Military Ethics Education and the Changing Nature of Warfare

Abstract

This article analyzes two traditional approaches to teaching military ethics, aspirational and functionalist approach, in light of the existing technological development in the military. Introduction of new technological solutions to waging warfare that involve dehumanization, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as employment of different technological tools to enhance humans participating in war and to improve military efficiency (such as built-in AI algorithms), not only bring to the surfaces the obviously existing weakness and inadequacies of the two traditional approaches to military ethics education, which have been rendered suboptimal, but also raise new challenges. The paper argues that teaching military ethics solely from the two perspective does not meet the demands of the upcoming (perhaps even already ongoing) military technological revolution and that the future will demand a more profound and conceptual moral education of military personnel that will reassess the role of martial virtues, increase responsibility for killing in war (making war more “real” and riskless killing more “difficult”) and result in military professionals that resemble “a Renaissance man” in their philosophical outlook. Only by ensuring that all military professionals (in particular high-ranking officers) have been properly and adequately ethically educated, future armies, as well as entire societies, can actively aspire toward optimal armed forces structure, a more professional and efficient approach to military profession, and ultimately better and more responsible military personnel in total.