A Moral Military

12. Conclusions: The War Conventions as a Moral Code

12 Conclusions The War Conventions as a Moral Code Chapter 2 considered the range of moral styles. The rest of this book may be thought of as a discussion of various aspects of the war conventions. Now we have this question: What is the moral status of the style that follows the conventions and the moral status of the styles that do not? Speci fic and narrower questions about morality appeared in each chapter, but we are still left with the matter of the status of the conventions as a whole. To judge moral status calls for us to locate three factors: (1) the moral actor, (2) the beneficiary of the acts, and (3) the nature of the sacri fice that the acts contain. The Moral Actors For the war conventions, the moral actor is sometimes the individual soldier, sometimes the individual politician, and sometimes that abstract thing called the nation. Even this outline is too spare a catalog of moral actors; it does not mention groups of soldiers (such as squads, companies, the Joint Chiefs, court-martial boards), and groups of politicians (congressional committees and review boards). These are the obvious moral actors who are to be restricted and judged by the Geneva and Hague Conventions; however, a most significant group has not yet been listed—the general public. The public, citizens or not, are not merely the beneficiaries of the soldiers’ and politicians’ efforts; they are also moral actors. They finance the war, desire it more or less, and also sacrifice for it (even without considering the personal risks of area bombing). The Geneva Conventions include a section on publicizing their texts “as widely as possible, . . . and, in particular, to include the study thereof in their programmes of military and, if possible, civil instruction , so that the principles thereof may become known to all their armed forces and to the entire population” (FM 27-10, p. 11; emphasis mine). In addition to this formal effort by the parties to the Geneva Conventions , there is also the clear statement in FM 27-10 that: “The customary law of war is part of the law of the United States, and . . . is binding upon the United States, citizens of the United States, and other persons serving this country” (FM 27-10, p. 7; emphasis mine). Why this effort to have the “entire population” know the principles of the conventions? One obvious reason is the fact that knowledge of what war crimes are becomes a restraint on their commission by the military. We pay attention to this below. A second reason is to constrain the population from committing, asking for, or countenancing war crimes. Civilian populations have killed POWs without trial, engaged in marauding, and supplied poison gas for use in extermination chambers.1 The war conventions restrict not only the military but the entire population to civilized conduct; therefore, the members of the general public are responsible for their own personal conduct as well as for the behavior of their employees. For a principle to be morally acceptable on the basis of universal fairness , it must apply to everybody. The war conventions meet that test: They apply to all parties on all sides, whether in the military forces or not. They apply to the political leadership, the military leadership, and all the way up or down to include “the entire population” on all sides. The Beneficiaries Who are the beneficiaries of the war conventions? The titles of the Geneva Conventions (12 August 1949) specify the beneficiaries: “For the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field,” for the “Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea,” “Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War,” and “Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.” Because everyone is by definition either in the armed forces or not, these conventions apply to everyone. Combatant or not, one’s status in war may easily change from one category to the other. The principle of universal fairness would seem to be comfortably satisfied by the universal range of benefit. The conventions apply not only to all sides in international wars; they also carry minimum provisions: “In the case of armed conflict not of an international character” (FM 27-10, p. 9). Civil wars and lesser cases of Conclusions / 179 “armed con...