervention group officers participated in a training effectiveness evaluation six months after the training had concluded.Footnote 151
The training session took only five days, but it was very intensive. The officers received six hours of instruction each day, which was a mix of actual moral dilemmas, military ethics theory, moral psychology and the “individual, organizational, and contextual challenges related to moral behavior in the military profession”.Footnote 152 The researchers gathered baseline data on the first day by presenting the officers with two moral dilemmas and then asking them to write short essays describing the methodology by which they would resolve the dilemmas and proposing a solution.Footnote 153
In total, the officers were presented with six different dilemmas over the course of the training. They engaged with each of the dilemmas using a structured five-part cycle. During the first phase, the trainers introduced a moral dilemma to the officers that was based on the real-world experiences of Swiss personnel on different missions. In the second phase, the trainers provided the officers with a predefined set of questions, and then had the officers develop their own individual solutions to the dilemma based on the structure of the questions. After completing their individual solutions, during the third phase the officers discussed these results with each other in small groups. In the fourth phase, each small group had to come to a consensus on what they assessed as the single best solution to the dilemma. In the fifth phase, the small groups then shared their consensus solutions with each other.Footnote 154
At the end of the training session, the researchers again presented the individual officers with two different moral dilemmas and asked them to explain how they had analyzed the dilemmas and decided upon solutions.Footnote 155 This same method was used in conducting the subsequent post-training evaluation six months later.Footnote 156 Using criteria that assessed both the process used by the officers and the content of their analyses, raters acting independently of each other evaluated the ethical decision-making skills shown by the officers.Footnote 157
The results of these evaluations showed that the officers’ ethical decision-making competencies had significantly improved by the last day of the training session, in terms of both their methodology and the content they considered in their work.Footnote 158 Importantly, even when tested six months later the officers still showed higher ethical decision-making skill levels, although their scores were not as high as they were for the testing done at the end of the training session.Footnote 159 Further, the amount of effort that the officers put into analyzing a dilemma was proportional to the moral intensity of the scenario – that is, the amount of potential harm that would result if the dilemma was not resolved properly. The researchers therefore assessed that the most accurate picture of an individual’s moral decision-making skills would result when that person was making a decision in high-stakes situations.Footnote 160
The Swiss Military Academy researchers made another interesting finding regarding the differences in methodology employed by the officers in their pre-training tests and in their post-training tests. The officers likely had experienced problem-solving in a military setting; they were not an unseasoned group. In their pre-training tests, however, their approaches to moral decision-making were not structured.Footnote 161 This suggests that although soldiers can solve complex tactical problems under conditions of stress, these same problem-solving skills do not lend themselves to ethical decision-making. Even otherwise well-trained, experienced and educated soldiers likely require specific training to develop ethical decision-making skills, and these skills likely require refreshing, because they have a shelf life. Finding the time and space to refresh moral decision-making skills in a combat situation could be very challenging, but is very necessary – and is exactly what a US-commanded division in Iraq did in 2007.
Battlefield ethics training, Iraq
Perhaps accepting the recommendation of MHAT IV to develop battlefield ethics training to address the troubling results of its surveys regarding unethical soldier attitudes and behaviours,Footnote 162 the commander of Multi-National Division – Center in Iraq ordered his staff to develop and deliver a battlefield ethics training programme for all soldiers in his command in late 2007.Footnote 163 Even today, the programme that was implemented stands out as being unique in many ways. First, at that time, the commander’s soldiers were engaged in extensive combat operations against Iraqi insurgents. There are other instances of military organizations revamping their ethical and IHL training in the middle of the fight and making it better – one example is the work done by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, starting in 2021, to pivot their ethics and IHL training away from a largely academic and theoretical approach to instead include the combat experiences of its soldiers fighting the invading Russian Army.Footnote 164 This is not common, however.
Second, the lesson plan was developed in a multidisciplinary manner, largely relying on division staff personnel who were themselves in the theatre of combat operations. Some military legal and medical specialists assisted, as well as civilian ethicists,Footnote 165 but this battlefield ethics lesson plan was not the product of large education and training centres in the rear. This was likely reflected in the economy of its delivery – it only took sixty to ninety minutes to deliver in full.Footnote 166 Content-wise, it provided both good examples and bad examples of handling ethical issues, and the lesson plan emphasized the importance of good leadership and following the US Army Values.
Third, the lesson plan was delivered by leaders at all levels to their subordinates, who in turn delivered the plan to their subordinates, and so on (what the lesson plan developers called “chain teaching”), in a discussion-style format, wherever the soldiers were. Importantly, leader instructors were given latitude to tailor their presentations to the actual experiences of their units in combat.Footnote 167 It is not uncommon to find a seminar approach used in war colleges with more senior officers, but this might have been the first time that most of these soldiers had an opportunity to talk to their direct leaders about military ethics and IHL issues. As General H. R. McMaster noted in his remarks at a military ethics conference at the US Naval War College in 2010, prior to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, ethical training in the US Army at this time largely centred on IHL and the disciplinary provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which penalized IHL violations,Footnote 168 and was likely given by a legal adviser.Footnote 169
Fourth, not only was the lesson plan driven by data at its inception – that is, by the survey results from the MHAT IV and MHAT V reports – but it also incorporated data collection and analysis from the beginning to assess whether its delivery resulted in changes in troops’ attitudes and behaviours regarding IHL. Before the training took place, an anonymous pre-training survey was administered which included all the soldiers who had participated in the MHAT V Iraq survey. About three months after the training, the unit administered a follow-up survey. Both surveys included the original questions in the MHAT V Iraq survey, plus nine new questions that assessed “the training and factors associated with unethical conduct”.Footnote 170
Results
The results of the training programme were remarkable. While the soldiers provided answers to the pre-training survey that were largely consistent with the MHAT V Iraq survey results, the post-training survey found marked improvement in all answers regarding soldiers’ actual attitudes and behaviours during deployment, including their attitudes toward IHL-compliant conduct. In many cases, these improvements were statistically significantFootnote 171 – for example, the number of soldiers who would report a comrade for harming or killing an innocent civilian increased almost 55%.Footnote 172
Messervey et al. have pointed out that it is not possible to know for certain why this battlefield ethics training programme was successful, because the lesson plan developers did not test to answer this question.Footnote 173 One factor that could have played a role was the moral intensity of the context in which the lesson plan was being delivered: during breaks from combat patrols.Footnote 174 The lesson plan developers attributed the improvements in survey scores to the integrated nature of the ethical training and what they termed “engaged leadership”Footnote 175 – that is, the discussions between leaders and their subordinates at all levels about ethical issues and leadership expectations.Footnote 176
Discussion as the medium of ethics training
The significance of the discussion format of the lesson plan on the effectiveness of the learning is supported by a survey of students conducted by the legal staff at the US Command and General Staff College in October 2001. Some 401 combat arms and combat support officers were asked to participate in an anonymous survey regarding their experiences with IHL and IHL-related training. All but one of the students asked to take the survey were newly promoted majors and therefore had about ten years of commissioned service. To have been offered attendance at the resident course at the college, the students ordinarily would have been evaluated as being in the top half of their year group.Footnote 177 Responses were submitted by 188 officers.Footnote 178
The most interesting results of the survey concerned the students’ assessment of the efficacy of different training methods. Unsurprisingly, 82% of the students had received their IHL training via PowerPoint presentations, but only 28% found these effective.Footnote 179 In contrast, 78% of respondents found discussions and seminars to be an effective delivery method for IHL training for officers and senior non-commissioned officers. The legal staff found this curious, because only 56% of respondents said they had participated in this style of IHL training.Footnote 180 As to IHL training delivery methods for junior enlisted soldiers, 70% of respondents found that realistic situational training exercises were effective. The next most effective delivery method, however, was the use of discussion or seminar format training, at 49%. Again, the legal staff were perplexed by this, because in the units in which they had served, none of them had ever experienced young soldiers receiving IHL training in this fashion.Footnote 181
Clearly though, the discussion or seminar format registered well in this survey of young field-grade officers as an effective IHL training method, even though they might have never experienced it themselves. The results of the battlefield ethics training programme and the survey of the Command and General Staff College students suggest that militaries could profit in IHL compliance by developing multidisciplinary, discussion-based IHL curricula that leaders at all levels could use to directly engage their subordinates in talking about ethics, professional military identities and IHL.
Conclusion
In his remarks to a military ethics conference at the US Navy War College in 2010, General H. R. McMaster of the US Army related that “[a] key part of the psychological well-being of soldiers is a sense of agency, or control; preserving discipline and moral conduct in combat depends in large measure on it”.Footnote 182 Effective agency requires competence and confidence in the skill sets it exercises, however, and in this sense, General McMaster noted that values education and training “can ring hollow unless it is pursued in a way that provides context and demonstrates relevance” to soldiers.Footnote 183
Dick Couch, who was a US Navy Sea, Air and Land sailor (SEAL) during the Vietnam War and later taught military ethics at the US Naval Academy, assessed that to accomplish this, we must devote “close attention to small-unit leadership and small-unit culture”Footnote 184 – that is, we must meet soldiers with our ethics discussions, instruction and training where they work and live. Otherwise, our efforts will not resonate with them. And when we go to meet them, we cannot just bring the same approaches to IHL and military ethics using the same content that we have in the past; we must first accept that we need to undertake fundamental changes.
For example, making intervention to keep a comrade from straying from basic IHL rules an affirmative part of a warrior ethos or creed could require significant investment of resources over a sustained period of time to be effective. These efforts would need to be tailored to match the sensibilities of soldiers in different nations’ militaries in order to build the sense of responsibility among soldiers that would prompt intervention, as shown in research into the effectiveness of campaigns promoting social intervention to prevent friends from driving while drunk.Footnote 185 Importantly, it might be insufficient to differentiate in approaches on merely a national or even a service-branch level, such as an army or navy. To be effective, it might be necessary to tailor approaches to particular communities of service, such as special forcesFootnote 186 or junior non-commissioned officers.Footnote 187
Another fundamental change would be the development and conduct of active lesson plans to give all soldiers practice in thinking and feeling their way through dilemmas involving what appear to be conflicting positive values. As the study conducted at the Swiss Military Academy shows, such lesson plans are needed because ordinary military problem-solving processes do not lend themselves well to resolving military ethical dilemmas posed by conflicting positive values, It might be difficult convincing military traditionalists that this training would not undermine soldiers’ immediate responsiveness to orders.Footnote 188 Therefore, military organizations might need to mass their efforts in conducting such training with senior non-commissioned officers first, both to gather the benefit of their experiences in developing these lesson plansFootnote 189 and to win them over to support this sort of training for soldiers.
In addition, instruction on leadership must be tied to greater education for leaders at all levels in behavioural ethics so that they better understand why soldiers in stressful military operations act and react the way they do, particularly in instances where soldiers are fatigued by loss of sleep and their military ethical decision-making skills start downgrading. There are many military tasks that sleep-deprived soldiers can still adequately accomplish, but research data shows that military ethical decision-making is particularly challenged by lack of adequate rest. Importantly, this instruction must also emphasize the role that good leadership can play in reducing deficits in ethical behaviour under these conditions.
Finally, as demonstrated by the US Army battlefield ethics training programme in Iraq, military organizations should develop lean, multidisciplinary IHL and military ethics lesson plans driven by data geared towards assessing instructional effectiveness. This would help drive the incorporation of IHL principles into professional military identities as part of military ethical decision-making by leveraging the positive impact of direct discussions between leaders and their subordinates. Competence is a very significant component of professionalism, and we should seek to provide all soldiers with effective military ethics education and training that will give them confidence in their ethical and moral decision-making skills.
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