Moral Problems in Shock and Awe (2005)

Immediately after the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 2003, the mass media had its catch phrase: "shock and awe." While descriptive of the visual characteristics of the initial bombing of Baghdad, the phrase also had a deeper, highly-defined meaning. Coined from the title of the 1996 book, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, by Harlan K. Ullman the term "shock and awe" describes the United States military doctrine adopted after the Gulf War. However, despite the supposed benefits of a quick victory with few casualties, this tactic has many implicit moral problems stemming from the principal of noncombatant immunity.

Defining Shock and Awe

Shock and awe is the tactic used to achieve rapid dominance. The concept of shock and awe was developed as a way to minimize the time a war took and the number of troops required to fight it (Ullman "Misunderstood"). This necessitated a drastic change in strategy from the force-on-force, attrition-style warfare of past conflicts. Ullman, in his book, defined rapid dominance as such:

In Rapid Dominance, "rapid" means the ability to move quickly before an adversary can react. . . . "Dominance" means the ability to affect and dominate an adversary's will both physically and psychologically. . .The principal mechanism for achieving this dominance is through imposing sufficient conditions of "Shock and Awe" on the adversary to convince or compel it to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. (Shock xxv)

Any vagueness as to the scope of an attack is made clear soon thereafter. "Rapid dominance must be all-encompassing" (Ullman, Shock xxvii). This seems to lead to the conclusion that, in both the physical and mental realms, everyone and everything are potential targets if seen as necessary to quickly win a war. Even if some types of force are limited to the most dire situations, no uses of any type of force are ruled out in shock and awe.

In an era filled with massive technological advances, Ullman expects the use of highly-precise weapons to result in less collateral damage (Shock 50). Yet, the scope of the attacks on an enemy would still remain "all-encompassing." In an interview with CBS before the invasion of Iraq, Ullman described how he envisioned the application of the tactics he developed:

"You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted." (qtd. in CBS News)

Noncombatant Immunity and Differentiating Between Combatants and Noncombatants

Noncombatant immunity is one of the two main principles required for jus in bello, a part of Just War theory. Jus in bello focuses on moral conduct in war – the realm which would contain tactics such as shock and awe and rapid dominance. Many theories have been put forth in support of noncombatant immunity. John Rawls presents one of the most famous of these theories. Using a rights-based theory, Rawls proposes that soldiers may be attacked because they pose a threat to the opposing army. This threat posed by a soldier must be an immediate one, though. In other words, one may only kill a soldier in self-defense (Martin 159), a theory accepted by many also as a general moral principle in times of peace. However, regardless of the reason, noncombatant immunity has generally been accepted throughout history (Hartle 141).

Other complications, assuming one accepts the principle of noncombatant immunity which I do for this essay, come from distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants. One very simple way is Jeffrie Murphy's "chain of agency" theory. A person in the chain must be "logically inseparable from war fighting" to warrant morally attacking them. The distinction is made, then, by whether one takes part "in any activity that would not take place if it were not for the requirements of warfare." A simple example compares a farmer and a munitions plant worker. While the worker would be employed elsewhere if there were no war, the farmer continues to farm regardless of the state of his country (Hartle 145). While, personally, I believe this principle does not extend far enough, it does protect a large part of any population at war and establishes that there are noncombatants in a war. Therefore, it will be enough to prove the immorality of the shock and awe tactic.

The Immorality of Shock and Awe: Past and Present

Shock and awe attacks "entail. . .the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure" including water supply systems and power grids (Ullman Shock 13), a fact to which Ullman alluded in his interview with CBS. Even assuming that the strikes which disable these utilities kill no civilians immediately, countless noncombatants die as a result of the loss of energy and clean water. I call these deaths "secondary collateral damage," although they are secondary only in relation to the attack and not in importance. Applying the "chain of agency" again, one can easily see that electricity and water and, in turn, the people using them, use them in times of both war and peace. Those who die as secondary collateral damage from a lack of electricity – such as patients on ventilators in a hospital – pose no threat to an opposing army and are the furthest removed citizens of all from a country's war effort.

A second problem with Ullman's tactics comes from the means required to create sufficient shock and awe. The precise attacks that create shock and awe are administered not by ground troops but by missiles or airplanes. While technology has improved immensely in terms of accurate weapon delivery, there are still no 100%-accurate weapons. As weapons become more and more powerful and destructive, the accuracy required to control the effects of the destruction also increases. One of the largest moral objections made to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an example of shock and awe cited by Ullman (Shock 23), is that the nuclear warheads dropped on the cities did not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Obviously, it is not the job of the weapons to discriminate but that of those who drop them. With their increasing power, the use of indiscriminate weapons becomes a point of contention. One must only consider the fact that, at the end of the Cold War, the United States possessed nuclear weapons with 1000 times the force of those used in World War II to see that weapons technology has increased to nearly unfathomable levels (Hartle 149). To instill a sense of shock and awe in an enemy, the use of powerful weapons seems necessary, yet, their power brings with it questions of morality. Even if weapons are perfectly precise, secondary collateral damage illustrates how shock and awe is innately immoral because of its target selection.

Moral Supports for Shock and Awe

While never cited specifically by Ullman, one common moral support for military actions which cause noncombatant deaths is that of the double effect. The double effect principle states "that where a course of action is likely to have different effects, one morally desirable and the other not, it may be permissible to take that course as long as the desirable effect is intended but not the other" (Boss G-2). The previous argument involving the indiscriminate quality of modern weapons demonstrates that the double effect does not apply. If one knows a weapon is indiscriminate, one knows that it will kill noncombatants; therefore, "collateral damage" is a foreseeable result of the use of indiscriminate weapons. Innocent deaths are not merely an unfortunate side effect of a shock and awe attack but an anticipated outcome. They cannot be justified as "unintended" because they are an inseparable part of an attack and not a second, separate result.

When examining the tactics required by the doctrine of rapid dominance through shock and awe, it seems that only one moral defense of it can be made. Because there are no confines in which one must limit an attack, and the scope of the attack includes all of the enemy and all of the enemy's physical realm, it seems to be assumed that the entire society may be killed morally. In other words, there are no noncombatants in an enemy's society. However, even accepting that assumption, it neglects other factors. There are always non-citizens in a country. These people could have no connection to the country being attacked, but a shock and awe attack would not discriminate between them and a citizen. Also, one has no control over what country they are born in to or what nationality they inherit from their parents. If all of society is considered the enemy, even people who wish to leave their country or refuse to support their government's actions in wartime are considered legitimate targets of war. Thisis obviously not the case.

Other Implications and Considerations of Shock and Awe

The principle of shock and awe uses a means that inevitably causes the deaths of noncombatants both directly, with indiscriminate weapons, and indirectly, as secondary collateral damage, through the destruction of infrastructure. Whether using Murphy's chain of agency, Rawls' self-defense theory, or a different defense of noncombatant immunity, unless one considers no one a noncombatant, there is no moral defense of shock and awe. When the power of any single weapon increases, the moral responsibility attached to its use increases at an equal rate. A strategy requiring the use of thousands of immensely powerful weapons seems likely to be immoral because of the inevitability of noncombatant deaths, and such is the case with the U.S. military doctrine of rapid dominance through shock and awe.

Bibliography

Bacevich, A.J. "Morality and High Technology." National Interest. 45 (1996): 37-47.

Boss, Judith A., ed. Analyzing Moral Issues. 3rd ed. Dubuque: McGraw Hill, 2005.

CBS News. "Iraq Faces Massive U.S. Missile Barrage." CBSNews.com. 24 Jan 2003. 1 Nov 2005. http://www.cbsnews.com/

Coppieters, Bruno. Nick Fotion. Eds. Moral Constraints on War. New York: Lexington Books, 2002.

Gallie, W.B. Philosophers of Peace and War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Hartle, Anthony. "Discrimination." Moral Constraints on War. Ed. Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion. New York: Lexington Books, 2002. 141-60.

Luban, David. "Just War and Human Rights." Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol. 9, No. 2 (1980): 160-81.

Peterson, Scott. "US Mulls Air Strategies in Iraq." Christian Science Monitor. 30 Jan 2003.

Rex, Martin. "Just War and Human Rights." Professional Ethics. Vol. 10 (2002): 159-79.

"Shock and Awe." Wikipedia.org. 5 Nov 2005. 16 Nov 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe.

Ullman, Harlan K. "'Shock and awe' misunderstood." USA Today. 8 Apr 2003. Volume 8.: 15a.

Ullman, Harlan K, and James P. Wade. Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. Washington: NDU Press, 1996.

Van Damme, Guy, and Nick Fotion. "Proportionality." Moral Constraints on War. Ed. Bruno Coppieters and Nick Fotion. New York: Lexington Books, 2002. 129-40.

Zohar, Noam J. "Collective War and Individualistic Ethics: Against the Conscription of ‘Self-Defense.'" Political Theory. Vol. 21. No. 4 (1993): 606-22.