CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

4.2.3 The Importance of Military Codes of Ethics: Warriors’ Honour
An aspect of the Western way of making war that faces challenge from contemporary
trends in conflict is the existence of an accepted code of conduct, imbued in
professional armed forces as an essential part of their ethos. Before examining how this
may be challenged by the evolving character of war, we should first examine the
progeny and nature of this ethos: the warrior’s honour.
In the evolution of Western cultures, at least, as long as men have organised themselves
for combat they have subscribed to codes of conduct that distinguish the honourable
from the dishonourable. That war is not simply a ‘condition of generalized and random
vilolence’ we have already heard from Michael Howard (see p40). Values may change
over the years and what is an acceptable level of violence in one generation is slaughter
to another, (fortunately the trend has been toward a lesser tolerance of violence even as
capacity has progressed in the other direction!); and values may differ across cultures;
but there is plenty of evidence that even to the ancients there was a clear understanding
of acceptable and unacceptable conduct in war. As Michael Ignatieff 93 puts it, codes of
honour
… seem to exist in all cultures, and their common features are among the oldest
artefacts of human morality: from the Christian code of chivalry to the Japanese
Bushido, …. As ethical systems they were primarily concerned with establishing
the rules of combat and defining the system of moral etiquette by which warriors
judged themselves to be worthy of mutual respect.
That accounts of Agincourt (1405) give so much attention to Henry V’s order to slay the
French prisoners, offers some evidence that such an action was abnormal – even
abhorrent – in medieval warfare; a view given greater weight by the refusal of his men-
at-arms to carry it out. (Henry had to resort to the low-born archers to get the job done,
and even then the evidence suggests that in fact very few were killed and the order may
have been more about making a show and instilling fear in the captives to ensure their
compliance). 94 The Chivalric code notwithstanding, European wars in the medieval age
tended to inflict greatest damage on the civil population as the object was to destroy or
confiscate an enemy’s lands and possessions rather than risk direct confrontation with
his military force or the costly business of besieging his castles. The re-codification of
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