Leonard Cheshire morality of force

Leonard Cheshire morality of force

"Sandhurst". Address by Leonard Cheshire on the "Morality of force", Defines morality and law. Talks of natural, man-made and divine law. Goes on to discuss conscience and religion. Continues discussion of morality in war. Mentions conventions and international law of armed conflict. Considers contrary views: appeasement and pacifism as well as the Christian commandments and the right of self-defence. Goes on to discuss the right to go to war, the right of individual conscience to disobey orders, interrogation by force and nuclear weapons. Submitted with caption 'Address by Leonard Cheshire on the "Morality of Force" at Sandhurst College'.

Audio recording 00:46:52

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SCheshireGL72021v20011-0001, SCheshireGL72021v20011-0001-Transcript

Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
File Title: "Sandhurst". Address by GLC on the "Morality of force"
Duration: 47 minutes
Transcription Date: 19/02/2020
Archive Number: AV-S: 219

Start of Transcription

00:00 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: Gentlemen, I do thank you for the warmth of your welcome. You’ve picked out some of better things, left out some of the others [laughs] and made the better things a bit better than they really were. Father didn’t think I got a good degree at all [laughter]. If he’d heard, you use the word scholar he would have walked out of the room [laughter]. Anyway, I do count it a very great privilege to be invited give this talk this morning – or try to give this talk - because I realise only too well how important the subject of ‘the morality of force’ is, not only to servicemen, not only to us in this country, but to the whole human family. It’s a very difficult and complex subject, one cannot be dogmatic about it. I find the more one thinks about, the more complex one realises it is. Nevertheless, I do think there are certain reference points one can establish and certain general principles one can lay down. The application of a general principle to a particular incidence is, of course, another matter and a difficult matter. In giving the talk, I would like to do it not just from the point of view of the use of force. In other words, under what circumstances are we right to do this, that or the other, but I would like to talk also from the point of view of the public debate - the defence debate - because we are going through a time where many people are expressing strong views against the right of self-defence. Some of them as regards to Nuclear problem only, others completely, they are disputing the right to be defended. Now, a country that is divided on the rights of self-defence, is in my view, as weak as a country that is not properly armed – not properly defended. It seems to me that every serviceman has a duty, not only to learn his profession – become totally proficient in his profession, but to be able to enter the debate, meet those who hold differing views, and discuss with them in a reasoned, constructive way. So, if I say certain things that may seem very obvious to you, that is my reason. I also by way of introduction, want to say that if I appear to give the impression that we in Britain – or we in the west, are always right and everybody else is always wrong, I don’t mean to do that. It’s very easy in discussing the rights and wrongs of the use of force in a particular incidence to give the impression that we are all good, and the other side is all bad. I don’t mean to do that at all.


03:58: I think I have to start by facing up to the question of morality. What is morality, given our pluralist society where we have so many different points of view, beliefs and so on. What do we mean by morality? And also I think why morality in war? Now morality, as a term, derives from mōrēs, meaning customs. In early, primitive society, all groups evolved customs for ways of behaviour which they considered binding on their members and in the course of time, these became codified into systems of law. But morality only really comes into play, when there is a claim on the person – on me in my inmost being, in response to a higher law to act in a way that I think is right even though it’s contrary to prevailing customs. So immediately, we have the external law and the internal response – or conscience, and briefly I’d like to talk about both of those.

05:35: Law, in general, could be defined as an ordinance of reason made for the common good and promulgated by the person or persons in authority over the particular society. We all understand the purpose and necessity of law. It’s purpose is to enable the society – whatever it is, whether it’s a darts club or a nation, to operate harmoniously and in unity, and also to achieve it’s particular end. We know the effect of breaking the law. Breaking the law beyond a certain point introduces chaos into society. There are 3 categories of law; the positive – or man-made law - the natural law and the eternal or divine law. The positive law, which we’re all familiar with, applies to us particularly in this discussion in the form of international law relating to the use of force. But its interesting to note the positive law – the man made law, the laws of your Country or laws of King’s regulation or Queen’s regulation now, although great trouble is taken in drafting them, the whole judicial system is needed to interpret them, and even then, there can be doubt.

07:35: The natural law is quite different. It’s not man-made, it derives from the nature of man and of society. One could say that it is the way in which the majority of men think that we should behave in our dealings with other people. The concept of a law existing in it’s own right was first worked out by the Ancient Greeks, and although there are numbers of people that dispute the existence of the natural law, the appeal has lingered on down the centuries. And the very fact that so much emphasis is placed today on human rights, indicates the appeal that the natural law has. Anyway, the purpose of the natural law is clear enough to define the dignity of the human person and give it validity in human society. But the natural law cannot be codified, you can never produce a handbook on what is right and wrong. We work out, inductively, certain general principles, but the application of those principles to a particular situation, we have to do ourselves. I think that, whatever our views about the natural law or not, we would all agree that we ought – in our dealings, under whatever circumstances, always respect the dignity of the other person. Or if you like, to invoke the golden rule, ‘do unto others as we would unto us’.

09:48: The eternal law, or the divine law, obviously presupposes the existence of a creator and those who don’t feel that they can accept that – that creation is the work of a creator, created for a purpose, obviously won’t accept the divine law. But granted the purpose of law - an ordinance of reason made for the common good, promulgated by the person in authority - and given the fact that nature – that creation is held together by a system of laws and works in total harmony because of them - it is not unreasonable to believe that if there is a creator, then he has built into his creation a similar law to enable human society to live in harmony and to achieve it’s eternal end. The particular point of this law, to us, is the Christian call – or commandment - to love, and in a moment I’ll have to face up to the question ‘how do you reconcile the Christian law of love – to love our fellow men - with killing … going to war’.

11:36: Then conscience … now conscience - which again is disputed by some, but I think because it’s misunderstood – conscience is the ability that we have to come to a moral judgement. It is me, coming to a decision, in a matter that involves a moral element. It is not a separate faculty like memory, it is the ability we have to form moral judgements. To the religious man, part of that process of coming to a moral judgement involves the voice of god speaking within me, warning me of the consequences of doing the wrong thing and helping me make the right decision. I think we all know, whatever our beliefs, what it is to have a bad conscience and what it is to have a good conscience. Conscience is normally considered inviolate, if a man really in conscience believes something, he must be allowed to do it. But conscience is not the final arbiter of what is right and wrong, we have a lifelong duty to inform our conscience. That is to say, reflect on the issues of right and wrong, to listen to what other people – who are perhaps qualified to talk about it – and above all, to live according to our conscience. The one thing about morality is that you cannot learn it in the abstract. Whatever you learn, you have to put – we have to put – into practice. There’s an interplay, the more I try to live according to what I believe is right, the more I’m going to be able to come to a correct morale judgement.

13:53: So, to sum up I would say that, first, there can never be a handbook of what is right and wrong. We can never refer to something and say, ‘in this situation I’ll do that’. We have a personal responsibility to form our own judgements in the concrete and forming a judgement – a moral judgement – involves knowing the facts. You have to know the facts and you have to be able to work out the likely consequences of doing one course of action and of doing the other … and weigh up the two. I would say that where there is an honest and upright search for the truth, where there is a genuine effort to live according to the dictates of my conscience and where I am willing to take a share in all the responsibility for all members of the human family – not just my own vested interests, not just our own limited national interests - there is morality.

15:09: The question ‘why morality in war?’. The first answer has to be for it’s own sake itself. Morality, like obeying the civil law, makes us more of a human being and is the only way in which we can build up the human family towards it’s ultimate end … in which we can participate in the struggle to overcome evil by good. But, another reason is the purpose of war - ‘why do we go to war?’ - we go to war, assuming we are a just nation, for the sake of peace. If going to war does not lead to a better and a more secure peace at the end of it, then that war has not been won. War involves not just the conquest of territory or the domination of enemy forces, it involves a battle for the minds of people. At the end of the war, one would hope, if we fought it properly, that we’ve earned the respect of people – people in other countries as well as our own – and that means we ought to give a moment to look at peace.

16:57: What do we mean by peace? People talk so much about peace, it is so emotive, so politically loaded that I’m not sure we always stop to consider what it is. Peace is not the absence of war – not just the absence of war. Living under an oppressive and dictatorial regime – a brutal regime, shall we say like in Uganda some years ago – is not living in peace. Peace presupposes justice, if there is not justice, there is no peace and so the road to peace is through justice. – enforcing justice throughout the world. But, unfortunately, people differ as to what is just, what is right in a given situation. So, it seems to me that what we need is the rule of law among nations, so that, again, everything that we do in war should be building up the rule of law among nations. If it isn’t, if it’s moving away, if it’s destroying the rule of law, then of course we are moving towards anarchy. So, there is every reason for knowing what is right and wrong in war and for living up to it.

18:30: So now to confront morality, with the war convention. By the war convention, I mean those rights and duties, that have been defined in various conventions like The Hague and Geneva Conventions, various resolutions of united nations and written into international law. International law … see’s international society as consisting of different sovereign states, each of which have a number of rights and particularly, the right to territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Here, I think it’s useful to invoke the domestic analogy – to compare the international scene with the national scene. So, in the domestic analogy, that is the right of everyone of us, as householders, to be safe and secure in our house and to run our families in the way we want. Every time those rights are violated by aggression, the values of international society are diminished. And therefore the war convention gives not only the right of self-defence, but almost imposes a duty of self-defence, because if the aggressor is allowed to get away with it, then the door is open for others to follow suit. So, the war convention … allows the right of defence only against aggression, it permits war only in self-defence – or going to another Country’s defence. The difficulty is that aggression has never been properly defined and so that leaves the victim state in some difficulty - if other states won’t agree that actual aggression has taken place. In the whole of international law, there is great poverty of language. The only term – the only crime – in international law, is aggression. And as I say, that’s not been properly defined. In the domestic scene we have armed robbery, break-in, theft, all sorts of terms that enable us to put the crime into category and know the kind of response there should be.

21:42: Now just to look at the contrary views – those people who dispute the right of self-defence. There are two principally; those who advocate appeasement. Now I’m not going to linger today on appeasement, except to say that my life, in my own view, was dominated, by the dreadful effect of appeasement - and I mean, I’m talking about the 1930s and the rise of Hitler. Had we been properly armed, had we had the political will to tell him that he was not going to advance into the various countries he did, he would never have reached the point where he could of launched what escalated into World War 2. So, to me, the moral blame for World War 2, with it’s 55 million deaths, lies at the door of all those – I suppose we have to be included as members of nation – who failed to build the political will to stop him. We failed to let him know that if he marched, we would fight. By contrast, Finland, when attacked by Russia, defended herself and fought even though all the odds were against her and the world thought well of her for it. Appeasement will never work against an aggressor. Appeasement makes an aggressor more aggressive and we can never say that the world will not see another Hitler – or something like him. We cannot build our policy on that assumption.

24:04: The other contrary view … is pacifism. Now pacifism, one has to remember, is a very broad term embracing a whole range of differing views and differing motives. When one comes into a discussion with a pacifist, certain things are essential in my view. First, we must respect his sincerity of view. However much we disagree with his actual view, we must show that we respect him as an individual and we respect his sincerity. Secondly, at the very beginning, we must establish that we are men of peace. We want peace. We believe that armed defence is one of the roads to peace. We must challenge his assertion that, he only, is the man of peace. Thirdly, I think it is very necessary to make certain that the argument precedes from basic principles, step by step, in a logical way. Otherwise, you shoot all over the place, you get all sorts of difficult questions that confuse the issue and make it very difficult. The pacifist that we’re really concerned with is the absolute pacifist, who says that killing is wrong and therefore one must never put up armed defence even against an aggressor – no matter what the consequences. I think it’s necessary to think this out and to have your reasons ready. And it is particularly necessary to argue it from the moral point of view. It is no use to say against a pacifist, ‘well look at the Russian build up’, because that is missing his main point. He is trying to say, it is better to be red than dead and if that is the alternative, than a lot of people would say ‘yes, I suppose it is’. But the whole point is that it’s best of all to be neither red nor dead. And the whole purpose of armed defence is precisely that – to see that neither the Soviet Union nor anyone else invades and that therefore we have peace. It is on that, that the moral justification of armed defence rests. It is very useful to invoke a domestic analogy and to say ‘well, if a gunman came into this room - with a sub-machine gun and opened fire – what would you do?’. I find the pacifist will never answer that question. If he says, ‘well I’d have to shoot him to save the 300 people he’s killing’, he’s lost his point. He is then a polarized pacifist and will have to show that he agrees with armed defence up-to a point but not beyond a certain point. That is a different position. If he says he’ll do nothing, he loses credibility. I can quite see the point of view of somebody who says, ‘well, in the last 7,000 years men have been fighting and peace is no closer – so let us look for another alternative’. But I think we need to show him that, to disarm, to have no defences, is to give those who are not willing to disarm the sole possession of military weapons. Particularly the nuclear weapon, which I’ll come to in a moment.

28:30: Finally, in the contrary view, the Christian commandment, to love - obviously that’s a big subject, can only briefly talk about it. The first point is, the commandment to love, is to love all our fellow men. You will here people say, ‘you must love your enemy and shooting him isn’t a way of loving him – you must try and covert him’. That really is missing the point. If we have two groups of people, one who are attacking the other – in other words, an aggressor and a victim – you cannot possibly say that ‘the Christian commandment to love, compels me not to do anything to the victim – because I’ve got to love him’ and allow the aggressor to destroy the victim. In my view, the Christian commandment to love, compels me to take whatever steps necessary in such a situation, to go to the help of the victim. Secondly, if an appeal is made to Christianity, you have to make the appeal to the Christian tradition as a whole. You cannot isolate one text and use that for your argument. And the truth is – although there will be a lot of debate on this – that the Christian tradition has always upheld the right of defence. What it has done, is to try and limit the consequences of going to war. It’s limited the circumstances under which you may go to war, but it’s never denied the right of self – defence.

30:27: Now, if I may take – because I’ve now dealt with the right to go to war – we’ve now got to consider the question of what we may do in waging war. The general principle is clear enough; everything must be related to winning - to victory. There must be nothing excessive, nothing wanton, no destruction that isn’t necessary, no vengeance. Also, the means must be proportionate to the end – to the goal. That means that the war aims have to be precisely and clearly defined, we have to know our war aims. They will differ from war to war; against Nazi Germany, the only war aim could be unconditional surrender, because the system was so dreadful that it had to be changed – there had to be a political change. In Korea, in the Falklands, obviously the war ends are quite different. I consider that the war aims should be known at all levels throughout the chain of command, so that people can judge the rights and wrongs of a given course of action by that reference – by that reference point.

32:21: If I may take 3 difficult case; the right of individual conscious to disobey an order, interrogation by force and nuclear weapons. Now, the right of individual conscience. It is generally held that conscience is inviolate and therefore if a man genuinely feels in conscience, that he can’t obey and order, then according to the principle he must be permitted not to do so. But, in the first place, to make a correct moral judgement, you have to know the facts and in most situations, unless they were very vocalised, we – even fairly senior members of a fighting unit – could hardly know all the facts. So, we would have to be very, very careful and very sure indeed before we had the right to say, ‘I won’t obey’. Also, we have to take into account the safety of the fighting unit of which we are part and if our action is going to in any way weaken it’s safety or it’s fighting efficiency, then again we would have to be extremely careful. I don’t really see that this right of not obeying an order could ever hold except in an very obvious, localised situation; if I was being asked to take an enemy’s life that clearly wasn’t necessary – if he’d already been captured or out of action or something of the sort. At any rate, that is the way that I see it. If you joined the armed forces, you do so presumably because you believe in your country and you believe that your country’s government is basically just and also you believe in the integrity – the moral integrity – of the armed forces. So, it would have to be an extreme situation and a localised one where you could exercise that right. If you exercise it, you clearly then have to take the consequences, but you do it because you’re utterly convinced that what you’re being asked to do is morally wrong.

35:00: The very, very difficult question of interrogation by force and this is something that I find myself wrestling with, but of course I’m hampered by the fact that I don’t really know much about it. Again, you have poverty of terminology, the only word really is torture and the moment you hear torture, you recoil, you think ‘no surely that cannot be right’. Certainly, if extreme physical force and inflicting of pain is going to be used habitually, then there are strong reasons against it. Number 1, the habitual use of torture for interrogation degrades the person who uses it, certainly it is against the natural law and thirdly, it will escalate the level of violence. Of course, I suppose in a World War like World War 2, that’s a bit different because everything is at stake and the level of violence is so high that it could hardly be escalated. But in other conflicts, undoubtedly it does. But then you have to say, suppose I am taken prisoner and I have information which is absolutely vital to the enemy, suppose I’d been taken prisoner a few days before D-Day, in 1944, and I knew when and where the landing was coming. Now, could I really expect those who held me not to use all the force they could to get it out of me? I don’t think I could. The only thing that I could say -and I’m sure you’ll feel that this is a contradiction in itself - is that if we have to use under such extreme circumstances desperate means to get information out of somebody, we should try to do it in such a way that we don’t degrade him as a human person, if that is possible. I think there are forms of torture which are different from the use of force that you might have to use in such an extreme emergency. Perhaps we can discuss it …

37:43: Finally, nuclear weapons … When I say nuclear weapons, I really mean the nuclear deterrent. My own personal view is this: that nations only go to war as a result of a calculated, reasoned decision, believing that they will gain more from going to war, whether in defence or offence, then by not going to war. They don’t go to war by accident, and they don’t go to war just driven by an impulsive emotion. Now, with the scale of nuclear weapons – between the West and the Soviet Union – it is impossible, so far as anybody can foresee, to resort to a nuclear use without being hit yourself to such a point that you receive unacceptable damage and destruction. In other words, I do not see how you could go to war – if it’s going to involve nuclear war – and gain. You would in effect, be committing suicide and I don’t believe that any nation is going to do that. So, I have a firm conviction that the nuclear deterrent is in fact a guarantee against major war between the nuclear powers. And it is on that, in my view, that the morality of possessing nuclear weapons, for the purpose of deterrents, rests. I think it gives us time to negotiate balanced, mutual, assured reduction – to reduce tension in the world – and to build up the institutions of peace, so that gradually we can move away from the possibility of war between major nations as a means of settling disputes. But we have to acknowledge that we’re faced with ideological state systems that are incompatible one with another – the Soviet Union and the West. There is a deep conflict between the two and therefore we are in a position of danger. I would say, as part of the morality of the nuclear deterrent, we should be doing everything in our power to eradicate injustice throughout the world. The more we can solve local injustices, the more we can attack the poverty of the developing nations and reduce the feeling of bitterness they’ve got against us because of that gap. It seems to me, the more we are reducing the possibility of armed conflict – armed defence is essential, but it is not on itself enough – so that other aspect comes into it to. I’d be please to try and discuss other aspects of nuclear weapons in discussion time, if you like.

41:43: But just to conclude – to sum up. Firstly, there can never be a handbook for what is right and wrong. If we want to be in a position to make a correct moral judgement, we must think and talk about morality here and now, throughout our lives. We may only go to war when it is in self-defence, but if we don’t see that our country is defended, then we may well bring upon ourselves a war that would never have happened. And it’s my own humble view that we made precisely that mistake in the Falklands. If we’d had a larger military presence there, the invasion would have never taken place. It took place because it was obvious that it would be very easy – a walk over, they’d be no response. In a tiny way, it’s what happened in the 1930s. If we were not in a position to keep a military force or presence there, well then we should have negotiated some other political arrangement.

43:13: When it comes to fighting, our first duty is to win. Our first duty, even in the moral order in my view, is to be absolutely proficient in our profession as members of the armed forces. Morality presupposes that we are absolutely professional as soldiers. But we have to fight in such as way, that at the end of it there will be a better and more secure peace. We have to win, but we have to win with honour. If you think that is contradictory, I don’t believe it is. There may well be situations in a war, in a battle, where for the interests – the long-term interests of human respect and justice – you may have to withhold your fire, even for a temporary set-back, because more will be gained in the long-run. Above all, we all need to be men of peace. We need to show we have the interests of the whole human family at heart, not just our own and this we need to show in peace time – in our daily lives. So that the nation, those who take different views, will believe that we have the same goal as they do, we just differ on the means.

45:00: Gentlemen, thank you for having listened to me and I look forward to our discussion.

45:05: End of Speech.

45:06 [Musical Interlude] to 46:58

46:58: Recording Ends.

End of Transcription.