ABSTRACT
In his July 2003 Arrival Message, former United States Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker made explicit his view of the ethical foundations of the American profession of arms, emphasizing that the United States Army is, always has been, and ‘will remain a values based organization, where the core identity of Soldier is centred around a self-conception of the “Warrior of character” whose “non-negotiable” commitment to the values embodied in the Constitution of the United States “will not change,” no matter what the exigencies of operational deployments or the character of our enemies’ (Warrior Ethos Briefing 2003, 1). When Schoomaker characterized the American soldier as the professional who, in some ways more than any other epitomizes the spiritual underpinnings of American national identity, he was conveying much more than motivational hyperbole: he was evidencing his own awareness of, and commitment to, a plausible – but by no means universally accepted – ideal centre of gravity in the relationship between soldiers and the states they serve. The eloquent and provocative British General Sir John Winthrop Hackett succinctly expressed this ideal in his 1970 Harmon Memorial Lecture at the United States Air Force Academy. Laying aside the obvious fact that, since military organizations are created by the state to protect the state, the effectiveness of a military organization will be judged largely on instrumental grounds (i.e., on how well they contribute to deterring war and, when deterrence fails, how well they conduct themselves in war), Hackett offered the noble idea that ‘the highest service of the military to the state may well lie in the moral sphere, [as a] well from which to draw [moral] refreshment for a body politic in need of it’ (Hackett 1970, 19).
