CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

Thinking of the position of individual members of our armed services going to
war, we should only go into major conflict with a very strong measure of
authority behind the government’s decision. In the case of Iraq, we tried and
failed to get the obvious authority, which was that of the Security Council of the
U.N. Obviously lots of people who normally go along with this did not and there
was a strong body of public opinion which was also against it. Therefore, it
seemed to me that in that case it was essential that your House should have a
debate and vote. 196
Such prior parliamentary approval is not required nor has it previously been sought but
the Rt Hon Tony Benn in his evidence to the Public Administration Committee went
further than Lord Hurd and argued for a formal statutory requirement for parliamentary
approval, analogous to the US War Powers Act. 197
In addition to the Government and perhaps Parliament, the institutions at most threat to
their standing as a result of involvement in a conflict not widely accepted as justified, or
from unjust conduct within it, are the armed services. In general throughout the Iraq
war the British armed services fared well in the opinion of both politicians and the
public, even those opposed to the war. They were roundly praised for their
professionalism and (as discussed above) sometimes compared favourably – if not
entirely fairly – with their American counterparts for a more measured approach. The
importance of public trust in its national armed forces is examined in detail, in the
context of the Israeli Defence Force by Asa Kasher 198 . Kasher argues that ‘(p)ublic
trust in a military force or any other governmental organization is not merely an
attractive decoration that the organization can enjoy. There are governmental
organizations that have a moral obligation to enhance public trust in their core
communities.’ 199 (Original emphasis). Such trust is essential for, among other things,
the citizens’ own quality of life but also for their support for the organization (lack of
which the US Army suffered during the Vietnam conflict) and for the organization’s
recruitment (a key practical consideration that will be considered again later). Public
trust, according to Kasher, requires a ‘presumption of proper ethical compliance.’ 200 In
the case of the Vietnam War, lack of support for the war, as well as concern over its
proper conduct, undermined public trust in the US Army, leading to a crisis in morale
from which, arguably, the US Army did not fully recover until the 1991 Gulf War.
More usually, though, citizens in a democracy will understand that the armed forces act
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