On Fear-Induced Aggression

Wherever there is a military establishment, there is a possibility that it will provoke the very thing that it is meant to deter. A foreign enemy might be driven to attack us not despite our armed forces, but because of them, in an act of fear-induced ‘defensive aggression’. What this tells us is that a military’s contribution to ‘national security’ is not unequivocally positive. There is a trade-off involved. States armed with militaries may be less likely to find themselves on the receiving end of ‘greedy’ or ‘opportunistic’ aggression, but they are more likely to find themselves on the receiving end of preventive aggression, motivated by feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Thankfully, international norms against the use of preventive military force have limited the instances of defensive aggression over the last century. But today these norms are unravelling. If ‘defensive aggression’ becomes legitimized, we should expect to see more of it.

Introduction

Ethicists dealing with war and armed conflict have invested most of their energies in two questions. First, under what circumstances is it morally permissible for a state to resort to military force? This is the question of jus ad bellum—the justice of war. Second, once hostilities are underway, how should combatants conduct themselves? This is the question of ...

Conclusion

Although best known for his contributions to mathematical psychology, Anatol Rapoport became an outspoken military abolitionist during the Vietnam War era. In the foreword to Understanding War he writes: [T]he identification of national security with military potential, the belief in the effectiveness of ‘deterrence’, the belief that dismantling military institutions must lead to economic slump and unemployment, the belief that military establishments perform a useful social function by ‘defending’ the societies on which they feed, and so on. All these beliefs qualify as superstitions by the usual definition of a superstition as a stubbornly held belief for which no evidence exists....

Cognitive Bias and the Misuse of Military Power

Wherever there is a military establishment, there is a danger that its use will not be confined to the prosecution of ‘just wars’ and interventions. In other words, there is a risk of the armed forces being overused or misused by the state. In this chapter I argue that some unjust wars are bound to be perceived as just by our political decision makers, not because of the unique pressures they face, or because they are morally deranged, or because they are ignorant of the facts, but simply because they carry the same unconscious biases as the rest of us. This means the prospect of military misuse is not limited to societies whose political elites are hawkish warmongers or sociopathic careerists. We can fully expect that even ‘decent’ governments, genuinely committed to never waging unjust wars, will wage them sometimes.

Epilogue

Whether or not the costs of a military establishment are worth bearing will depend on, among other things, the availability of alternative arrangements for national defence. Gene Sharp spent his career advocating for what he called a ‘post-military’ civilian-based defence system. It would perform the core functions currently entrusted to armed forces, including national defence against external aggression, but it would rely on non-violent means and methods—the very same that citizens might employ to depose a local dictator. Sharp envisaged a world in which the energies and resources currently spent on militaries would be redirected into these radically different-looking defence institutions. He called this process ‘trans-armament’, as opposed to disarmament, to emphasize that it would not involve throwing our weapons down, but rather replacing them with other (in Sharp’s estimation, better) ones. The epilogue examines Sharp’s proposal.

Martial Values in Civilian Life

Wherever there is a professional military organization, certain values must be cultivated in and celebrated by it, in order for it to effectively deploy organized violence on behalf of the state. But when these values penetrate into civilian society—as they almost invariably do—there can be pernicious results. This chapter takes a sample of three civilian domains—law enforcement, business, and education—and draws attention to some of the adverse consequences that their cultural ‘militarization’ has had. This analysis suggests that when the values, ideals, and assumptions of the armed forces encroach into, and take root in, civilian institutions, the proper functioning (or telos) of those institutions can be compromised.

The Coup Risk

It is not uncommon for the armed forces to turn against the state that they are supposed to protect. Wherever there is a military, there is a risk of a coup. Since 1950 there have been 232 of them in ninety-four countries, and this is only counting the successful ones where an incumbent government was unseated. The coup risk is a function of what Peter Fever famously called the ‘civil–military problematique’: armed forces with the means to defend their state invariably have the means to attack it as well. This chapter argues that citizens should take the risk of a coup seriously for largely the same reasons that they take the threat of foreign aggression and occupation seriously: both can be expected to compromise their communal self-definition and their enjoyment of human rights.

Military Conditioning and Moral Damage

Wherever there is a military establishment, men and women must be recruited into it and conditioned to be effective war-fighters. Whether or not they are ever deployed, there is a respect in which this conditioning is morally damaging to those involved. Combat training is geared towards making soldiers more comfortable with killing, so that they can do it repeatedly and efficiently in battle, without thinking too much or feeling too deeply. One of its aims is to enable recruits to use lethal violence without suffering emotional distress. But a morally decent person would experience distress in these circumstances. The upshot is that military conditioning is (or tries to be) morally damaging, or corrosive of virtue. It is morally injurious not by accident, but by design.