Military Legitimacy

Military legitimacy concerns the delicate balance between might and right. It begins with the law - operational law (OPLAW) and the law of war (LAW) - but it goes beyond the law to its moral underpinnings. Moral and cultural standards in the area of operations must be respected to ensure legitimacy. Personal and national values provide the framework for military decision making. The potential conflict between civilian and military perceptions of these values represents a continuing threat to military legitimacy because, in a democracy, public support is both a requirement and a measure of such legitimacy. This book provides an overview of the concept of legitimacy as it applies to military operations, especially in peacetime. It is argued that legitimacy was hardly an issue during the Cold War as it was defined in terms of combatting the Soviet threat. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and diminishing defence resources, there must be a new under-standing of military legitimacy and its relationship to new strategies. The diplomat-warrior personifies legitimacy in peacetime and is an effective means of filling the gap between the limits of diplomacy and conventional military operations.

Focusing on the challenges faced by the US military in responding to "operations other than war" in the post-Cold War era, Rudolph Barnes makes a plea for the US government to address the "organizational bias for combat" and "narrow traditionalist view of military professionalism" within the Pentagon, which, he argues, are serious obstacles to developing an effective capabiilty for operations other than war. He draws on examples from Vietnam to the mismanagement of US military involvement in Somalia.

An innovative addition to the literature of military studies, this exploration of the issues of legitimacy and commitment in the military focuses on the contemporary military situation, critically analyzing current fault lines and future trends in this area. The editors, Thomas C. Wyatt and Reuven Gal, contend that post-World War II wars are different from the two wars preceding them, that the nontraditional wars in Algeria, Vietnam, Pakistan, Lebanon, the Falkland Islands, and Grenada, among others, can be characterized by issues of national concensus and home support, political debates, moral argumentations and counterargumentations, demonstrations and alienation, and conscientious objectors. In such wars, weapons systems, training, and tactics become secondary to issues of legitimacy and commitment. Military organizations, too, are different in that they are now prepared not only for wars but also for peace and peace-keeping missions that consist of police-type or constabulary tasks. Also, the volunteer army has largely replaced the army composed mainly of conscripts, and these better-educated soldiers are different in that they will examine carefully the sources of military legitimation before furnishing the unconditional commitment that is the backbone of the military fighting spirit. The volume's eleven chapters were contributed by an international group of leading behavioral scientists who write from the perspectives of a wide scope of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and military studies. The work is divided into three main parts that focus on some of the theoretical puzzles inherent in the combination of military ethics and moral values; assess sources of legitimacy and commitment; and detail the manifestation and measurement of commitment and legitimacy in a variety of nations and organizations. The subjects of conscientious objection, educational benefits, the Army Reserve, and the Vietnamese, U.S., Soviet, and Israeli armies are a few of the intriguing topics scrutinized here. As a whole, Legitimacy and Commitment in the Military provides an essential collection for the military student, the scholar, the soldier, and military professionals who aspire to leadership. The various individual chapters offer unique insights for students and researchers in the fields of ethics, history, anthropology, and the behavioral sciences.

Throughout human history, scholars, statesmen and military leaders have attempted to define what constitutes the legitimate use of armed force by one community against another. Moreover, if force is to be used, what normative guidelines should govern the conduct of warfare? Based upon the assumption that armed conflict is a human enterprise and therefore subject to human limitations, the Western 'just war tradition' represents an attempt to provide these guidelines. Following on from the success of Hensel's earlier publication, The Law of Armed Conflict, this volume brings together an internationally recognized team of scholars to explore the philosophical and societal foundations of just war tradition. It relates the principles of jus ad bellum to contemporary issues confronting the global community and explores the relationship between the principles of jus in bello and the various principles embodied in the customary law of armed conflict. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing and assessing the links between just war and the norms of behaviour, the book provides a valuable contribution to international law, international relations and national security studies.

This book focuses on the notion of legitimacy to explain the success (or failure) of stability operations in the post-Cold War era. The author argues that the intervening force must create an enduring sense of the legitimacy of its mission among various parties such as the people of the host nation, the host government, political elites and the general public worldwide, and states in the international community that will determine and establish conditions regarding legitimate intervention.

Delegitimation has become the new battleground for Israel and the critics of Israeli military operations. But the Israeli experience reveals a more general engagement where all states act strategically to build legitimacy for their policies and all resist attempts at delegitimation. To understand these processes it is necessary to see how politicized moral and legal judgments shape both the use of force by states and our judgments about the means and the outcomes. This is a book about legitimacy, military lawyers, and security. More particularly, it is about how the legitimacy of Israel’s asymmetric military operations cannot be detached from the politics of law and ethics. Sometimes it is enough that states respect the laws of armed conflict, but at other times they may be held to a higher standard. This does not happen in a vacuum. Rather it is the product of political engagement in the murky politics of international legitimacy where standards are negotiable and some states get a harder time than others. There is a strong theoretical analysis underpinning a discussion that constantly returns to the practical problems of modern armed conflict where combatants hide among civilians and states complain about the unrealistic expectations of human rights NGOs. Here, the law is unclear and there are choices to be made. The book presents new research into the involvement of Israeli military lawyers in operational targeting decision making that has life and death consequences. The case studies concern targeted killing during the Second Intifada, Israel’s 2006 Lebanon War, the 2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and, finally, the 2010 Israeli maritime interception of the ‘Turkish Flotilla’ to Gaza. The investigation identifies a struggle between the proponents of human rights in war and those who promote the rights of states to deploy military force for the security of their citizens. But not all parties to a military conflict are held to the same standards. In fact, the analysis maps a complex political deployment of law and ethics in the strategic calculation of legitimacy costs and the diplomatic processes whereby they are contested, with policy implications for those in charge of the design and execution of military operations.

En række indlæg fra en verdenskongres i Toronto i august 1974, hvor over 50 sociologer fra 24 lande drøftede de væbnede styrkers stilling i samfundet