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.Is there any problem with this division between the attitude towards officersand the attitude toward enlisted personnel? In a hierarchical institution suchas the military, it might appear more important to ensure that those giving theorders are of good moral character than it is to make sure enlisted personnelare morally upright people.As Ian Huntley points out (2003, 2), In a strictlyhierarchical organization, such as the armed forces, it is reasonable for soldiersto expect their leaders to provide them with guidance.So long as lower ranksare taught to obey all legitimate orders, there should be minimal violations ofthe laws of war and institutional regulations.There are two reasons to be concerned about the difference in the aim andcontent of ethics education and training given to officers and that provided toenlisted personnel.First, in a combat situation it is often the military personnelon the front line the strategic privates who are faced with the most immediateand pressing ethical issues, and yet it is frequently these personnel who have, atbest, a scant level of ethics education.If moral sensitivity and moral judgmentare considered necessary and morally admirable traits for officers because theyenable them to maintain moral courage in the face of extreme situational pressures,then it is even more important for enlisted personnel to develop these traits aswell.They are the ones at the front line, and they are the ones who will have tofind the courage to uphold the laws of war when external pressures of time andthreat (as well as, sometimes, pressure from their superior officers) might temptthem to break them.It is patronizing to treat enlisted personnel as less capable What is the Point of Teaching Ethics in the Military? 169of moral development than officers, particularly since they are required to carryout acts of extreme violence that require a substantive moral justification.AsPatrick Mileham points out in Chapter 4: Gone are the days when the jus adbellum tradition meant that politicians alone took responsibility for justifyingthe use of force and soldiers, with relatively clear consciences, attended to thetechnical details, including lethal means, and widespread destruction. Militarypersonnel in today s military forces are all too aware that they cannot escape moralresponsibility for what they do in combat (see Crossley 2006).Furthermore, when war crimes occur, such as those at Abu Ghraib in Iraq andMy Lai in Vietnam, it is usually not the senior officers but the lower ranks whocommit the atrocities (sometimes when ordered to do so by their junior-rankedofficers).Since the post-Second World War trials at Nuremberg, the just followingorders excuse is no longer considered tenable; military personnel of all ranks aremorally and legally responsible for their actions in warfare.It is therefore evenmore important to enable all military personnel to develop the skills that willenable them to disobey illegal orders and take responsibility for their actions.Theassumption that enlisted personnel may simply follow the example of their leadersthreatens to treat enlisted personnel as little more than automatons who must beguided properly by their leaders, rather than treating then as autonomous moralagents who will have to take responsibility for their actions and decision-makingunder high-stress situations.For these reasons it is extremely important to develop a consistent approach tomilitary ethics education and training.Using one approach for enlisted personneland another for officers reveals a lack of clarity about the aims of military ethicseducation.Either the aspirational view should govern ethics education for bothofficers and enlisted personnel, or the functional view should dominate.Whatcan be said in favour of each view? What we want is a perspective on the purposeof ethics education and training that is consistent with the military s ethicalcommitments, and that is consistent with respect for the moral autonomy of allmilitary personnel their status as rational agents who have the capacity to reflectupon and understand moral reasons.As will become evident, both these views, ifapplied consistently, are far more demanding than has been recognized.The Functional View versus the Aspirational ViewAdopting the functional approach to military ethics education and training wouldmean that decisions about which ethical theories to use, how to teach ethics, andwho should be taught ethics will be driven by considerations of how to achievean efficient military force that carries out its duties within the bounds of law.Competing approaches to ethics teaching will be judged purely on their success inpromoting good military functioning.Adopting the aspirational view, on the otherhand, would mean that decisions about the structure and focus of ethics teachingwould be governed by a conception of good moral character.While both viewsmay appear straightforward, in practice they are both extremely demanding. 170 Ethics Education in the MilitaryIf the functional view is taken seriously, implementing it would require acomparative study of the effectiveness of different ethical theories (e.g.virtueethics, deontological ethics, rule-based ethics, reward-and-punishment theories)and the effectiveness of different pedagogical methods (e.g.case studies, role-playing, lectures) in promoting the desired forms of behaviour.It would alsorequire the extension of ethics training to all military personnel not just officers and a thorough analysis of the impact of other areas of military education andtraining on the behaviour of military personnel.Analyzing other areas of military education and training is essential becausethe behaviour of military personnel is influenced not only by the lessons theyreceive in ethics or character development, but also by their immersion in the all-encompassing group-oriented military environment and by their training in actsof violence.A serious commitment to promoting good behaviour in the militarywould have to take into account research into the effects of group-think and peerpressure on the behaviour of military personnel (Bordin 2002), the psychologicaleffects of learning to kill (Grossman 1999; Bourke 1999), the processes that canlead to institutional wrongdoing (Hamilton and Sanders 1999), how crimes ofobedience occur (Milgram 1974; Kelman and Hamilton 1989; Osiel 2002), and themoral psychology of war crimes (Muñoz-Rojas and Frésard 2004).Of the ethicsprogrammes described in this volume, the only one that explicitly addressed someof these issues was that of the Netherlands Defence Academy, which includesclasses on moral disengagement and the psychology of obedience to authority(see Chapter 11), although these classes are only available to officer cadets whomajor in management studies.The functional view must also address the problem of situational factorsoverriding pre-existing dispositions to behave correctly.Whether or not onebelieves that character traits exist as stable action-guiding dispositions, severalexperiments have shown that the situations we find ourselves in can, at times, exertan influence on our behaviour that is far greater than we would have expected orpredicted (Sabini and Silver 2005)
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