ABSTRACT
Introduction The previous chapter ended with the conclusion that the military stands in need of a value more comprehensive than, say, honor, courage, or loyalty, and that respect might just be a suitable candidate. As a virtue that benefits colleagues and outsiders alike, it seems to be in tune with today’s missions, where servicemen often operate among the people. In fact, although not per se a very martial virtue, respect is already present on the value lists of several militaries. While “respect for human life” makes an appearance on the value list of the Israeli Defense Force, and “respect for the dignity of all persons” can be found in the Fundamentals of Canadian Defense Ethics, respect as such is included in the value lists of, for example, the US Army and British Army, and Norway’s Armed Forces (Robinson 2008). In addition, the notion of respect figures prominently in some militaries’ codes of conduct. Nonetheless, this is not the concession to the present tasks of the military it seems; although “respect” certainly sounds comprehensive, and for instance more all encompassing than the already broad values of “respect for human life” and “respect for the dignity of all persons,” it is in fact not that inclusive at all, at least not in the way most militaries interpret it. What is striking is that their definitions limit respect to own personnel, and thus fail to take into account the new circumstances military personnel face today when deployed in faraway countries, especially the circumstance that they often will be doing their job amidst the local population. One of the quite rare articles that appeared on the subject of respect as a military value, “An Exploration of Respect in Army Leadership” in Military Review (H. Keller 2006), a piece on respect as a value for the US Army, does, for instance, not mention the need to respect outsiders in any way. Not that surprising, since the author has the express wish to go beyond respect as (narrowly) defined in the doctrine and leadership manuals on the one hand, yet still uses these documents as stepping stones. A choice that rules out a more inclusive definition of respect; military ethicist Timothy Challans relates, for instance, how
early drafts of the Army’s 1999 leadership manual included the notion of respect; in fact, the key feature of respect was that of respecting the enemy
on the battlefield. That idea did not survive the staffing process, and even a cursory check of the manual today will reveal that only Americans are mentioned as being recipients of this important value of respect.
