Publication

The traditional view of military ethics requires soldiers to always subordinate their lives to accomplishing the mission and avoiding harm to noncombatants when. In the context of irregular warfare, this subordination forces combatants to assume all the risk since transferring it to civilians is co-extensive with transferring it to the mission. Resolving the absurdity requires reframing the problem. Rather than conceiving military ethical decisions as the observation of restraints on the use of force to meet obligations toward enemy civilians, the central question of military ethics is better described as where does one place risk in the face of certain threats: combatants, non-combatants, or the mission.