Moral Victories: Ethics, Exit Strategies, and the Ending of Wars

What does 'victory' mean in the context of the liberal interventions characteristic of post-Cold War western warfare? Often conceived in narrowly strategic terms, can the concept of victory also provide a moral compass for policy pertaining to the termination of wars? Or is it a retrograde notion that impairs rather than empowers policy by fostering an unhelpful image of military conflict as 'trial by strength'? Against the backdrop of protracted and messy 'endgame' struggles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, this project addresses these vital questions.

This focus necessarily leads to an engagement with the field of Military Ethics. Supported since 2002 by a specialist journal, the Journal of Military Ethics, this is a growing area of research in the US, UK, and Europe. Widely taught at service and military academies under the rubric of Leadership Studies, and at research universities, it brings together ethicists, strategists, historians, political theorists, philosophers, international relations scholars, theologians, and military practitioners and planners to consider the ethics of military force.

This project will contribute to an emergent area of concern within Military Ethics, the jus post bellum, that body of work devoted to the ethical issues associated with the conclusion of conflicts. Reflective of the structure of just war theory, Military Ethics has traditionally focused on the jus ad bellum and jus in bello poles of analysis, which focus respectively on the moral questions attendant to the initial resort to force and its subsequent conduct. Since it was first vaunted by Michael J. Schuck in a 1994 Christian Century article, the jus post bellum has been hailed by leading figures in the field-Michael Walzer, Brian Orend, and Larry May, among others-as an area of great importance. Despite this, the jus post bellum remains sorely underdeveloped.

Much current jus post bellum literature focuses on the responsibilities, rights, and duties of the 'victor' (vis-à-vis both the 'vanquished' enemy and the international community more generally). This project will examine the utility of this framing. In particular, it will contend that the emphasis on 'victors' (and by extension 'victory') is of dubious merit. On the one hand, it locks in ad bellum and in bello restraints on war. On the other hand, it is an archaic remnant of the classical and medieval conception of war as an 'ordeal' or 'wager'-a conception that few would endorse today. Accordingly, this project will bring together leading UK, US, and European scholars (historians, strategists, ethicists, and international relations specialists) and practitioners (military educators and defence ministry personnel) to re-evaluate the role that the concept of victory can and should play in military planning and policy.

The project will pivot upon the following question. How should victory be construed in the context of post-Cold War conflict? Is victory a normative or purely strategic concept? Can victory provide a moral compass for the termination of wars? Is victory a problematic concept for any reason? How can victory in war be leveraged to yield a durable post-war order? Viewed in concert, these questions, which are designed to lead rather than constrain, will provoke consideration of the relation between ethics, strategy and governance in respect of the termination of violent conflict. More generally, the project as a whole will challenge scholars and practitioners to re-consider the utility of force in the current security environment and the relation that now prevails between winning wars and winning the peace.

The principal non-academic beneficiaries of this research will be military planners, practitioners, and educators in the US and UK. It will benefit these actors in three specific ways. First, it will provide a forum for military educators, planners, and practitioners to reflect upon how they conceive of 'victory' in the context of the liberal humanitarian wars characteristic of the post-Cold War era and how this informs professional practice in respect of the ending of violent conflict. Second, it will provide an interface between academic research and professional practice, thus ensuring that military planners, practitioners, and educators have ready access to a relevant knowledge base and facilitating evidence-based curriculum design and development. And third, it will deliver and train highly skilled researchers whose expertise will contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of the armed services in respect of the ending of wars.

Four activities will be undertaken to ensure that beneficiaries have the opportunity to engage with this research:

(1) The first activity is collaboration, that is, the establishment of an active partnership between researchers at Glasgow University, the US Naval War College, and the Joint Services Command and Staff College at the UK Defence Academy. The central element of this partnership will comprise a formal Exchange or Visitorship programme, wherein a senior member of the Naval War College, Professor Martin Cook, will be invited to undertake a fixed-term Fellowship at Glasgow University under the auspices of the Adam Smith Research Foundation. This will be supplemented by provision for a reciprocal visit by the PI and project postdoctoral fellow to attend the military ethics symposiums held annually at the Naval War College.

(2) The second activity is capacity-building, which will be achieved via the provision of a fixed-term research leave for the PI alongside the establishment of a dedicated postdoctoral fellow, to be based at Glasgow University, to serve this field and to coordinate the engagement and exploitation elements of the project. More broadly, the workshop component of the project will foster a collaborative relationship between the Glasgow Global Security Network, the Scottish Centre for War Studies, the Glasgow Human Rights Network, and project partners at the UK Defence Academy and US Naval War College. Indeed, via this collaboration with project partners at the UK Defence Academy, this project will both profit from and build upon related research projects being conducted there.

(3) The third activity is engagement, which will be pursued principally through two annual workshops, one to be held at Glasgow University and one at the Joint Services Defence and Staff College at the UK Defence Academy. These workshops will bring together eight scholars and practitioners in the field and will produce a collection of research papers to be published in the Journal of Military Ethics.

(4) The fourth activity pertains to exploitation, and will comprise the maintenance of a website to communicate our activities to a wider audience; the production of a special issue of the Journal of Military Ethics to disseminate findings resulting from the project; the publication of an article by the PI in the Review of International Studies; and the presentation of project research findings to the annual conferences of the International Society for Military Ethics (ISME).

The following milestones for deliverables will be observed. The project and its devoted website will commence in September 2014. The postdoctoral fellowship will commence at the same time, and run through till September 2016. The Visitorship Programme will take place in Spring 2015. The workshops will be convened in May 2015 and May 2016. The special issue of the Journal of Military Ethics will appear in September 2016, while lead articles by the PI will appear in June 2016.