Aft er the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, for most militaries in the West the core tasks shift ed from national defence to the handling of international crises, ranging from humanitarian missions to regular warfare. Th ese new operations oft en require a great deal of selfcontrol on the side of Western military personnel, as there is not only an asymmetry regarding the amount of military might of the respective parties, but also in the number of restraints imposed. Most of the civilian casualties in today's confl icts are caused by insurgent forces – around 77 per cent in 2011 in Afghanistan (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan 2012: 1) – yet these seem to draw considerably less media attention, and to produce much less moral outrage, than those caused by Western soldiers. Although the blind eye turned to atrocities committed by the other side might seems unwarranted, one could also argue that it is partly natural since Western militaries profess to bring good – and sometimes even to be "a force for good". As an inevitable consequence of having to function under the watchful eye of politicians, the media and the general public, ethics education for military personnel today partly comes down to convincing military personnel of the importance of exercising restraint – that is, using minimal force, and behaving in a respectful way – even when their adversaries do not. As incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, the required moderation does not always come naturally, and militaries try hard to fi nd ways to prevent misconduct by their personnel. To this end, the military traditionally stressed the importance of obedience to rules and codes of conduct, yet these solutions seem to be of limited use today for at least two reasons. First, rules and codes oft en lack the fl exibility needed in the complex operations undertaken today. Second, although we expect military personnel to also do the right thing when that abovementioned watchful eye is not present, rules that try to condition behaviour seem to be largely impotent when no one is around; something that eff ectively reduces good conduct to a matter of not being found out.1 It is for these reasons that a growing number of militaries consider character building superior to rules or codes of conduct imposed from above, and as a result there is at present 32 Virtue ethics in the military Peter Olsthoorn 366 APPLIED ETHICS in the ethics education for military personnel more attention given to virtue ethics and military virtues than there used to be (see, for instance, Bonadonna 1994, Osiel 1999, J. H. Toner 2000, Robinson 2007a, Olsthoorn 2010). Th e idea that virtues, and thus character, can to some extent be developed is, of course, very appealing to military organizations. OLD VIRTUES AND NEW TASKS At the same time, the military view on virtues and virtue ethics might be a bit too straightforward. To begin with, virtues and values are evidently not the same, yet they are sometimes treated by militaries as if they were: many of the good things most militaries list as a value (courage, for instance) are in fact virtues by most accounts. Th at is also the term used in this chapter, as it seems to be closest to what militaries actually mean to say, and is in line with both the emphasis they put on character development and their choice of virtue ethics as the basis for their ethics curricula. One likely reason for the fact that such confusion can arise is that the existing literature on virtues in a military context is not abundant, and that there has in general been little attention to the more problematic sides of the current emphasis on virtues and virtue ethics in the military. Th e literature that is available oft en deals with one specifi c virtue only, such as courage or loyalty, while broader approaches that go into the relations between the diff erent virtues are relatively rare (see J. H. Toner 2000 for an exception). Also, texts normally do not refer to much scholarly literature, and are more oft en apologetic than critical, as they mainly stress the importance of that particular virtue, without going into its intricacies. What is more, the abovementioned shift from traditional tasks to new, more complex missions raises the question of whether some virtues might not have become less relevant. Much depends on whether the actual virtues military personnel aim for are the right ones for a particular job, and one could expect that today the appropriate virtues are not necessarily solely the more bellicose ones. In the existing literature on military virtues, traditional virtues such as courage, discipline, loyalty and obedience will typically be in the foreground, however. Not surprisingly, it is also these virtues that fi gure prominently on the lists of virtues and values of most armed forces (Robinson 2007a). Although there is evidently still a role for such conventional soldierly virtues, the problem is that they, especially in their common interpretation, mainly further military eff ectiveness. Instrumental in attaining the objectives of the military, they are not particularly helpful to the local population of the countries to which military personnel are deployed. Seeing as military personnel today have to deal with more than just opposing forces, this is a cause for some concern. At fi rst sight working out a set of more cosmopolitan virtues and values, more in line with today's new kind of missions, would be a good way of tackling the exclusiveness of the traditional military virtues. Such a fresh set of virtues would most likely be more about exercising restraint (probably giving a place to not so new cardinal virtues such as justice, temperance and prudence) than about demonstrating virtues such as courage, loyalty and discipline. Yet one could also argue that a new set of virtues is probably not only unnecessary but also perhaps asking a bit too much from what is, on the whole, a relatively traditional organization. Instead of devising a new list of virtues from scratch, one could also identify the weaknesses of the existing virtues and see if the way militaries interpret these traditional virtues VIRTUE ETHICS IN THE MILITARY 367 can be improved. Although most militaries today cling to fairly traditional interpretations of their longestablished virtues, other readings are of course possible. So perhaps the question is not which new virtues the military should promote, but in what form the existing ones should best be understood. Especially at a time when armed forces are increasingly used for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, it seems sensible to see whether the traditional military virtues can be reformulated in a way that makes them more attentive to the interests of outsiders. I will look at two examples of archetypical military virtues: courage and loyalty, and a less archetypical one: respect. COURAGE, LOYALTY AND RESPECT Not surprisingly, most literature on military courage pays tribute to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, famously describing courage as the middle position between rashness and cowardice, to be developed by "habituating ourselves to make light of alarming situations" (1104a), and serving a morally just cause. No doubt this link to a morally just cause was apt at a time when citizensoldiers themselves deliberated on which enemy to march against. However, it seems less than apt for modern militaries, if only because today's soldiers do not have a say in what the political or moral objective of their mission is. One can hardly blame the Aristotelian view on courage for this; it merely suggests that in military ethics Aristotle is sometimes called upon rather routinely. A limitation of more practical consequence is that Aristotle seems to have equated courage with physical courage on the battlefi eld (Nicomachean Ethics 1115a). Now, physical courage is of course important and for a soldier a defi ning virtue, and it is in fact the form of courage militaries like to see most. Yet, as such, physical courage is primarily something the organization, superiors and colleagues benefi t from. For today's soldiers this defi nition is therefore too narrow, as it excludes the just as important virtue of moral courage, which has a much wider reach. Moral courage involves "the capacity to overcome the fear of shame and humiliation in order to admit one's mistakes, to confess a wrong, to reject evil conformity, to denounce injustice, and to defy immoral or imprudent orders" (I. Miller 2000: 254). However pretentious it may sound, this form of courage is not so much about being a more eff ective soldier than about being a better person. Moral courage is not only important to the military because it needs people who blow the whistle if necessary, but also because it needs, and much more frequently so, soldiers who are willing to correct a colleague when they think him wrong, or even report him if necessary. Its benefi ciaries, today, are not so much their fellow soldiers, as is the case with physical courage, but the outsiders the military is there to protect. Th e diff erence between the two forms of courage is not completely straightforward, though: whereas the word "physical" in the term physical courage refers to what is at stake – life and limbs – the word "moral" in the term moral courage refers to the higher end that this form of courage aims at (and not to what is at stake in the case of moral courage: esteem, popularity and so forth). It is by defi nition motivated by a moral cause, at least in the eyes of the agent and those who label his act morally courageous. By defi nition, yet not as a logical necessity, one could imagine someone risking his or her status and reputation for an ignoble end, and the principal distinction between the two forms therefore lies in what is put in harm's way. Th at it is not one's life and limbs that are at stake, but "only" 368 APPLIED ETHICS one's reputation or popularity (see for instance Castro 2006: 69), probably explains why militaries rank moral courage somewhat lower than physical courage. Th e physically courageous soldier, however, is oft en not someone who has succeeded in performing a courageous act in spite of his fears, but, as military sociologists like to point out, someone fearful of what colleagues might think of him. In general, the motivation behind many acts of physical courage performed by military personnel therefore partly boils down to being more afraid of being considered a coward than of dying (see also Dollard 1944: 46; I. Miller 2000: 178). Th ere is a considerable literature stressing the importance of social cohesion, such as the concern for one's reputation among colleagues and the fear of ostracism, as a motivation for military courage. Although most of that research is dated and sometimes methodologically unsound (see also MacCoun et al. 2006, Segal & Kestnbaum 2002), armed forces have adapted their internal organizations on the assumption that the existence of strong bonds between soldiers is the most important factor in combat motivation (Keegan 1976: 53, 72–3). However, there is a drawback to this. Strong social cohesion, setting a premium on bonding over bridging, can lead to the kind of ingroup favouritism that is potentially dangerous to the people the military are supposed to protect. Incidents involving military personnel are, in other words, perhaps not the result of the military structure not working as it should, but the result of something built into the military apparatus when it works as it is supposed to work, with everything geared towards military eff ectiveness on the battlefi eld. What is more, if physical courage is motivated by strong group ties, it is not very likely to be accompanied with the virtue of moral courage just described. Th at militaries promote physical courage at the expense of moral courage is the more to be regretted, as the benefi ciaries of moral courage are, as I have noted, probably more oft en outsiders than colleagues.2 Testimony to the inverse relationship between social cohesion and moral courage is that the more socially cohesive a unit, the more prone to a lack of moral courage it seems to be (Olsthoorn 2010: 52). However, it is militaries in general, and not only their elite units, that tend to breed conformism, and they are for that reason, in general, no bastions of moral courage. Th e emphasis on social cohesion might very well be an important cause of the coverups that follow on incidents at times. Th is tendency to give priority to the interests of one's own group is the defi ning characteristic of a particular form of loyalty, the virtue we turn to next. Militaries oft en include loyalty in their lists of values, and clearly consider it a cardinal virtue. However, loyalty to what? Like courage, loyalty seems to come in two basic varieties: loyalty to a group (which can range from one's primary group to one's country) and loyalty to a principle (such as justice, or respect for human life). Th is is a relevant distinction, since the claims that are made upon a person by group loyalty frequently go against the demands of loyalty to principle. Most philosophers and ethicists have a preference for loyalty to principle, as group loyalty "requires us to suspend our own independent judgment about its object", and "aff ects one's views of who merits what" (Ewin 1992: 403, 406, 411). Some might argue that such unrefl ective loyalty is not loyalty at all, but that seems too easy a way out (see also ibid.: 404). In fact, one might even say that the opposite is more likely to hold true: someone who is cautious with his loyalties, weighing them carefully against other values, is not someone we would in general describe as having loyalty as a paramount attribute (Keller 2007a: 158; see also Ewin 1992: 411). So even if not all group loyalty is blind loyalty, it does presuppose a certain nearsightedness. VIRTUE ETHICS IN THE MILITARY 369 Although oft en treated under one heading, one could even wonder if loyalty to a person, group or nation on the one hand, and loyalty to a principle on the other, are really two manifestations of one phenomenon, or two diff erent things altogether. Suspension of independent judgement, or the "willingness not to follow good judgment" (Ewin 1992: 412), is, in general, not required by loyalty to principle, to name one important diff erence. One could argue that, from this point of view, it is only in so far as loyalty takes the form of loyalty to principle that it can be said to be a laudable trait, while loyalty in its more familiar meaning of loyalty to a group is, because of its inherent bias towards near and dear, in general not a moral quality. Standing behind one's fellow countrymen, colleagues or organization, even when it is clear that they are at fault, for example, seems a rather undesirable form of loyalty, and certainly not virtuous. "Our country, right or wrong" cannot be right from a moral point of view (Primoratz 2008: 208). Armed forces, as we have seen, are less hesitant than most ethicists about the benefi cial qualities of group loyalty; when militaries include loyalty as a value they mean loyalty to country, colleagues and the organization. Loyalty to principle, a type of loyalty that has a wider scope and includes more than just the interests of colleagues or an organization, is hardly ever mentioned in the various value statements of armed forces.3 As is the case with the stressing of physical courage at the cost of moral courage, there are drawbacks here too. Th e fact that most militaries put their own people fi rst, something understandable in itself, has as a consequence that they (and their political leaders) tend to reduce risks for their own personnel in ways that increase the chances of civilian casualties among the local population (Shaw 2005: 79–88). Also, this narrow interpretation of loyalty might be a cause of the coverups that at times follow on incidents involving military personnel, similar to what happens when social cohesion gets too much emphasis. Stressing group loyalty can diminish moral courage. Somewhat worryingly, this narrow interpretation is in line with how other virtues, including respect, are mainly seen as relating to colleagues. Military ethicist Timothy Challans relates, for instance, how: early draft s of the [US] Army's 1999 leadership manual included the notion of respect; in fact, the key feature of respect was that of respecting the enemy on the battlefi eld. Th at idea did not survive the staffi ng process, and even a cursory check of the manual today will reveal that only Americans are mentioned as being recipients of this important value of respect. (2007: 163) At present the US Army describes respect as, among other things, "trusting that all people have done their jobs and fulfi lled their duty", and, emphasizing that the Army is a team, seems to limit respect to colleagues.4 As one author stated, albeit somewhat polemically, "nonsoldiers lie outside the military honour group; as such they are felt to deserve no respect" (Robinson 2007b). Although it might be true that colleagues, not outsiders, are those who suff er most oft en from misconduct in the military, this exclusive attention to their wellbeing seems a bit too onesided. Th is is all the more so given that respect is evidently not a constantsum game, meaning that respect for outsiders does not diminish the amount of respect left to show colleagues. In view of the fact that respect does not always come naturally, it is all the more regrettable that some militaries limit their defi nition of the virtue of respect to 370 APPLIED ETHICS respect for colleagues, and more oft en than not fail to mention in their codes and value lists the need to respect outsiders as well. Th e need to point that out is fairly evident. For instance, only 47 per cent of the American soldiers and 38 per cent of the marines in Iraq were of the opinion that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect (Mental Health Advisory Team 2006). Although respect costs nothing, it seems to be in short supply nonetheless, and this scarcity is, as Richard Sennett writes, manmade (2003: 3). Why exactly militaries are reluctant to include outsiders is therefore something of a puzzle, especially since respecting outsiders, besides being good in itself, would serve their – and, in the end, our – interests, too. It is likely that, as many have claimed, disrespectful behaviour fuels resentment towards Western military personnel and thus makes recruitment easier for insurgent groups. No doubt, the abovementioned emphasis on strong cohesion and group loyalty play an important role here. Th at marines are less likely than soldiers to believe that noncombatants in Iraq are worthy of respect (Mental Health Advisory Team 2006) is probably due to group ties among marines being stronger than among average military personnel. EDUCATING MILITARY VIRTUES More inclusive interpretations of the traditional military virtues will only work in so far as promoting virtues really contributes something to the chances of military personnel behaving morally in the fi rst place. Although most militaries just assume that virtues can be successfully taught to military personnel, there are at least two potential problems here. First, how can they best be taught? One supposedly develops virtues by practising them, yet is there really much room for practising virtues in, for instance, the academic curriculum for future offi cers? Even if it is true that "the modeling of conduct through the examples of others" and the "literary heritage of culture" can have a positive role in moral education based on virtue ethics (Carr & Steutel 1999: 253; for a diff erent view see Challans 2007: 29–72), one might wonder whether in practice ethics education based on virtue ethics does not oft en consist of teaching about virtues (and virtue ethics) rather than teaching virtues, which is something diff erent altogether. Second, a focus on virtues implies a focus on the agent and his character, and to some observers a virtue ethics approach might suggest that incidents involving military personnel are the result of moral fl aws at the individual level (see also Robinson 2007a: 31), reducing misconduct involving military personnel to a matter of "a few bad apples". Th is dispositional view is oft en too onesided, seeing that unethical behaviour is as oft en the result of what is sometimes called the "ethical climate" as it is shaped by the larger organization and, certainly in the case of the military, the political leadership. In his book on Abu Ghraib, Philip Zimbardo argues that the hopeless situation the reservists involved found themselves in (understaff ed in an overcrowded prison, with daily mortar and rocket attacks, and pressure from above to break prisoners who were said to be responsible for attacks on American troops outside) made disaster close to unavoidable (2007: 324–443; for a diff erent view see Mastroianni 2011). Some of the Abu Ghraib perpetrators had never shown any signs of being morally substandard prior to the scandal, suggesting that a situational view might be more in place (Zimbardo 2007: 6).5 Incidents such as in Abu Ghraib are not necessarily the result of lacking virtues at the individual VIRTUE ETHICS IN THE MILITARY 371 level, and in this specifi c case "the military and civilian chain of command had built a 'bad barrel' in which a bunch of good soldiers became transformed into 'bad apples'" (ibid.: x). If this "situational view" is correct, this essentially means that, even if militaries succeed in teaching their virtues of choice, the infl uence of a virtuous disposition is at times, and probably in particular when needed most, as limited as the infl uence of rules and codes of conduct imposed by the organization. Ethics education should therefore not only aim at promoting virtues, but also at giving insight into the factors that make unethical conduct more likely to take place. Th ese diffi culties bring us to the more general question of how eff ective ethics education for the military is, regardless of its theoretical underpinning. Military ethicist Martin Cook sees at the US Air Force Academy "a fundamentally incoherent and confused welter of programs justifi ed, if at all, by the belief that if ethics is important, throwing lots of resources at the subject from any number of angles and approaches must somehow be doing some good" (2008: 57). Th is seems to be the state of aff airs at many similar institutions too. Th ere is no extensive research on what works and what does not, and little evidence of best practices. Despite this uncertainty, it seems likely that ethics education, based on virtues or otherwise, does increase the moral awareness of military personnel who receive it, but this does not necessarily mean that it also contributes to better behaviour in a very straightforward manner. Possibly, the benefi cial eff ects are not so much to be found in a direct infl uence on conduct, as in an indirect infl uence: providing formal ethics education for all military personnel, or at least for all future offi cers, is likely to improve the ethical climate and, thus, in a roundabout way (and in line with the situational view of the social psychologists), in the long run also the behaviour of military personnel. Th is is mere conjecture, however, and given the amount of time and eff ort spent on ethics education for military personnel, the question of whether it works deserves more consideration. Although most of today's cadets and midshipmen are introduced into, for instance, diff erent moral systems, and some just war theory, it is not clear to what extent elaborate ethics education for military personnel has any tangible benefi cial eff ects. Nor is it always clear what these eff ects should be. Should ethics education in the military be "aspirational, aimed at improving the moral character of military personnel not just because this will lead to more reliable behaviour, but also as an end in itself " (Wolfendale 2008: 164)? Doing so would make soldiers "good people, not just wellbehaved people" (ibid.). Th at is the position most virtue ethicists would take, stressing, for instance, the possible negative eff ect on the soldier's character of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. However, for those at the receiving end, in recent years to be found in, for instance, Iraq and Afghanistan, it probably does not matter much how pure the motive is. For them, soldiers behaving correctly would suffi ce. Which brings us to the following. RULES AND OUTCOMES Undiluted adherence to virtue ethics, dutybased ethics or consequentialist ethics might be common in academic circles both in and outside the military. In real life, however, most people tend to see a role for both virtues and rules, and are also inclined to take the consequences of a course of action into consideration when judging it (see also Nagel 1986: 166). Despite the fact that academics tend to consider this "confused", they are probably quite 372 APPLIED ETHICS right in doing so. Th e traditional military virtues are of themselves already rather inward looking, but there is on a theoretical level also something inherent to virtue ethics that makes it less than comprehensive. Central to most versions of virtue ethics are the agent, his character, the maintaining of his morals, his ability to look at himself in the mirror, and even his "human fl ourishing", and this makes virtue ethics somewhat selfregarding. Virtue ethics is primarily agentcentred, even in situations where an outcomecentred approach might be more in place. However, I have already noted that it is in practice more because of expected good consequences than for building good characters as such that militaries promote their virtues in the fi rst place, and this means that a virtue ethicist would probably hesitate to call it virtue ethics that is practised here. In theory, there is even some resemblance between consequentialism and that which militaries expect from promoting their virtues, namely good outcomes. In practice, however, military virtues aim mainly at good outcomes for the military, whereas consequentialism is all about giving equal weight to the interests of all parties involved. Given this agentneutrality, it is not entirely fair that consequentialism is so oft en rejected out of hand in military ethics, mostly on the grounds that it would make military expedience override all other concerns (see for instance Snow 2009: 560). In reality, the consequentialist tenet that the consequences to all persons should weigh equally would, if taken seriously, have the favourable outcome of eff ectively distributing the right to life (and more generally the protection of individuals' interests) somewhat more evenly. As to rightsbased ethics: despite the popularity of virtue ethics in military ethics, there is still a place for more deontological views. Michael Walzer's works on war, required reading in many a military ethics course, are explicitly based on rights, not on virtues. What is more, the just war tradition Walzer stands in is as a whole primarily founded on an ethic that stresses the importance of universal, categorically binding moral rules (though, at the same time, there are unmistakably some consequentialist elements in both Walzer's thinking and the just war tradition). Not asking anyone to go beyond the call of duty, especially deontological ethics as conceived by Kant, which has quite a following in military ethics (see for example MartinelliFernandez 2006, Ficarrotta 2010), can demand quite a lot from military men and women. On this view, moral duties are to be followed not because they are imposed from the outside and backed by sanctions, but because one accepts them by choice (MartinelliFernandez 2006: 56–7). Most likely, the altruism and universalism this requires makes Kantian ethics in eff ect less suited for the military. However, one could argue in favour of a rather rudimentary form of rulebased ethics that, although the chances of being caught for a war crime might not be high, external rules can have a preventive eff ect when it is generally understood what is and is not allowed (see also Slim 2008: 282–3). Soldiers might have to pay a high price if they fail to adhere to these rules, something perhaps overlooked in the ethics education of military personnel that focuses on character development too exclusively. Th at universal rules lack fl exibility is in fact not a problem in every instance. In the case of torture, for example – at present under every circumstance forbidden by international law – it is probably a good thing, seeing that any fl exibility on this point can bring us onto a slippery slope astonishingly quickly. Likewise, the use of some types of weapons is forbidden, and for good reasons. We do not leave the decision on these matters to the individual soldier, however virtuous he or she might be. VIRTUE ETHICS IN THE MILITARY 373 CONCLUSION Articles and books on military ethics, and especially those written by authors with a background in the armed forces, tend to depict military personnel as possessing a higher calibre of virtue than the average man or woman. Not that these authors perceive soldiers to be morally fl awless, but there is a permanent worry within the military that in larger society virtues and values have rapidly faded away over the past few decades, mainly as a result of individualism and materialism. In the end, some fear, this is bound to have adverse eff ects on the moral fi bre of military personnel (see, for instance, J. H. Toner 2000: 44). At the same time, many of the authors employed outside of the armed forces who write on military ethics seem less convinced of the military's moral eminence. Th ere is, for instance, some concern that troops who are trained for combat in today's missions sometimes experience diffi culties in adjusting to the less aggressive ways of working needed to win the hearts and minds of local populations, and that such diffi culties are bound to impede their mission in the longer run. Th is fear has been fed by incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan (Abu Ghraib and Haditha spring to mind) which, even though involving only a very small percentage of military personnel, might have tarnished the reputation of the military for some time to come. Th e reason for the gap between the positive image of military personnel as a moral enclave in a morally footloose world, on the one hand, and the criticisms of the military by others, on the other hand, might partly be the result of the discrepancy between the more martial virtues that the military has adhered to up till now, and the soft er qualities prized by larger society. Some might argue, in view of this, that today's missions call for virtues that are more inclusive than the traditional virtues such as honour, courage and loyalty, which seem to be mainly about military success in regular warfare. Yet a convincing case can be made that much can already be won by interpreting these traditional virtues in somewhat more comprehensive ways. Traditional as they may be, virtues such as courage and loyalty come in varieties, and although it is clear that in today's militaries there is still a clear need for them, it is just as clear that not all varieties are equally suited to today's circumstances. Recent experiences suggest that the more conventional readings of the timeproven military virtues give too much priority to military eff ectiveness, contain little which regulates the conduct of military personnel towards those they are to protect, and might therefore no longer be adequate. It is therefore necessary to develop more uptodate interpretations of some of these traditional virtues. To revisit one example from the preceding discussion: although loyalty is a fundamental military virtue on most accounts, it is doubtful whether loyalty in the military really is always that benefi cial, since it usually takes the shape of group loyalty, and not that of loyalty to principle which is a type of loyalty that is morally more sound since it has a wider scope and includes more than just the interests of colleagues or an organization. However, whether it is new virtues, or new interpretations of the old ones that we need, they may bring the military somewhat closer to larger society. Such new interpretations might also bring the values of the military somewhat more in alignment with the humanitarian ideals underlying many of today's operations. Unfortunately, it seems that some military personnel tend to see operationsotherthanwar as lesser than "the real thing". Th e proliferation of the term warrior at the expense of the more humble word soldier 374 APPLIED ETHICS probably does not help much (see also Challans 2007, Robinson 2007b). Although it has been said that peacekeeping is not a soldier's job, but that only a soldier can do it, soldiers will defi nitely not do a better job if they see themselves as warriors before anything else. NOTES 1. To cite three examples: in 1993 Canadian airborne soldiers tortured and murdered a Somali teenager who had tried to access the Canadian camp – and kept silent about it. In that same year, a Belgian paratrooper urinated on a dead Somali civilian, and two of his colleagues held a Somali civilian over an open fi re. In both cases there were attempts to conceal the events. In the Haditha in 2005, US Marines shot twentyfour unarmed civilians aft er the death of one of their colleagues. Th e marines involved initially claimed that most victims were killed by the same roadside bomb that killed their colleague, while others were allegedly insurgents killed in the fi refi ght following the bomb attack on their convoy. 2. Th e need for cohesion has been used over the last decades as an argument for closing the military to ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals (Segal & Kestnbaum 2002: 445). Even if this makes sense from a warwinning perspective, it might be detrimental from a winning the hearts and minds objective. Research by Miller and Moskos suggests that nonhomogeneous units, that is, units including women and ethnic diversity, sometimes do a better job at this than homogeneous groups do (1995: 634). 3. Loyalty in the US Army (to be found in its Seven Core Army Values), for example, means: "Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit and other Soldiers. Bearing true faith and allegiance is a matter of believing in and devoting yourself to something or someone. A loyal Soldier is one who supports the leadership and stands up for fellow Soldiers." See www.goarmy.com/life/living_ the_army_values.jsp (accessed July 2013). 4. By contrast, in the Values and Standards of the British Army we read that "like loyalty, respect for others goes both up and down the chain of command and sideways among peers". However, "respect for others also extends to the treatment of all human beings", and the document stresses the need to treat all people decently, "including civilians, detainees and captured enemy forces". See www.army.mod.uk/documents/ general/v_s_of_the_british_army.pdf (accessed July 2013). 5. Richard A. Gabriel has remarked that possessing a virtue and behaving ethically are not the same thing: virtues are about character, ethics is about conduct. Th e possession of a virtue is a disposition to behave well, and although Aristotle maintained that there exists no virtue that is only potential, according to Gabriel, this disposition in itself is not suffi cient to guarantee that someone will always behave ethically when most needed (1982: 8–9, 150, 152).