Military morality a necessity

From Germany we learn of soldiers readying for a tour of duty with NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovina with the help of a privately made video showing mock rapes, torture and execution scenes. From Canada, Belgium and Italy come tales of murder and mayhem by troops of the UN force to help save the Somalis in the early 1990s.

Everyone understands the great pressures on military personnel, pressures not lessened because their post-Cold War role is one of peacekeeping rather than attacking a clearly defined enemy. The pressures can be greater precisely because of the constraints placed on men who have been trained to fight and kill: on duty with the UN they must transform themselves into universal protectors, charged not with taking sides but with keeping warring sides apart. Yet the inhuman behavior so graphically recorded must -- until further notice at least -- be regarded as the exception.

To dismiss these horrific actions as isolated incidents with no bearing on the character of the armies of countries which provide UN personnel is to miss the point. The challenge for every society with structured defense forces is to know how to train them simultaneously for aggression and compassion; to show them how to kill and at the same time appreciate human dignity.

It is a tough call and one which is variously played out in different societies and in different ages. What we learn from these incidents is that some of the most modern and highly educated societies need to do a lot better in striking the balance between a robust military training and a robust morality.

This is a fundamental problem for defense services: that of striking a balance between the highly disciplined internal culture needed to perform acts of great courage in times of war and the acceptance of the mores of the society they serve. Trivializing significant breaches of universal morality while magnifying trivial breaches of institutional protocol is rightly condemned in most countries. International peace-keeping demands no less.

-- The Australian