Ethics Education for Irregular Warfare

Don Carrick, James Connelly, Paul Robinson, Don Carrick, James Connelly, Paul Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754677000
• eBook ISBN: 9781317141150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Following on from Ethics Education in the Military (eds. Paul Robinson, Nigel de Lee and Don Carrick: Ashgate 2008) which surveyed and critically analyzed the existing theory and practice of educating soldiers, sailors and airmen in the ethics of 'old fashioned' warfaring, this volume considers the extent to which such theory and practice is adequate to prepare members of the military to meet the more complex ethical challenges faced when engaging in irregular warfare in the 21st century. In recent years, events in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the requirement that Western military personnel, drawn from the armed forces of many different countries, should behave in an ethical manner at all times. The contributors to this volume come from various disciplinary backgrounds, several are serving or former military officers and most are actively engaged in ethics education. The volume advances theoretical understanding of different approaches to ethics education and provides practical conclusions.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Ethics Education for Irregular Warfare

Paul Robinson

DOI: 10.4324/9781315580395-1

Aims and Content

The armies of modern states evolved primarily to fight the armies of other states. Their structure, equipment, training and, most importantly for this book, value systems, reflect this purpose. State versus state wars still happen, as in the case of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, but they are a rarity in the modern world. Since the end of the Second World War, the overwhelming majority of wars have been internal conflicts of one kind or another. In these conflicts, state armies confront stateless enemies in conditions for which conventional armies are often unprepared. Military forces also engage in numerous other activities which fall short of what people would normally consider war. These forms of ‘Irregular Warfare’ and ‘Operations Other Than War’ are currently the norm.

Although the magnitude of armed conflict worldwide has declined by over 60 percent since the end of the Cold War (Marshall and Goldstone 2007, 4), the pace of military operations by Western states has increased in the same time period, with international military forces being deployed to Haiti, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, and other locations. Whereas the UN had approximately 12,500 troops deployed on peacekeeping operations in the mid-1980s, the number had increased to over 45,000 by 2003 (Armstrong, Lloyd and Redmond 2004, 84). Western states have also conducted operations without UN approval, such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the international forces did not engage in conventional warfare. We must expect this pattern to continue. Most state armies will not in the foreseeable future wage war against other state armies, but, barring a political change of mind about the value of military intervention, many of them will be regularly engaged in military operations of other kinds.

Preparing for these operations is thus a vital task. It poses many challenges. Some of them are strategic and tactical, others are technological, and still others are ethical. The last of these form the subject matter of this book. Our aim is not to discuss the ethics of irregular warfare in general, but rather to examine how to educate troops to respond appropriately to irregular warfare’s ethical demands. How, we ask, can one educate, train, and prepare military institutions and the men and women who serve in them, to act ethically in what are often extremely difficult circumstances? What are the peculiar attributes of irregular warfare which differentiate it from conventional war, and how should military institutions respond to the special ethical challenges which these differences create?

To answer these questions, we have drawn together experts from a variety of countries, including both academics and military personnel with experience in irregular warfare. The book begins with a theoretical discussion of issues relating to ethics education for irregular warfare. Next comes a section on operational issues, which includes an examination of the question of torture, as well as case studies from Iraq and Israel. A concluding section then explores how military academies in the USA, UK, and Netherlands address the problem of educating military officers for irregular warfare. This book complements and expands on work presented in an earlier volume on Ethics Education in the Military (Robinson, de Lee and Carrick 2008). It is hoped not merely to expand knowledge in an academic sense, but also to provide practical input into what is an extremely important aspect of military education.

Irregular Warfare

The term ‘irregular warfare’ covers a host of activities, many of which have little in common with one another. They range from terrorism, insurgency and counter-insurgency, guerrilla warfare, netwar, and cyberwarfare, to various forms of peace support operation. Often they involve combatants who are starkly unequal in power, and who use very different tactics. Irregular warfare of this sort is sometimes referred to as ‘asymmetrical warfare’. Another common term is ‘Operations Other Than War’ (OOTW), which can encompass both irregular warfare and other more peaceful activities, such as military aid to the civil power. Also popular in some circles is the concept of Fourth Generation War (4GW), a phrase used to describe non-linear, asymmetric warfare fought between states and non-state actors (Lind 2004; Hammes 2004; Echevarria 2005). To a large extent, terms such as irregular warfare, OOTW, and 4GW overlap. For the purposes of this book, we have chosen primarily to use ‘irregular warfare’ because it best represents the reality of most of the operations which Western armies are today undertaking. They are not necessarily operations ‘other than war’, and can involve very heavy combat which resembles conventional war.

Counter-insurgency (COIN) and peace operations are the two most prominent types of irregular warfare. Insurgency consists of actions by non-state actors to overthrow the existing state authority or to wring political concessions from it, or of similar actions to expel a foreign occupier. The insurgents aim to break down the government’s will to fight and to persuade or coerce the population to switch allegiance from the government to them. This may take many years, even decades, and insurgencies thus tend to last longer than conventional wars.

The insurgents’ relative military weakness will normally induce them to resort to methods other than direct combat, including terrorism and guerrilla warfare, as well as political operations aimed at winning popular support. Terrorism is another term which lacks an agreed definition, but it is generally considered to involve illegal violence by non-state actors against primarily civilian targets. Guerrilla warfare, on the other hand, is a method of fighting in which the weaker side avoids direct combat as much as possible and prefers instead to use hit-and-run tactics. There are no clear front lines, and the guerrillas/insurgents may blend into the local population, making it difficult for government forces to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Guerrilla warfare may be combined with conventional war, with guerrillas acting behind the front lines while conventional operations are carried out against the enemy’s main force. This combination of conventional and guerrilla war took place during the Vietnam War, for instance. If the insurgents/guerrillas achieve significant success, they may gain sufficient strength to abandon the guerrilla phase and adopt more conventional means in an effort to seize power. Alternatively, they may hope for the government to collapse from within, or for the foreign occupier to lose the will to resist and decide to withdraw (for discussions of guerrilla warfare, see Laqueur 1977; Sarkesian 1975).

Insurgency, terrorism and guerrilla warfare are all political phenomena as much as military ones, made possible only because of the existence of some degree of political, and possibly also economic, discontent. Consequently, COIN operations rely on a mix of political, economic, and military responses. Campaigns to defeat insurgencies require efforts to win ‘hearts and minds’ through economic development and reconstruction, strengthening state legitimacy and authority, and the provision of security. To this end, COIN doctrine suggests that counter-insurgents should use minimum force, abide by the law, and subordinate all military activity to the political strategy (see for instance, Thompson 1967; Joes 2004; Fall 1998). To avoid unnecessarily harming civilians, it is essential that force be directed precisely at insurgents, rather than be used indiscriminately in the hope of catching some insurgents along the way. This means that secret intelligence is of special importance in COIN.

Attempts to rebuild a shattered state system also occur in various types of peace support operations. Peace operations are held to be of four types: peacekeeping, peacebuilding, peacemaking, and peace enforcement (Bellamy 1996; Boutros-Ghali 1995; Jakobsen 2002). Peacekeeping and peacebuilding fall somewhat outside the parameters of irregular warfare, as theoretically both are undertaken only after peace has been established between the warring parties. Having said that, force may sometimes have to be used during peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and troops engaged in them may face similar ethical challenges to forces carrying out other types of peace operation.

Peacekeeping takes place when those fighting a war have agreed to a ceasefire, but tension between them remains. A third-party force, normally under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), seeks to preserve the ceasefire and create conditions in which the opposing sides can formulate a long-term settlement. Missions involve monitoring, observing and supervising ceasefires, and establishing buffer zones which keep the previously warring parties physically apart (Bellamy, Griffin and Williams 2003).

Peacebuilding represents a longer-term attempt to prevent a conflict from resuming by addressing its root causes. This is normally done by creating strong and legitimate institutions of government and supporting economic development. Action may also be taken to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate into society the soldiers of warring sides, and to train police and armed forces. In this regard, peacebuilding shares some common ground with COIN (David 1999; Paris 2004).

In contrast to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, what is termed peacemaking takes place while a conflict is still raging, and consists of actions undertaken to bring the conflict to an end. This may involve negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy, but may also involve threats and use of force (Greig and Diehl 2005). In this way, peacemaking can slip into peace enforcement. This involves the threat or use of force to impose, maintain or restore a peace settlement, and to some extent is distinguished from war only by the supposedly disinterested status of the enforcers. In some instances, such as in Kosovo in 1999, such enforcement may include an outside party drawing up a settlement and ordering the warring factions to abide by its terms on pain of military attack (Boulden 2001). In the Kosovo case, peace enforcement in its turn slipped into conventional war.

As may be seen from the descriptions above, the boundaries between the various types of irregular warfare are not always clear. What most of these operations do share are complexities and uncertainties, including ethical ones, which differ from those encountered in conventional war.

The Ethical Challenges of Irregular Warfare

In conventional war, the aim of military operations is normally clear, namely to defeat the enemy’s armed forces in battle. Furthermore, one knows who the enemy is. This is often not the case in irregular warfare, and even if one does know who the enemy is, one may not be able to find him, as he will be hiding among the civil population. This imposes on armed forces a need to practise extreme care when using force, not merely because one does not wish the innocent to suffer, but also because harming them will have negative repercussions which will undermine the political struggle. This is especially true given the wide reach of modern media, which makes it difficult to hide mistakes. Contemporary terrorists and insurgents are often capable of sophisticated ‘information operations’, exploiting the mass media to their advantage. These and other factors mean that ‘Ethically speaking, COIN environments can be much more complex than conventional ones’ (Headquarters Department of the Army 2006, 7–5).

Lieutenant General Sir Alistair Irwin, formerly the General Officer Commanding British forces in Northern Ireland, notes that a system of ‘asymmetric morality’ exists in counter-terrorist struggles. The same may be said in other cases of irregular warfare. The public expects terrorists and insurgents to behave improperly, but it does not expect the same of the state; the state is held to a higher standard, and so ‘The opprobrium that attaches to national institutions that act illegally is infinitely greater than anything that attaches to the terrorists themselves’ (Irwin 2004). However unfair this may seem to some to be, it is a political reality. Democracies must not only be purer than pure but must also appear to be so, if they are to succeed in irregular warfare. This means that maintaining the highest ethical standards is a matter of great operational importance.

This is not easy. Irregular warfare can impose tremendously varying demands on military personnel, requiring them to switch rapidly between different tasks with different ethical values. As noted above, irregular warfare can involve peaceful tasks such as economic development, and a minimal use of force, but on occasion combat can intensify to a level which is indistinguishable from full-scale war. US Marine Corps general Charles Krulak has coined the phrase ‘Three Block War’ to describe this sort of situation. Within the space of three contiguous city blocks, Krulak says, armed forces may find themselves having to carry out three different types of military operations: conventional combat against insurgents in one block; peacekeeping operations to separate warring factions in the second; and humanitarian assistance in the third. Soldiers will need to be able to switch rapidly between using maximum force at one moment to using minimum force at the next (Krulak 1999). Something similar to this can be seen in the operations of Western troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; in the latter, for instance, NATO forces have fought fierce battles with the Taliban, while also providing humanitarian aid and carrying out reconstruction and development.

From the point of view of ethics education, this creates great difficulties. The traditional values and virtues associated with the ‘warrior’, such as courage, comradeship, and obedience, may be of limited use to the soldier attempting to win the hearts and minds of a foreign people, for which task he may require a more cosmopolitan ethos which looks beyond the immediate military group, as well as a keen intelligence and cultural understanding. Inculcating the former set of values, which remain necessary for traditional soldiering, may perhaps hamper the development of the latter set, whereas inculcating the latter may render the soldier les...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword – George R. Lucas, Jr
• 1 Introduction: Ethics Education for Irregular Warfare
• Part 1 The Theoretical Background
• Part 2 Operational Issues
• Part 3 Pedagogical Issues
• Index