Neta C. Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199981724
- eISBN:
- 9780199369942
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199981724.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, American Politics
The preparation for and waging of war is a social system entailing structural requirements and effects, as well as having implications for individual agency. The chapter makes a short detour to ...
More
The preparation for and waging of war is a social system entailing structural requirements and effects, as well as having implications for individual agency. The chapter makes a short detour to philosophy and organization theory to show that organizations can be and are imperfect moral agents, and that the U.S. military is a moral agent. Because most scholarly work on moral agency focuses on individuals, the chapter necessarily breaks new ground by integrating organization theory with a theory of imperfect moral agency. While some measures for minimizing civilian harm were in place at the start of these wars, it arguably took the military a long time and many civilians killed to see enormous political and strategic costs of collateral damage, and to recognize that its procedures could be and should be changed. Once recognized, however, commanders and the services focused on developing and improving means to minimize collateral damage. Rules of engagement were modified, and algorithms, weapons, operations, and ethics training were improved to meet the requirement for civilian protection. Throughout the wars the U.S. military has acted as an imperfect moral agent, and its gradual recognition of the problem of collateral damage, its initial ad hoc responses to the problem, and the gradual institutionalization of a program of civilian casualty mitigation illustrates a cycle of moral agency and a process of organizational learning. This process has been, with exceptions, mostly positive. But the chapter also shows where and how the U.S. military could further act to reduce systemic and proportionality/double effect collateral damage.Less
The preparation for and waging of war is a social system entailing structural requirements and effects, as well as having implications for individual agency. The chapter makes a short detour to philosophy and organization theory to show that organizations can be and are imperfect moral agents, and that the U.S. military is a moral agent. Because most scholarly work on moral agency focuses on individuals, the chapter necessarily breaks new ground by integrating organization theory with a theory of imperfect moral agency. While some measures for minimizing civilian harm were in place at the start of these wars, it arguably took the military a long time and many civilians killed to see enormous political and strategic costs of collateral damage, and to recognize that its procedures could be and should be changed. Once recognized, however, commanders and the services focused on developing and improving means to minimize collateral damage. Rules of engagement were modified, and algorithms, weapons, operations, and ethics training were improved to meet the requirement for civilian protection. Throughout the wars the U.S. military has acted as an imperfect moral agent, and its gradual recognition of the problem of collateral damage, its initial ad hoc responses to the problem, and the gradual institutionalization of a program of civilian casualty mitigation illustrates a cycle of moral agency and a process of organizational learning. This process has been, with exceptions, mostly positive. But the chapter also shows where and how the U.S. military could further act to reduce systemic and proportionality/double effect collateral damage.
Neta Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199981724
- eISBN:
- 9780199369942
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199981724.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, American Politics
United States officials argued during America’s post-9-/11 wars that the US took every precaution to prevent unintended civilian death and injury — known as collateral damage — due to US military ...
More
United States officials argued during America’s post-9-/11 wars that the US took every precaution to prevent unintended civilian death and injury — known as collateral damage — due to US military operations. Yet, during the first years of the wars, officials accepted the inevitability of the harm, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed and injured by the US and its allies. The book explores moral responsibility for three kinds of collateral damage incidents. Accidents were unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable, and arguably they were comparatively rare. More numerous were systemic collateral damage deaths, the foreseeable consequence of rules of engagement, weapons choices, standard operating procedures and military doctrine. Proportionality/double effect collateral damage is foreseeable, and foreseen, yet anticipated military advantages are said to excuse this unintentional killing. Both systemic collateral damage, and proportionality/double effect collateral damage are produced in part by expansive and permissive conceptions of military necessity. The other causes of systemic collateral damage are found in the organization of warmaking — the institutionalized rules, procedures, training, and stresses of war. Depending on choices that are made at the organizational and command level, the likelihood of causing civilian casualties may rise or fall. When those factors, including beliefs about military necessity, change the incidence of collateral damage also changes. This book offers a new way to think about moral agency and accountability. The dominant paradigm of legal and moral responsibility in war stresses both intention and individual accountability. Yet that framework is inadequate for cases of systemic and proportionality/double effect collateral damage because the causes of those deaths and injuries lie at the organizational level — where doctrine, tactics, and weapons are decided. The author supplements theories of individual agency and accountability with a theory of collective moral responsibility, treating organizations as imperfect moral agents. The US military exercised moral agency when it began, mid-way through the Post-9/11 wars, to change its organizational procedures in order reduce collateral damage deaths. The book offers ways to increase political and public moral responsibility for conduct in war.Less
United States officials argued during America’s post-9-/11 wars that the US took every precaution to prevent unintended civilian death and injury — known as collateral damage — due to US military operations. Yet, during the first years of the wars, officials accepted the inevitability of the harm, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed and injured by the US and its allies. The book explores moral responsibility for three kinds of collateral damage incidents. Accidents were unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable, and arguably they were comparatively rare. More numerous were systemic collateral damage deaths, the foreseeable consequence of rules of engagement, weapons choices, standard operating procedures and military doctrine. Proportionality/double effect collateral damage is foreseeable, and foreseen, yet anticipated military advantages are said to excuse this unintentional killing. Both systemic collateral damage, and proportionality/double effect collateral damage are produced in part by expansive and permissive conceptions of military necessity. The other causes of systemic collateral damage are found in the organization of warmaking — the institutionalized rules, procedures, training, and stresses of war. Depending on choices that are made at the organizational and command level, the likelihood of causing civilian casualties may rise or fall. When those factors, including beliefs about military necessity, change the incidence of collateral damage also changes. This book offers a new way to think about moral agency and accountability. The dominant paradigm of legal and moral responsibility in war stresses both intention and individual accountability. Yet that framework is inadequate for cases of systemic and proportionality/double effect collateral damage because the causes of those deaths and injuries lie at the organizational level — where doctrine, tactics, and weapons are decided. The author supplements theories of individual agency and accountability with a theory of collective moral responsibility, treating organizations as imperfect moral agents. The US military exercised moral agency when it began, mid-way through the Post-9/11 wars, to change its organizational procedures in order reduce collateral damage deaths. The book offers ways to increase political and public moral responsibility for conduct in war.
