Morals Takes Philosophical Look At Military, Civilian Ethical Relationship

By DAVID W. MUNNS, Assistant Editor

MORALS UNDER THE GUN: The Cardinal Virtues, Military Ethics and American Society
by James H. Toner, Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, Feb. 2005. 215 pp. $22.00
ISBN: 0-8131-9135-1

James H. Toner asserts in the first chapter of this book that soldiers are ignorant of philosophy, and most philosophers are ignorant of the military. Yet they are invariably intertwined, and often at odds.

Toner maintains there is a necessary immorality in the military position. Imploring Machiavellian philosophy, he writes modern military ethics exhort soldiers “[not] to lie or cheat or steal when the very essence of combat obliges soldiers to do exactly those things — or much worse.”

Toner recalls a former secretary of defense, William Perry, as saying in a September 1993 U.S. News & World Report article that he “want[ed] to run defense like a business.” And, with that advice, shouldn’t it be permissible for soldiers to advance their own careers by “modified duplicity” if their executive business counterparts do exactly that?

If the avowals in the first chapter were valid, there would be the recognition “that lives and politics are imperfectible,” but military ethics scholars “nonetheless have the responsibility of teaching the difficult truth that the exigencies of military life result, unavoidably, in the occasional commission of ‘immoralities’ and that machinations are not always evil,” Toner writes.

However, by his own admission, almost all of the epigraphs in the first chapter are “deceitful or distorted.” The first chapter “is a hoax” to make readers exasperated at the prospect that immorality is a necessary evil for military service, he writes. And Toner argues throughout the rest of the book that, albeit a romantic concept, the military and true ethics are infused so tightly together that one could not exist without the other.

Tackling the difficult issue of religion, Toner is careful to implore the convictions and moral litmus that one’s personal religion has instilled while discouraging proselytizing. “Using government time, money or resources for purposes of religious propagation is wrong,” he writes. “But it is not wrong — it is, in fact, morally quite ‘on target’ — for government officials and military officers to speak and to behave publicly as they believe privately.”

Toner says that an “accommodationist” approach to military ethics, drawing them close to the ethics and norms of the civilian sector, is misguided. In fact, soldiers ought to transcend civilian ethics for a higher code of standards. “There is no substitute for virtuous, valorous, vigorous leadership,” he insists.

The military is comprised of “ladies and gentlemen” whose ethic is demonstrated, but not acted upon, as “a self-appointed ethical tutor for the nation.” Toner calls American scientist and diplomat Benjamin Franklin one who cultivated such an ideal. Franklin developed a list of virtues that he tried to not deviate from and kept strict written records to monitor his progress.

It is no surprise that Toner, a professor of international relations and military ethics at the Air War College, employs Socratic means of purporting his thoughts. “If we, like Franklin, can follow a list of virtues … can we thereby develop the ideal officer and gentleman? In short, does a list of virtues lead to virtue itself?” he writes. Everything hinges on the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance, according to Toner.

He makes the case that the cardinal virtues are what delineate the ethic of a soldier from the judiciousness of civilian ethical maxims. Toner concludes, “In the end, this book is about good people trying to be good officers. By extension, it is about good people trying to be … good people.”

BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER: The U.S. Naval Academy’s First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality
by Robert J. Schneller Jr., New York: NYU Press, April 2005. 330 pp. $34.00
ISBN: 0-8147-4013-8

Essayist, biographer and poet Peggy Lamson echoes many historians’ assessments that Reconstruction following the Civil War was a “glorious failure.” “Glorious,” according to Lamson, “because it was a beginning, a noble experiment which encouraged Negroes to look forward to the day when race would no longer be a factor in judging men and their capabilities; a failure because, in the end, it only served to sharpen, perhaps irrevocably, the subtle antagonisms which divided whites and blacks.”

During the Reconstruction era, the Navy, too, struggled with the glory and failures present in the rest of society. While the Republican Party was divided by scandal from President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, an economic depression ensued that pitted Southern Reconstruction against the dwindling Northern economy. Concurrently, a new wave of terrorism against African Americans and white Republicans flourished in the South.

Although the Union’s Navy had been somewhat integrated, allowing black sailors to board its ships during the Civil War, never before had the Navy included blacks into its officer corps. But the end of the war brought conciliation for this inequality, and in 1872 the first black cadet midshipman entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Before then, black Americans lacked anyone who would appoint them into the academy. When Robert Brown Elliott, the first black person elected to Congress, took his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870, African Americans finally had a small but significant friend in this branch of government.

Robert J. Schneller Jr., an official historian in the Contemporary History Branch of the Navy’s Naval Historical Center, writes, “As one way of translating his civil rights rhetoric into action, Elliott strove to break the color barrier at the Naval Academy” by nominating James Henry Conyers as a cadet midshipman in June 1872.

But it was more than 70 years before a black midshipman successfully graduated from the Naval Academy.

Breaking the Color Barrier documents the integration of the U.S. Naval Academy by piecing together the stories of the young men who fought for racial equality. It focuses on Midshipman Wesley Brown, who graduated from the academy in 1949, and who was touted by classmate, former President Jimmy Carter, as his “first personal experience with racial integration.”

The book describes not only the history behind the ultimate integration of the academy, but also the character of Brown and others who made perhaps the single biggest impact on erasing stigmatization of African Americans in military service and beyond.

Also Received:

THE NAVAL INSTITUTE GUIDE TO THE SHIPS AND AIRCRAFT OF THE U.S. FLEET
by Norman Polmar, Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, March 2005. 672 pp. $89.95
ISBN: 1-59114-685-2

This almanac provides up-to-date information on the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard from the Cold War to the War on Terror. The triennial volume offers overviews of each branch of service from a renowned naval historian, and includes details of each service’s ships, aircraft, weapons and personnel.

NAVAL SHIPHANDLER’S GUIDE
by James A. Barber Jr., Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, March 2005. 320 pp. $39.95
ISBN: 1-55750-435-0

As the first new guide on naval shiphandling in decades, this book hones beginning and intermediate shiphandlers’ skills to perfect this crucial trade. It covers shiphandling simulators, a topic untouched by previous guides, and provides thorough information on the subject from a skilled shiphandler with years of experience on nearly every type of Navy vessel.

Seapower does not review works of fiction or self-published books.