Phillip Dolitsky
Phillip Dolitsky is a Strategic Advisor at The Philos Project and an independent national security and foreign policy analyst. He is working towards becoming a strategic theorist, focusing on the intersection between strategy, military ethics, and classical realism. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Chesterfield Strategy, Parameters, Providence Magazine, Military Strategy Magazine and more.
It has been 80 years since the atomic age ushered in a new chapter of world history. 80 years after President Truman’s fateful decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby forcing Imperial Japan to surrender and saving countless American, Japanese and Chinese lives, we still debate the morality of that world altering decision. I believe that that is a good thing. We all intuitively recognize just how monumental a decision it was to drop the bombs, and I would not want to be a writer on military strategy and ethics in a world where we stopped grappling with arguably the most agonizing decision ever made by a single man in world history.
Much has been written on the 80th anniversary of dropping the atomic bombs. I write this humble contribution to the fray to note just how relevant the enduring moral debate over the atomic bombs continues to be, and how they interact with the tragic world of military strategy. In particular, I would like to focus on the moral imperative to consider alternative choices of action, as well as a brief rethinking and reframing of noncombatant immunity.
Before beginning this analysis, I want to clarify what this essay does and does not aim to do. It will not propose a new system of ethics for strategists, nor claim to offer a better framework than existing traditions. My point is simpler: strategy is never free of ethics, because it is carried out by human beings who cannot act in a moral vacuum.[1] Yet ethical traditions—especially Just War theory[2]—are too often “not well enough designed or employed to offer helpfully practicable navigational guidance on behavior.”[3]
No comments:
Post a Comment