The rise to the fore of realist ontologies in international relations has meant that ethical issues have been associated more with evaluation than explanation. Yet ignoring the constitutive role of morality and ethics in structuring security policy choices leaves us without a complete understanding of the causes and consequences of international behavior. Accordingly, this article seeks to transplant the role of ethics from the realm of evaluative to empirical theory by introducing the idea of a security ethic, referring to the state’s—and by extension the military’s—normative attitudes toward the use of organized violence, including under what circumstances it is ethically permissible to use force at all, and the manner in which force can be justly employed in a given military operation. The article develops this framework by reference to the historical security outlook of the Israel Defense Forces.
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References
1.
See David A. Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Welch, “Morality and ‘the National Interest,’” in Ethics in International Affairs, ed. Andrew Valls (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); and Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).
2.
Whether the military’s security ethic represents the outlook of the polity as a whole depends on the nature of civil-military relations within the state and therefore on regime type: democracies can be expected to display more consonance between the military’s ethic and society. I have chosen not to problematize the relationship between the military and society, and will therefore use “military” and “state” interchangeably.
3.
Attitudes surrounding issues of force are echoed somewhat in the cognitive operational code construct developed by Nathan Leites and expanded upon by Alexander George. While an operational code refers to the set of beliefs held by decision-makers about how the world works, a security ethic is meant to encompass that aspect particularly concerned with the use of force in international affairs, and can be experienced at the cognitive as well as emotional and ethical levels. See Alexander George, “The ‘Operational Code’: A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision Making,”International Studies Quarterly13, 2 (1969): 190–222.
Efraim Inbar, “The ‘No Choice War’ Debate in Israel,”Journal of Strategic Studies12, 1 (1989): 25–25.
6.
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders,”International Organization52, 4 (1998): 949–949. See also Jeffrey Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in IR Theory,” World Politics 50, 2 (1998): 326– 327.
7.
March and Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics,”951–951.
8.
For instance, the Myers-Briggs personality test identifies four decision-style dichotomies: thinking/feeling, extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, and judgment/ perception.
9.
Welch, “Morality and the ‘National Interest,’”5–5.
10.
A similar case-study approach is developed in Robert K. Yin’s notion of “analytic generalization” as a way of generalizing theory from a single case. See Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003), 32–33. In addition, Stephen Van Evera identifies several criteria for case selection that suggest that Israel is an appropriate case to use for this investigation. These include data richness (much scholarly work has been produced on the IDF); intrinsic importance (much of what takes place in the Israeli security sphere has effects on the conflict zone of the Middle East, which has historically been of global concern); competing theories make divergent predictions about the case (Israel’s historically high-threat environment would lead some to expect that geopolitics better explain security outcomes than do ethical ideas); and the theoretical framework developed here lends itself to testing across a variety of other cases (the IDF can be compared to other militaries and can be evaluated across time). See Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 77–88.
11.
Johnston, “Thinking About Strategic Culture,”46–46.
12.
Alaistair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 37–37.
13.
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
14.
John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
15.
Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984).
16.
See Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
17.
Two examples in the Israeli case are the 1982 Lebanon War and Israel’s conduct in the first Palestinian intifada. (The second Palestinian intifada has led to fewer domestic critiques, arguably owing to the Palestinians having shifted the locus of conflict to pre-1967 Israel and largely targeting civilians.) For a discussion of the role of these events in generating societal critiques of Israel’s foreign policies, see Mira Sucharov, The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming).
18.
Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, “Norms and Deterrence: The Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos,” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
19.
Martha Finnemore, “Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention,” ibid.
20.
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 361–362.
21.
Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.), Security Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46, 2 (1998): 391–425.
22.
Charles A. Kupchan et al., Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2001).
23.
Mary Fainsod Katzenstein and Judith Reppy, “Introduction: Rethinking Military Culture,” in Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discrimination in Military Culture, eds. Katzenstein and Reppy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).
24.
Ole Jacob Sending, “Constitution, Choice and Change: Problems with the ‘Logic of Appropriateness’ and its Use in Constructivist Theory,”European Journal of International Relations8, 4 (2000): 443–470.
25.
Here, a psychoanalytic framework may be helpful in discussing the role of unconscious fears in leading to a conscious security ethic. This sort of argument is presented in Mira Sucharov, The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming).
26.
Emanuel Adler, “Constructivism and International Relations,” in Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlsnaes et al. (London: Sage, 2002); Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 34; and James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, “Rationalism vs. Constructivism: A Skeptical View,” in Handbook of International Relations.
27.
US Department of State, U.S. National Security Strategy. Available online at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/wh/15423.htm
28.
Emanuel Adler, “Cognitive Evolution: A Dynamic Approach for the Study of International Relations and their Progress,” in Progress in Postwar International Relations, eds. Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 63–65.
29.
Ibid.
30.
See Elizabeth Kier, “Homosexuals in the US Military: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness,”International Security23, 2 (1998): 5–39; Aaron Belkin and Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert, “A Modest Proposal: Privacy as a Flawed Rationale for the Exclusion of Gays and Lesbians from the U.S. Military,” International Security 27, 2 (2002): 178–197; and Michelle M. Benecke et al., “Diminishing Core Values: The Consequences for Military Culture of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue,’” in Beyond Zero Tolerance (see note 26).
31.
Tamar Vital, “Homage to the Heroes,”Jerusalem Post, June 5, 1992.
32.
The security ethic concept echoes the IDF’s ethical code developed in the early 1990s, which includes such directives as “perseverance in mission,” “comradeship,” “discipline,” “sanctity of life,” “loyalty,” “personal example,” “professionalism,” “purity of arms,” “representativeness,” “responsibility,” and “trustworthiness.” Yet the security ethic concept is intended to be a more comprehensive set of organizing principles governing the use of force. See the IDF web site at http://www.idf.il/%20english/doctrine/doctrine.stm
33.
Eliot Cohen, Michael J. Eisenstadt, and Andrew J. Bacevich. ‘Knives, Tanks and Missiles’: Israel’s Security Revolution (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998), 18–19.
34.
As chapter VII, article 51 of the UN Charter states, “Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
35.
Abba Eban, speech to the Jerusalem Economic Conference (April 4, 1968), quoted in Michael Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 326.
36.
Dan Horovitz, “Is Israel a Garrison State?”The Jerusalem Quarterly4 (1977): 58–58.
37.
Kier, “Homosexuals in the U.S. Military,”31; and Aaron Belkin and Melissa Levitt, “Homosexuality and the Israel Defense Forces: Did Lifting the Gay Ban Undermine Military Performance?” Armed Forces & Society 27, 4 (2001): 541–565.
38.
From the IDF web site, http://www.idf.il/english/doctrine/doctrine.stm.
39.
Gil Merom, “Israel’s National Security and the Myth of Exceptionalism,”Political Science Quarterly114, 3 (1999): 409–434.
40.
From the IDF web site.
41.
At the helm was an organization called Yesh Gvul (“there is a border/limit”), which, during the Lebanon War, collected over 250 soldiers’ signatures in a letter to the prime minister and defense minister protesting the war. By 1983, over forty reservists had been imprisoned for refusal, and by the war’s end, 143 soldiers had refused to serve. Prison sentences varied from fourteen to thirty-five days, and one-fifth of those jailed were officers. See Reuven Kaminer, The Politics of Protest: The Israeli Peace Movement and the Palestinian Intifada (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 1996), 35; Martin Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), 299; and Ruth Linn, “Conscientious Objection in Israel During the War in Lebanon,” Armed Forces & Society 12, 4 (1986): 490. While activists estimate that during the intifada up to 2,000 soldiers engaged in selective refusal of some sort, including 186 reservists, some 200 were actually jailed. See Ruth Linn, Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), 11; and Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, 350.
42.
David Ben-Gurion to President Truman (May 16, 1948), reprinted in Yehoshua Freundlich (ed.), Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, vol. 1. 14 May to 30 September 1948 (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 1981), 12–12.
43.
Mona Fixdal and Dan Smith, “Humanitarian Intervention and Just War,”Mershon International Studies Review42, 2 (1998): 283–312.
44.
Alon Peled, “The Politics of Language in Multiethnic Militaries: The Case of Oriental Jews in the Israel Defence Forces, 1950–1959,”Armed Forces & Society26, 4 (2000): 587–605.
45.
IDF Chief Educational Officer, “The Educational Activities of the IDF,”circa 1960 (in Hebrew).
46.
Former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, interview with author, March 16, 2000, Jerusalem.
47.
Cohen et al., ‘Knives, Tanks and Missiles,’148–148.
48.
Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 45–45. See also van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, 77–82.
49.
Israel Tal, “Israel’s Doctrine of National Security: Background and Dynamics,”The Jerusalem Quarterly4 (1977): 45–45; Michael I. Handel, Israel’s Political-Military Doctrine (Cambridge, MA: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1973), 68; Cohen et al., ‘Knives, Tanks and Missiles,’ 57.
50.
Yoram Peri, “Afterward,” in Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs, 399–399.
51.
From Rabin’s June 1967 speech at the Hebrew University, as recalled by Rabin in The Rabin Memoirs, 120.
52.
Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), 55–55.
53.
Edward N. Luttwak and Daniel Horowitz, The Israeli Army 1948–1973 (Cambridge, MA: Abt Books, 1983), 12–14.
54.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, “Symbols and Security in Ethnic Conflict: Confidence-Building in the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process, 1993–1995” (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 2000).
55.
Former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin acknowledges the dichotomy between the “criticism [the war] aroused among the other Western participants” and the Israeli view, noting that “the Suez war was not a controversial issue in Israel.” Yossi Beilin, Israel: A Concise Political History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 83–83.
56.
Amnon Dankner and David Tartakover, Where We Were and What We Did: An Israeli Lexicon of the Fifties and Sixties (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, Ltd., 1996), 59–59 (in Hebrew).
57.
Mordechai Bar-On (ed.), Israel Defence Forces: The Six Day War (Jerusalem: Israeli Ministry of Defense, 1968), 229–229; emphasis added.
58.
Uri Ben-Eliezer, The Making of Israeli Militarism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 19–21.
59.
In David Hardan (ed.), The Moral and Existential Dilemmas of the Israeli Soldier (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1985), 8–8.
60.
Ibid.
61.
Luttwak and Horowitz, The Israeli Army, 23.
62.
van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive, 132–132.
63.
Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 7–7.
64.
In Rafi Mann, It’s Inconceivable (Or Yehuda: Hed Arzi, 1998), 45–45 (in Hebrew).
65.
Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 79–79.
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CNN. “Israel Supreme Court Bans Interrogation Abuse of Palestinians.” CNN online edition, September 6, 1999. Available at http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9909/%2006/israel.torture/
67.
Randall L. Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?”Security Studies5, 3 (1996): 90–121.
68.
From a 1981 article by Rabin, quoted in Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine, 167–167, n. 10.
Cohen et al., ‘Knives, Tanks and Missiles,’26–26; see also van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive Branch, 277–280.
71.
See Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine, 32–33.
72.
David Rudge, “Four Mothers Movement to be Dismantled, Says Founder,”Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2000.
73.
Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs, 118–118.
74.
Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 325–325.
75.
Ben-Eliezer, The Making of Israeli Militarism, 7–7.
76.
It is not uncommon to see a newspaper headline referring to Rafael “Raful” Eytan, Rehavam “Gandhi” Ze’evi, Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer, Avraham “Baiga” Shohat, and Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, to name a few Israeli politicians circulating the ranks in recent years, some of them senior ex-military officers.
77.
“Brass in the House,”Jerusalem Report, May 4, 1995.
78.
Elon, The Israelis, 9–9.
79.
From a speech delivered by Rabin at the Hebrew University, and reprinted in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin (eds.), The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), 110–113.
80.
David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 98–99.
81.
Mordechai M.Bar-On, “Education Processes in the Israel Defense Forces,” in The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 138–166.
