ABSTRACT
Military ethics as a distinct field, as noted in the General Introduction to this volume, has its chief origins in the efforts of a relatively small number of professional officers serving in the various branches of the U.S. military during the late 1970s and 1980s to reflect on the ethics of the military profession. This stage in the development of military ethics is well illustrated by a book widely recognized as a classic in the field, Malham Wakin’s War, Morality, and the Military Profession (Wakin 1986) and by the establishment of an ad hoc grouping of serving officers from across the various American military branches into what they named JSCOPE: the Joint Services Committee on Professional Ethics, with annual meetings that very quickly drew serving professionals in NATO militaries, and gradually other militaries as well, into ongoing discussions of military ethics as a form of professional ethics. This growth stimulated the development of interest in professional military ethics in these other societies, and it also had the effect of enlarging the field beyond its original boundaries, engaging broader historical and contemporary reflection on ethics and war, drawing the participation of civilians from the public policy arena and academics from various disciplines, and transforming JSCOPE into ISME, the International Society of Military Ethics. But to the immediate point of this section of the present volume, this broader engagement had the effect of enlarging the scope of military ethics from its earlier focus on moral behavior in war to include moral concerns over the decision to initiate the use of military force. The ethics of the war decision now forms a part of military ethics, whereas a generation ago it did not.
