Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T00:57:45.642Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Immaculate War”: Constraints on Humanitarian Intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Martin L. Cook
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent years, American military forces have been deployed in an ever-expanding array of humanitarian, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and nation-building operations. In practice American forces have often been reluctantly committed, and almost always with an extreme emphasis on force-protection and the avoidance of American casualties. Often this issue is discussed in the framework of perceived political constraints on American use of the military – in terms of how many casualties the American public will accept in exchange for a given mission. Beneath the level of the political constraints on American leaders, there lies a deeper tension having to do with the implicit moral contract between the United States and its military personnel. Although military personnel are required to follow all legal orders, morally the traditional contract between soldier and state rests on shared assumptions about the purposes for which national militaries will and will not be used.

Type
The Meaning of Kosovo
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 14 , March 2000 , pp. 55 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sapolsky, Harvey and Shapiro, Jeremy, “Administration Deft to Predict Public Fatigue for a Longer War,” Army Times, October 18, 1999, p. 78Google Scholar.

2 Best, Geoffrey, War and Law since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 79Google Scholar.

3 Cook, Martin L., “Two Roads Diverged and We Took the One Less Traveled By,” in Buckley, William Joseph, ed., Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000Google Scholar).

4 PDD-25 (unclassified version). In Bowens, Glenn, Legal Guide to Peace Operations (Carlisle Barracks: U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute, May 1998), p. 358Google Scholar.

5 PDD-56 (unclassified version). In Bowens, , Legal Guide to Peace Operations, p. 372Google Scholar.

6 IbidGoogle Scholar.

7 UN Press Release SG/SM/7136, GA/95/96Google Scholar.

8 IbidGoogle Scholar.

9 IbidGoogle Scholar.

10 PDD-25, pp. 363–64Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 365Google Scholar.

12 Cook, Martin L., “Moral Foundations of Military Service,” Parameters 29 (Spring 2000)Google Scholar.

13 Clark, Wesley, “The United States and NATO: The Way Ahead,” Parameters 29 (Winter 1999–2000), pp. 2–14Google Scholar.

14 Tilford, Earl H. Jr., “Operation Allied Force and the Role of Air Power,” Parameters 29 (Winter 1999–2000), p. 29Google Scholar.