Military Ethics in Counterinsurgency: a New Look at an Old Problem
Abstract
For military operations, the counterinsurgency environment is perhaps the most complicated and arduous environment in history. Often, government and military leaders are unsure how conventional forces should deal with an inferior enemy who stays hidden in the population. Leaders at all levels wrestle with the conflicting operational designs based on whether insurgents can be directly engaged and defeated tactically or whether the support of the populace has to be won in order to deny insurgent sanctuaries. The environmental conditions constantly shift to favor operations of direct action against insurgents, and stability and support operations focused on the populace. Leaders must decide, often with inadequate guidance or training how coercive force impacts the concept of legitimacy in the minds of the host nation populace. The key task is to determine the ethics of a counterinsurgency environment and project the impact of those ethics on the outcome of the war. This thesis outlines military ethics in counterinsurgency and examines ethical systems, counterinsurgency principles, and historical examples to shed light on these difficult concepts.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 14, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA475568
Entities
People
- Theodore K. Shinn Jr.
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College