CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

The final issue to be considered from the national/domestic-political perspective is that
of acceptance of casualties. This, too, is an issue that impacts at both this and the
individual level. In the decade that followed the end of the Cold War, a perceived
feature of many interventions and would-be interventions was an aversion to casualties.
Of course, a desire to minimise casualties, especially on ones own side, is natural and an
appropriate desire for any politician or military commander; indeed it is their duty. 211 If
aversion to ‘needless’ casualty was etched on 20 th Century Western consciences by
images of the First World War, it was certainly, for the US, reinforced by the Vietnam
experience: ‘Some of the impetus for casualty aversion arises from within the armed
forces and originates in the military’s Vietnam legacy. Many in uniform believe that
lives were needlessly lost in the war in Southeast Asia and are determined to avoid
putting military personnel at risk unless absolutely necessary.’ 212 It is hardly surprising
that this should be a significant issue for Western democratic governments whose
decisions will be interrogated by the media and held open to public scrutiny. The UK
MOD recognised this explicitly in a key policy document published in 2000 213 :
Casualties to our own forces will only be acceptable to public opinion if they are
seen to be proportionate to what is at stake in the campaign. The critical factor
will be the extent to which the public feels the UK national interest is engaged or
the scale of the wrong being righted. The degree of public aversion to casualties
can be expected to vary between members of an alliance, and this may have an
impact on operational planning.
Even when the stakes are high or the wrong being righted is significant, the public may
be unprepared for high casualties. During the 1991 Gulf War, the commander of the
British 7 Armoured Brigade, Brigadier Patrick Cordingley, caused outcry in the British
media when he warned in a newspaper interview that people should expect large
numbers of casualties. This despite the fact that the Government had placed the
National Health Service on ‘full alert’. 214
Casualty-aversion has been particularly associated with US reluctance to engage in
humanitarian interventions after the debacle of the 1993 Somali operation. 215 Yet a
study by the RAND Organisation and the Triangle Institute for Strategic Studies in 1999
found that the US public were (in their response to interviews, at least) less averse to
casualties than had been assumed and certainly less so than either the military or
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