Strategic responsibility of the Armed Forces when making a political decision on military neutrality

Abstract

In this paper, author aims to identify and define the existence of a special kind of responsibility, i.e. "strategic" responsibility, within the Armed Forces for incomplete and inaccurate reporting regarding real and existing capacities and capabilities for deterrence and protection of military neutrality. In order for proclaimed military neutrality to be recognized and respected by other countries, the neutrality itself has to be viable, i.e. a country that is proclaiming it has to be capable of protecting and defending its neutrality. The potential for deterrence is of the utmost importance in this regard. By analysing the impact that the assessment of capacities and capabilities of the Armed Forces done by military officers has on making a potential political decision about military neutrality, the author points out and highlights the fact that it is not only justified, but also necessary to identify and attribute strategic responsibility within the military for the defined phenomena of incomplete and inaccurate reporting. The author places special emphasis on military officers as the "managers of force". It is not just political decision-makers and politicians who can be held responsible for potential consequences of the wrong decision regarding military neutrality of a country, but also all those who take part in the development of inaccurate and distorted perception of capacities and capabilities for deterrence and protection of such neutrality. By analysing the very phenomenon of incomplete and inaccurate reporting in the military, in this paper the author recognizes and identifies two key causes of this phenomenon - the insufficiently developed moral awareness of military officers about potentially far-reaching and long-lasting implications and consequences of such actions and the irrational attribution of responsibility to officers in the Armed Forces. The author introduces the ethical and logical principle of Kant's dictum to explain the limits of moral responsibility for the military personnel, and also the limits of justification of potential sanctions for officers. The author also suggests several important mechanisms for the optimal removal or at least mitigation of the described key causes of this perilous problem - most importantly, adequate ethical education and continuous ethical training of military officers and all military personnel and critical re-examination of the institutional culture that attributes almost unlimited and irrational responsibility to all military officers for phenomena, processes and practices that they cannot logically be held responsible for, and thus there can be no justified sanctions, both formal and informal, for them. The implementation of these mechanisms would additionally strengthen and further develop the necessary and invaluable strategic culture within the Armed Forces.