CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

Not only is the probable enemy today unlikely to share in such a code, but today’s
soldiers find themselves on a battlefield alongside or up against a range of new – or in
many cases re-emergent – protagonists who will provide a challenge to their ethos.
A particular challenge to modern Western soldiers will be to find themselves pitted
against well-armed children, with little or no concept of a moral code and, indeed,
possibly deliberately encouraged towards atrocity. Whilst such children must, of
necessity, be treated as combatants even if acting without true volition, there are natural
instincts to be overcome in engaging them and we must expect the effect on our soldiers
to be a traumatic one.
Western armies, too, bring civilians to the battlefield; the trend for governments to
outsource once core activity has not left the military immune; it is unlikely the trend
will, in the near term, be reversed. Little can be done about this except to recognise it as
a threat to the traditional values of the military, rendering it all the more important that
soldiers have a firm and unshakeable understanding of, and belief in, their own ethic-
set.
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