Ethics and MREs

At the intersection of philosophy of food and military ethics I hereby present for your consideration this (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) discussion on MRE ethics.

MREs are the US military's field rations. MREs are the field rations that soldiers get when it is impractical to feed them more conventional meals.  Each country has a different style of field rations. (Here is a sampling.) It is interesting that different countries have different approaches to field rations, with some rations meant to last all day while other counties produce rations that are to last for a single meal; some countries have rations that are meant to be shared among a few soldiers while others are designed to be eaten by individual soldiers. The US has a wide variety of meals while other countries only have a few, some countries like the US have vegetarian MREs, while other countries do not. Different countries have different allowances for how long a soldier can eat field rations, before presumably getting sick or malnourished. In the IDF all field rations (all food actually) are kosher. The US has kosher MREs as well (though they are difficult to obtain, and few people really insist on them).  Presumably all the meals are designed with the culture in mind. All Japanese rations, for example, I am told, have some kind of rice. Some field rations have alcohol, others had cigarettes. US MREs all still have matches, toilet paper, and bad tasting chewing gum. The US puts a fair amount of effort into making sure they are edible. Other countries , shall we say, try less hard.


With these differences in mind, I want to offer some philosophical thoughts about an interesting twist on distributive justice.

I have noticed an interesting sociological phenomenon that occurs when a unit in the US Army sits down to eat an MRE meal in the field.  Each soldier gets one MRE. MREs come in boxes of about 20 different MREs. So a unit that has about 50 people in it will open three boxes. (The numbers here are not that important.) So most (though not all) soldiers will get the meals the want, or they will get something close enough. But each MRE not only comes with a main meal, it comes with a whole bunch of "side dishes" as well. Most people do not keep good track of which extras come in which MREs, and besides, the MRE menus change frequently as do the side dishes, candy, deserts, etc. There may be coffee, toffee, skittles, m&ms, spicy peanut butter, cookies, pretzels, peaches, pears, cinnamon apples, etc. Few people ever get a complete MRE that has all and only the items they want. In units that are nice enough to let everyone choose the MRE they want (and most units do), most soldiers choose by main dish.

But as soon as the meal starts, so does the trading. Sometimes, in some units (especially in basic training) there are a host of quick (I mean stock market quick) quid pro quo trades where people announce what they have and weigh the various offers of trade, and finally execute the trades. In other units, (especially ones that have been together longer) there is a rapid succession of people doing what eventually amounts to the same thing - soldiers just give away all their unwanted MRE items. Soldiers call out "anyone want my X?" and someone else says "here" and it is tossed to them. Most items are quickly snatched up this way. Sometimes, there is just a box where soldiers put all their unwanted MRE items and everyone freely takes from it.

I suspect that the reason that in places like basic training people try to make trades, is because there is little trust in, or understanding of, the reciprocal nature of the trades that will be made. With trust comes the comfort in simply giving away what you don't want and knowing that something you do want will likely be offered shortly thereafter.

Regardless of which kind of trading is done, what ends up happening in both cases is that people who start out with an equitable, though unequal, distribution of resources, quickly and efficiently end up with a distribution that may or may not be equal, but is far closer to their ideal end-state than the distribution they started with. They all started with a main dish they wanted and perhaps some other things too, but all extra goods were redistributed in a fairly efficient procedure.

I am uncertain what lesson to draw from this. Have we learned anything about human nature from this?  I am not sure.  After all, in general, there is no question that there is no genuine scarcity of goods. No one worries that they have to try to gain an advantage lest they end up hungry. But it is clear that each soldier is attempting to seek advantage by getting the MRE items that he or she prefers. So by participating in a community where everyone is simultaneously looking out for their own interest, people can maximize their goals.

Of course, I suspect that we can't really derive any deep philosophical lessons. After all, there is little chance of someone starving under this system, nor is there any realistic possibility that someone will have enough "resources" to have any power over anyone else. That would be one messed up unit. But there is a good metaphor in this.

Nozick talked about the idea that even if everyone started out with an equal distribution of resources, there are many reasons to think it will not stay that way. The main reason is that people don't all want the same thing. And even if we all had the same thing, there will be parts of that which I do not want, and more of something I do. There will also be a person who feels just the opposite and is willing to trade with me.  The resulting state will then almost necessarily be unequal, and perhaps may result in a state that is far different from the original state. But if the result is from a set of fair exchanges, the result should not only seem just, but preferable to another system.

But this example we gave is probably a bit too artificial to be meaningful.

False Flags

It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions (Article 39) for a soldier to abuse emblems of nationality. That is, one member of a nation cannot pretend to be a member of another nation under certain circumstances in combat. Such false flag operations explicitly include wearing the uniform of the enemy.

But what about the case of someone from country A posing as an agent of country B to trick agents of country C to fight against country D, which A, B, and C don't like anyway, where C would not participate in because they are enemies of A, but allied with B in a case where A and B are not technically at war?

It sounds like a slightly more complicated version of the prohibited act.  However, the reason for the prohibition, I assume, is because it is such a "dirty trick" that causes members of country B from trusting each other. In this case, it will cause members of B to stop trusting C.

In any case, this happened or anyway, seemed to have allegedly happened. Israel, as the story goes, undertook such a false flag operation in Pakistan. Some Mossad agents tricked some Pakistanis into thinking it was the CIA to get the Pakistanis to plot against Iran, something they were happy to do for the US, but would certainly not have done for Israel because of the generally anti-Israel sentiment in Pakistan. (Israel has been the victim of straight forward violations of such false flag tactics when members of Hizbullah were killed in full IDF uniforms in Lebanon in 2006. See around 1:18 into this video.)

So the questions I have are first, is the Geneva Convention barring use of such "perfidious tactics" still reasonable?  It sounds like it would make for a more "civilized war" but does it really reflect a code of honor that anyone really cares about? Second, is it really immoral?  My gut tells me that most things are fair in love and war, and this does not really cross any threshold of gross immorality.  Posing as the enemy seem like a clever trick, not an immoral action. (It is the heart of the plot for almost every Mission: Impossible episode ever made.) It is not like abusing a flag of surrender. That would mess up the way peace can be accomplished. Using other nations' uniform doesn't seem nearly as bad. Finally, how broadly should false flag operations be interpreted? Should the prohibition extend to all cases, including the one in Pakistan or should it be confined to the strict traditional boundaries of using the enemies' uniforms in a time of war?

Thoughts?

(Updated to reflect story developments.)

Teaching ethics in Iraq

Article in the American Philosophy Association newsletter about an ethics class taught on COB Speicher in Iraq. (Look at the Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy vol 11, number 1: fall 2011.)

More on ethics and drones

Interesting article on ethics and drones by Yale's Stephen L Carter (\. also has a good discussion).. 

Book Review

David Barash, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, has a review of John Horgan's The End of War. 

Drone Ethics

Interesting article about a drone ethics briefing for the CIA. It generated a good /. discussion too. 

Ethics cards and such

Most armies in Western countries, I presume, have ethics programs that they try to get down to each individual soldier. It would be an interesting project to compare the process that went into making each of them. The IDF blog recently had a post about their "spirit of the Israel Defense Forces" ethics card, the US Army gives out cards and dog tags with the basic ethics philosophy of the Army. The Canadian Defense force has something similar (see Slide 38 in this powerpoint presentation). Anyone know what other armies do?

Notes on Kegley and Raymond's After Iraq

I was reading Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond's After Iraq: The Imperiled American Imperium. Here are some notes:

Kegley and Raymond’s After Iraq is concerned to understand and analyze the most likely security situation that the United States will find itself in after the conflict in Iraq is finished. The book does this in part by making claims based on empirical analogies with other large imperial powers that dominated the international relations of their day. It also extrapolates the political behavior of other states based on the idea that the US is setting a precedent with its behavior and actions in the Iraq (and to some extent Afghanistan) war.

Chapter 2 argues that there is a strong lesson in the example of the Persian Empire. It was arrogant and overextended. Persia conflated the fact that it was a powerful imperial power with being omnipotent. It was not, and ultimately fell apart and could not really withstand the combined Greek armies. (In the intermediate run, Kegsley and Raymond neglect to point out that after the defeat by the combined Greek forces the Persians waited patiently till the end of the Peloponnesian War when they once again became the major power broker on the Agean and lasted as an important empire until Alexander the Great.)

Chapter 3 takes on an important question (in light of Chapter 2) and asks: Is the US an empire? They conclude that indeed it is not. It does not have colonies nor does it compel other countries to do its bidding, or have any of the other traditional trappings of an emipre. It is some kind of qualified empire, or as they call it, an “imperium” which resembles an empire mostly in its imperious “attitude” (37) that has it believe that it is a political and moral beacon for other nations to follow. This attitude is traced (as in e.g., Joan Hoff's A Faustian Foreign Policy) from the “city on a hill” concept at the founding of the country through post-Cold War strategy. The definition of imperium as the world’s “supreme normative agent” allows Kegley and Raymond to make its case later on that other countries will seek to imitate the US. Oddly however, the fact that the US is not a traditional empire simultaneously seems undermines Kegley and Raymond’s case that it is possible to extrapolate about the future of the US from the examples of other empires. Also, it does not follow from the fact that the US is the hegemon and that it has a certain attitude, that other countries will follow its lead. There is a massive amount of obvious empirical evidence that most countries do not follow, have not followed, and have not been following the US in political philosophy. Moreover, the "city on a hill" attitude has been with the US since long before the formation of the country, that is, long before it was an empire. It is therefore odd to claim that this attitude is indicative of an empire. It is just as easily indicative of the 13 colonies, or the US at any point in her history.

Chapter 4 describes the challenges posed by asymmetric warfare, or more narrowly, Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW). 4GW is characterized by a blurring of the distinctions between soldier and civilian, and military and political. Fighting this kind of war is expensive, has vague goals and outcomes that are difficult to quantify, seemingly endless, and does not seek to defeat an army, rather to influence foreign politics. In short, it is a kind of war that the US and most western countries are unprepared to deal with. (Curiously, the authors do not recommend adapting to this kind of warfare, but rather to change foreign policy goals, strategies, and tactics to avoid it.)

The Bush doctrine is then discussed in Chapter 5, and described as an effort to radically alter American security policy by allowing for the American use of self-defense prior to a hostile act. Much of the chapter hinges on the distinction between prevention and preemption (a distinction that is at best unclear, and has been recently severely critiqued by David Fisher - a critique I am very much sympathetic with).

This defense posture, the book argues in Chapter 6, will be emulated the world over because the US controls the hegemonic discourse and its attitudes are adopted by others. Therefore, the authors claim, other countries will also use the excuse of pre-emptive self-defense to initiate wars of their own. (I find this argument implausible on its face. If anything, Kegley and Raymond’s argument suggests that imperial powers will start adopting preemptive self defense to initiate wars as they please. But imperial powers always initiate wars when they please and right now the US is the only such power. It is hard to believe that it is a lack of philosophical arguments that has been preventing war all these years, and now that there is a readily available philosophical argument provided by George Bush, wars will suddenly proliferate. It is also unclear to me why the US will be responsible for starting wars in foreign countries, when in all other relevant political attitudes, like democracy, the US is not particularly emulated the world over. Do countries only wish to emulate the worst feature of the foreign policy of the hegemonic power?)

The book ends with Chapter 7 speculating that it is international norms that promote order, predictability, and presumably peace. The US was once a moral leader in the world (though this was when she was much weaker and didn’t matter, so I suspect the US wasn't really a leader) and now that leadership is eroding because we refuse to adhere to the high-sounding principles we claim to embrace. The strange claim that legitimacy is a force multiplier is then asserted to show that the US will loose support for its military endeavors and ultimately fall victim to its own tactics (124); the fact that the US espouses preemption will create a climate of more wars; and the fact that we live in a unipolar world suggests inevitable instability. To the extent you believe in “hegemonic stability theory,” they tell us, the US must practice humility, prudence, and self restraint, though they are not clear why. It is certainly possible that it is the fact that hegemons do not practice humility that promotes hegemonic stability. (The authors do not elaborate much here.)

Their solutions are then to adhere to better norms, be clear about what those norms are, work with other nations in reciprocal trusting ways to avoid hostility, and stay resolute about the goals.

Officer education in the IDF

Jewish Ideas Daily has an interesting article about officer development, officer education, and officer ethos in the IDF.

Saba Bazargan on David Fisher's new book on ethics of war

Saba Bazargan reviews David Fisher's Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-First Century? for NDPR. According the the review at least the second part of the book looks quite valuable as Dr. Fisher was a member of various organizations in the UK's defense establishment. Far too little ethics is written by practitioners in their respective fields. This book ought to be welcomed by the ethics community as it is written by someone who is philosophically sophisticated and has actual experience in offices that were responsible for decisions about going to war, and not mere outsider observers who lack the insight, context, and training of an inside observer. Added a few days later: The more political science I read about the Iraq war and the Bush Doctrine, the more I realize that, at least according to the review, Fisher is hitting on an important distinction when he talks about the (non) difference between preemption and prevention. Many many people run roughshod over that and uncritically accept that they are radically different things, and ergo Bush is wrong in advocating preemptive war and ignoring preventive war. If Fisher is correct and the distinction is merely epistemic, a lot of what passes for political science has to be rewritten. (See e.g., Kegley and Raymond's After Iraq (p 80-84) and Joan Hoff's A Faustian Foreign Policy (170-171).)