CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

2.3.3 Relevance at the Individual Level
The foregoing sections have considered the impact at the international and national
levels of engaging in conflicts without widespread acceptance of their justification, or of
conducting conflicts unjustly. This section now turns to the men and women most
immediately affected – those of the armed forces who must execute their nation’s
policy. It asks, then, what the impact will be on these individuals, of a lack of
justification for conflict, or of unjust conduct therein.
This is a complex business, because the motivation of servicemen is complex. Even in
conflicts which may at face value seem to be ideology-rich, scraping below the surface
inevitably reveals very mixed motivation (as well as conduct that falls across a wide
moral spectrum). In his study of the American War of Independence (or what he argues
convincingly should better be termed the Anglo-American Civil War) Hugh Bicheno 220
reveals that the men (predominantly) of the US ‘Foundation Myth’ often fought for
reasons far short of the moral high ground of liberty and democracy; greed and personal
profit were every bit as much the driving force for many. Equally, in this war as others,
one can find evidence of those whose motivations may once have been at least partially
righteous and idealistic becoming disenchanted as they saw the morality of their cause
undermined by the cynicism of their leaders. Thus military history’s most famous
turncoat, Benedict Arnold, cites, with reasonable claim to sincerity, the manipulation of
cause as his justification. (Of course, however sincere, we must still add injured pride,
professional jealousy and pecuniary advantage amongst his motivations!). It was the
alliance with France, ‘the enemy of the Protestant Faith’ and Congress’s ‘sovereign
contempt of the people of America, (having) studiously neglected to take their
collective sentiments of the British proposals of peace’ 221 that were the final straw for
Arnold’s support for a cause he once so nobly fought for. Nearly a century and a half
later similar disenchantment with a war once deemed righteous can be found in
Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Statement Against the Continuation of the (First World) War –
1917’ 222 :
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority,
because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have
the power to end it. … … … I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a
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