“Conventional” military operations, in which the uniformed military forces of one state engage with an equivalent force of another state, have become the exception rather than the norm in contemporary warfare. Instead, military forces now more often find themselves pitted against non-state (or hybrid) opponents who avoid symmetric military engagements, preferring to seek shelter among civilian populations while employing a range of asymmetric guerrilla and terrorist tactics in operations located in the 'grey zone' between war and peace. For their part, national forces are obliged to negotiate the complexities associated with of fighting on urban terrain, managing refugees, cooperating with coalition partners, managing relationships with surrogate forces, gaining the trust of local tribes, contending with host nation group rivalries, resolving cultural tensions and building a stable and lasting peace.
These obligations considerably complicate the existing challenges of conducting operations in a manner consistent with the legal, ethical and social norms for the use of military force. Military leaders must, therefore, be conversant with the relevant moral conventions and ethical principles associated with armed conflict and familiar with the decision-making techniques needed to apply them in a way that will enable success in complex environments. Leaders must concurrently be acquainted with the gap between the individual moral frameworks found in multi-cultural liberal democratic societies and the international treaties and domestic laws that regulate the use of military force. This course addresses the context in which complex operations are conducted, the issues associated with using force in complicated socio-political and religious environments, and the demands this context and these issues impose on uniformed leadership. Course material draws on insights from the study of applied ethics, moral philosophy, moral psychology and related disciplines with a focus on enhancing and extending the practice of leadership.
