Morality and Warfare, and why Democracies also cause devastation to Battlefields

Morality has a place in war, just not where most believe it belongs.

I want to make a case for moral warfare, a rejection of the disregard for human life, but without ignoring the tactical and operational reality of war.

Soviet POWs being used by Germany to cover the mass grave after the massacre, October 1941

North-east of the center of Kyiv, Ukraine, lies Babyn Yar—a ravine, a quiet urban park, and today a memorial site for one of history’s worst single mass killings of civilians. Between September 29 and 30, 1941, nearly 35,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered by Nazi forces. These were some of the earliest victims of what would become the organized Holocaust.

Babyn Yar is more than a site of atrocity. It is a moment of revelation—a point at which the genocidal intent of the Nazi regime became unmistakable. The SS Einsatzgruppen, or “deployment groups,” carried out the massacre in response to a bombing that had targeted a German headquarters in Kyiv. But to be clear: this was not retaliation. It was, once again, the Nazi regime using an act of war as a pretext to murder Jews en masse, a scapegoating pattern seen repeatedly across occupied Europe.

I wanted to introduce this post with this, because this is a genocide, masked as a justifiable penal action against armed resistance. It serves as a case study to the question: Does morality exist in war?

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To approach this subject, I will distinguish between two levels of warfare: the strategic and the tactical. These are not merely technical terms. Strategy is concerned with purpose and direction; tactics are concerned with immediate action and effectiveness. What appears tactically sound may be a strategic blunder—and vice versa.

To be realistic, the tactical reality of war rarely grants a participant the luxury of moral decision-making.

A standard example for this goes like this:

You are an Allied infantry officer in Western Europe in the autumn of 1944. Under your command is a rifle company with access to armored, artillery, or air support. Ahead lies a small village—your next objective. Intelligence suggests a substantial enemy presence inside, alongside civilians who have not yet been evacuated.

You face a brutal decision:
Do you risk the lives of your soldiers by ordering a house-to-house assault, likely incurring heavy casualties? Or do you call in artillery or an airstrike to soften the target, protecting your men, but almost certainly endangering the civilian population in the process?

The vast majority of Combat Officers in Western Armed Forces will choose the path of least resistance. Throughout history, but especially during the Second World War, this was especially apparent. Because of their democratic forms of government and the reliance on public will, the Allied Powers adopted a “steel instead of flesh” policy regarding military force to combat the Axis powers. It is no surprise that the Armed Forces of the United States of America, the British Empire, and other allied powers were the most heavily motorized forces at that time. In addition to that, the Western Allies relied heavily, more so than their Soviet or German counterparts, on massed, modern artillery and air power to limit their own casualties as much as possible.

This led to the tragic irony that it was the Western Democratic Powers, whose firepower, while not intended to commit mass murder, caused significant harm to civilian populations in all of Western Europe.

Of course, this fact is often distorted. In particular, revisionist neo-Nazis, especially in parts of Europe and notably in Germany, attempt to weaponize these truths to relativize the crimes of Nazi Germany, justify genocide, or promote a myth of German victimhood. This is not only false, but morally bankrupt.

These people are wrong. As I have argued before, the actions of the Western Allies during World War II—though often harsh—were largely justified. Their strategic objectives were defensive in nature and lacked any genocidal intent or systematic violations of human dignity.

Even the worst aspects of the Allied War effort, the bombardment of Europe and Asia, were justified as they were means to a clearly defined end; absolute victory as quickly, cheaply and efficiently as possible through the depletion of Axis Air Forces, the disruption of industrial production, and the demoralization of the Axis populations. Additionally must be said that Allied countries were largely spared from such devastation through strategic bombardment, not because of Axis kindness towards their enemies, but the lack of technological and military capabilities to do so on their own. One does not need to be very imaginative to conclude what a German or Japanese strategic bombardment of the United States, Canada, Australia, and so on would have looked like.

The Allies engaged in a strategic bombing campaign to win a war, while the Axis forces integrated the ideological goal of ethnic cleansing, of systematic genocide, into their strategy and tactics right from the start of the hostilities, be it 1939 in Europe, or the 1931 Invasion of China by the Japanese Empire. Massacres of Allied civilians, the Holocaust, and all the other countless atrocities by the Axis forces were not accidental or byproducts; they were ends in themselves. Their violence served no practical purpose and was unproductive to the war effort, and in many cases counterproductive, and thus unnecessary and excessive. The example I mentioned at the start, Babi Yar, is a case of such unnecessary brutality.

Thus, I argue morality exists in war; it is just not immediately on the battlefields, but instead in the speeches, the laws, and declarations of warring nations and the political and military leaders tasked with grand strategy. Every war brings suffering to civilians, but not all such instances were caused by genocidal intention or any kind of xenophobia; it must be sadly recognized, as in most extreme situations, the children and the elderly as the most vulnerable.

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The War in Gaza and Ukraine

In recent years, we have seen many people from various backgrounds defend Russian war crimes in Ukraine as military in nature, as necessary; others downplay the genocidal intent of the October 7th Invasion of Israel by the religious extremist terrorist organization, Hamas, while misrepresenting the Israeli war effort in Gaza as inherently genocidal.

These examples reveal a larger misunderstanding and an increasingly popular abuse of morality to justify one’s own biases and opinions. While official death counts amongst Ukrainian citizens are still limited, we can tell from the atrocities committed by the Russian Armed Forces, like the massacre of Bucha, the “evacuation” of at least tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, especially children, we can tell from speeches by Kremlin TV propagandists, and the highest politicial and military officials od the Russian state that the destruction of Ukrainian national and cultural identity is at least a part of Russias political goals in Ukraine. The intent is obvious, and we can understand that the sole reason Ukrainian identity persists lies in the successful defensive effort of the Ukrainian nation, aided by Western allies.

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Hamas and Israel are a different topic, where the use of emotionally charged vocabulary is increasingly prevalent amongst Western Democracies. Instead of recognizing the root of Palestinian suffering in Gaza as the terrorist organization Hamas, many are quick to point to Israel. A democratic republic, not dissimilar to the previously mentioned Western Allies during World War Two. One can criticize the civilian suffering in Gaza, I do as well, but it often seems that many critics are less concerned with restoring peace to Gaza than with indicting Israel as inherently evil. Often by accusing Israel of pursuing the same goal as Nazi Germany, or Japan in the 1930s and 40s.
Not only is that a relativization of the worst genocides of the 20th century, but a complete misunderstanding of the War in Gaza.

Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel, launched a genocidal invasion against Israel on October 7th, 2023. Israel, similar to the United States after 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or Great Britain in 1939, has been on the defensive for almost 2 years. To clarify, a defensive war does not imply that one is obliged to spare the territory of the enemy. International law explicitly enables the defender to use everything at their disposal necessary to put an end to armed aggression, no matter if the invader is a fully recognized government or a terrorist organization.

Gaza, geographically speaking, is relatively densely populated, remotely comparable to major European population centres. Thus, any major war between two de facto militaries was always prone to result in great civilian suffering. Urban warfare, as we saw in Baghdad, Fallujah, Stalingrad, Kyiv, Berlin, and many more instances, has always produced the ugliest pictures of modern war. Nobody who is a serious Zionist, who supports Israel due to its modern society rooted in the enlightenment, and a democratic system of government, supports the death of civilians in combat zones.

However, the civilian suffering in Gaza has not exceeded the suffering of any other urban war throughout history. Genocide is a very harsh accusation; it should be used sparingly, not only to refrain from distorting its gravitas, but to be respectful to victims of undeniable genocides. Israel is a liberal democracy, similar in its flaws and strengths to almost any other democracy on earth, and as I explained before, democratic warfare is not exceptionally ethical.

Democracies have unique inherent weaknesses when compared to autocracies; they have a loud and self-aware civilian populace, who are not trained to be immoral servants of a tyrant. Democratic societies will question the morality of their government. Democracies are also restrained by popular sentiment; the will of a people to support a war dwindles the longer a war goes on, and war fatigue sets in.

Therefore, because of internal realities, Democracies are required to limit casualties and achieve as many political and military objectives within a short timeframe.

In the case of Israel, though, many of these factors have been made irrelevant due to the immense political capital Hamas gave the government of Israel by committing the worst atrocities against Jewish people since 1945. The population of Israel is faced with an existential enemy; thus, calls for restraint are unlikely to have much public support.

In proportional terms, the October 7th massacre was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust—akin to 9/11, but even more devastating relative to Israel’s population. We all know how the American government, but most importantly, the American people, responded to the 9/11 attacks. The war on terror occupied much of American strategic thinking in the first 20 years of the 21st century, it tied up a significant portion of the Pentagon’s firepower, and it was equally seen as morally grey or as outright illegal by much of the international community.

We have seen past instances of democratic nation states commit morally questionable acts in the face of a perceived or real existential threat. Israel and its war in Gaza are not exceptional.

But Israel, as a Jewish nation state, is, and I argue that is the primary concern of many who condemn Israeli actions in Gaza.

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I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. Please keep it civil.

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