Restraint in War

by LtCol Lance A. McDaniel

‘Even in hell [the hell of war] it is possible to be more or less humane,
to fight with or without restraint.’¹
—Michael Walzer

War has a way of teaching us hard lessons, some of which we learned in previous conflicts but, for various reasons, forgot and are having to relearn now in Iraq. One of the important lessons we are learning today is that in counterinsurgency operations, the manner in which we use force matters greatly and may play a role in determining whether we will be successful in achieving our campaign purpose. Military professionals must have serious discussions on the use of force and a more fundamental understanding of an American approach to the application of force.

Do Restraints Apply?
Conceptually, total war can be viewed as conflict without any restraint or limit whatsoever and with the full force and energies of the belligerents applied toward annihilating their adversaries. As wars like this are more theoretical than real, particularly since the dawn of the nuclear age, all current wars can be considered to have at least some limitations. This observation is true for so-called conventional wars. It is even truer for small wars, such as counterinsurgency operations, that tend to be limited by their very nature. My purpose here is to discuss the role that deliberate restraint in the use of force has for combatants engaged in counterinsurgency operations and what the moral and practical implications are for this limitation. My desire is to consider the theoretical foundations of restraint, the rationale for restraint in combat, and what this really means to the military men and women who are the primary purveyors of force. I am an artillery officer, and it may come as a surprise to some that an artillery officer would be concerned with a deliberation on the use of force. Perhaps, some might contend, our lawyers should be the people in our organization most concerned with this issue. The reality is, however, that lawyers do not pull lanyards—gunners do, and so the issue of how force is applied is a discussion for all of us, including our lawyers, but especially operators who will ultimately have to make tough on-the-spot decisions relative to the use of force.

Background
From a Western perspective, most theory of restraint in war emanates primarily from the ancient philosophers and Judeo-Christian theologians. Prior to the rise of Christianity, Greek and Roman philosophers spoke of limitations or controls on the conduct of war for reasons of morality or humanity. The theory of “just war” came from early Christian writers, most notably St. Augustine in the 5th century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who reasoned that war itself could be just or justified (jus ad bellum) and that acts or behavior in war could be just (jus a bello). From jus a bello came many of the modern conventions of war—what we call laws of war.² Over the next several hundred years legal theorists, men of the Enlightenment like Hugo Grotius and John Locke, refined these ideas and influenced their codification into Western governmental statutes. The moral theory on which many of our current law of war conventions are based is derived from over two millennia of Western philosophy.

Justice in War
For this discussion I am only concerned with jus a bello, assuming that the decision to go to war has already been made and that the real issue for military men is the comportment of individuals and units engaged in combat and how they use force. What is this idea of limiting war on moral grounds, and what does that mean in a practical sense? It seems paradoxical that one would enter into combat and do so with deliberate intentions of restraining or limiting the use of force. However, that is exactly what we do when we prescribe rules of engagement. Even before the law, though, there is a moral foundation on which the law is based.

In the current age, most wars will be fought amongst the people, which is to say that the noncombatant populace will tend to play an ever more dominant role—or at least will require strong consideration. The jus a bello aspect of just war theory calls for conduct that is governed by principles such as discrimination and proportionality. The principle of discrimination essentially calls for us to focus the application of force against the enemy combatant, or at least on those who are in active opposition to the intervention force. Discrimination specifically calls for us to deliberately avoid harming “innocents” or noncombatants who are merely caught in the unfortunate circumstances of conflict. Of course, discrimination has implications on the type of force we select and the manner in which we use that force. Proportionality is related, calling for a force selection that weighs the potential benefit to be derived against the likely negative effect that the force application would have on noncombatants.³ In execution, proportionality usually calls for us to use a type of force reasonably similar to that which the adversary is using—though that is by no means a hard rule. Another principle from just war is the idea that, in an effort to limit unnecessary death and destruction, we should use only the force necessary to accomplish the objective. For our purposes, we can call this measured force.

All of this theory from just war applies to all war—so why is today’s environment different, even if we agree that we will be principally engaged in small wars like counterinsurgency operations? The answer at least partially resides in the question. What was complex before is now substantially more so in that the challenges of fighting among the people will require us to be even more concerned about these principles of just war. At the same time, our opponents will deliberately seek to use this self-imposed restraint to their advantage. Knowing that we do not want to harm noncombatants, they will entice us to apply force in areas where civilians are located and thereby present us with a paradox. If, in the interest of military effectiveness or force protection, we use overwhelming firepower against the enemy, we may succeed in killing him and destroying his equipment and infrastructure. Unfortunately, we may also bring injury to innocent civilians. When that happens, it violates our Western ideas of justice in war and likely defeats the purpose of our intervention. In this there is a balancing act that weighs risk to our own people (members of the intervention force) with risk to innocent civilians, and the corresponding impact our choices and actions may have on the public perception of and support for our mission, be it at home, abroad or, most importantly, within the host-nation’s population.

A reader might point out at this juncture that I have mixed both moral and practical reasons for exercising restraint in small wars. That mixture or rationale is by design. The reality for the intervention force is that both reasons exist at the same time in the environment in which the intervention force will principally operate. Morally, we want to uphold our values as American military professionals. Our morals are simply a part of who we are as a people. While we should not and will not hesitate to kill our adversaries, we should deliberately avoid killing or bringing injury to people who are not involved with the conflict in which we are engaged. Additionally, we have the very practical desire to avoid giving the insurgents anything to use against us in the persuasive virtual battlefield of ideas. The indigenous people may not like the intervention force much, but we should work to avoid causing them to utterly despise us and thereby lose in the virtual domain of combat. Indiscriminant killing can lead to greater resistance and the creation of new insurgent recruits. And so the moral and practical reasons for the intelligent exercise of restraint in counterinsurgency operations do not need to be considered as two separate ideas.

What does restraint in the use of force really mean to a military man or woman? Practically speaking, restraint in the use of force in small wars amounts to a limitation only in excess. That is, it is assumed that Americans will continue to use intense and highly lethal force. The limitation applies to effects beyond the specific adversary. We want to kill with surgical skill and use tools of force that allow us to precisely engage enemy combatants while minimizing harm to noncombatants. This level of discrimination has always been difficult to accommodate in war. It will probably be no easier in the future to discriminate, but to the degree we can make distinctions, we want to use means that are acute at the point of impact but have manageable effects outside our area of specific focus. Some of these goals can be accomplished by exercising savvy battlefield geometry. We can also select weapons that have pinpoint effects (like the rifle). In the end we will have to ask ourselves difficult questions like, “Can I engage this target and be assured that I will not bring harm to civilians who are also in the same building or a building nearby, and if so, what weapons and munitions must I use?”

Restraint in war may mean electing not to use force. In late March 2004, I was in Ramadi, Iraq with one of the platoons of my battalion, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines (3/11). (I was the battalion executive officer.) Ramadi was quite restive at the time, with various incidents of mortar, small arms, and improvised explosive device attacks being waged against the soldiers and Marines. The platoon from 3/11 was performing an escort and security mission for the civil affairs (CA) team, and that morning the team was out at the government center in downtown Ramadi. While the CA team was inside, the 3/11 platoon was on the outside providing exterior site security along with a small team of civilian security contractors. Something strange happened. We noticed that all of the shops around our area had closed their shop doors. There were no women or children to be seen—only men. There was a palpable tension in the air. The platoon commander wisely decided to improve his geometry by sending some of his people up to some nearby rooftops to gain a three-dimensional perspective. A few of us were staring down an alley that the Marines referred colloquially to as RPG (rocket propelled grenade) Alley since someone had recently fired an RPG at the government center from this alley (and the hole in the wall behind us was a witness to this incident). Suddenly, one of the gentlemen from the contract security company who was standing right next to me was hit by something, possibly a rock. We scanned the area and saw nothing. Then, wham, I got hit by a rock—hard. (I imagine the rock came from a sling, unless Nolan Ryan was in the alley area.) A group of young men was forming a small crowd and moving down the alley toward us in a slow and seemingly nonorganized or meandering manner, but we saw no weapons. Nonetheless, we sensed something was going to happen. My heart rate was racing, and adrenaline was pumping through my veins. I can tell you that as my thumb rested on the safety of my rifle, I really thought an attack was imminent. The attack never came. After about half an hour, the tension eased. The shops opened back up. People came back out onto the streets. The crowd of young men drifted away. The platoon completed its security mission and returned to its forward operating base at Camp Ramadi. I do not know what happened that morning, but it was a tense situation to be sure. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Blink, speaks of the difficulty of making good decisions under super high-stress situations when we have to decide to either “shoot or don’t shoot.”⁴ I do not think we were quite in that state of affairs since we saw no weapons, but the whole situation put us into that kind of tense environment for a time. Gladwell’s point is to train in advance so that, when the time comes and you are unable to think clearly in a deliberate fashion, you are able to make good decisions based on an intuition born of the experience gained in training (or other episodes of combat for that matter).

Alternatives
To this point I have used the term “force” to refer to lethal force. I think some of the limitations on lethal force will be at least partially answered by the use of non-lethal weapons. I believe that the use of non-lethal weapons, as they become more advanced and more practical, will both improve and perhaps complicate the issue. The improvement will come from the greater flexibility in force choices afforded to the commander on the ground—and that is hugely important, especially in counterinsurgency operations. However, that very flexibility may bring with it some operational complexity. Undoubtedly, the widespread introduction of non-lethal weapons will require an even more sophisticated understanding of the use of force.

Summary
While the foregoing may appear to be a merely esoteric discussion, the reality is that Marines and soldiers are required to make tough decisions every day in combat on the use of force. Rules of engagement provide a backdrop against which they can refer. However, understanding the use of force must run deeper than what any finite set of rules can offer. Counterinsurgency operations are so complex, so chaotic, and the stakes are so incredibly high for small unit leaders that we owe it to them to educate them in the philosophy of the use of force and how restraint can and should be exercised for moral and pragmatic reasons. Additionally, once Marines and soldiers return from participation in conflict, they need to be clear of conscience. We want to protect our people from the potential psychological damage that may result from a failure to use appropriate restraint in counterinsurgency combat. Finally, the Army and Marine Corps should continue to develop tools of force that can be applied with precision and accuracy and that have acute but not expansive effects. Obviously, this criteria does not apply to all of our tools, but it does specifically apply to the tools we intend to use when we are fighting “amongst the people.”

Notes

1. Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars, Third Edition, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p. 33.

2. Bailey, Sydney D., Prohibitions and Restraints in War, Oxford University Press, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1972, p. 6–16.

3. Johnson, James Turner, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry, Princeton University Press, NJ, 1981, p. xxiii.

4. Gladwell, Malcolm, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Little, Brown and Company, NY, 2005, pp. 237–241.

>LtCol McDaniel deployed to Iraq with 1st Marine Division for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM I and II. He is currently assigned as Head, Service Concepts Branch, Concepts and Plans Division, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Quantico.

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