FROM AT LEAST as early as the Trojan War, military leaders have sought to achieve tactical and strategic surprise.Although an ancient military principle, the importance of surprise has by no means diminished with the passage of time.If anything, as advances in technology have increased the tempo of warfare, they also have made surprise more important (albeit more difficult) to achieve. 

Recognition of the vital role that deception of all kinds plays in military operations is clearly evident in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum of Policy 116: “Historically, military deception has proven to be of considerable value in the attainment of national security objectives, and a fundamental consideration in the development and implementation of military strategy and tactics.Deception has been used to enhance, exaggerate, minimize, or distort capabilities and intentions; to mask deficiencies; and to otherwise cause desired appreciations where conventional military activities and security measures were unable to achieve the desired result.”[1]

That deception is now, and for the foreseeable future will be, an essential component of U.S. military tactics, operations, and strategy is clear.The Joint Chiefs continue: “The development of a deception organization and the exploitation of deception opportunities are considered to be vital to national security.To develop deception capabilities, including procedures and techniques for deception staff components, it is essential that deception receive continuous command emphasis in military exercises, command post exercises, and in training operations.”[2]

The Moral-Philosophical Problem

For moral philosophers, statements of this kind invite an important question:"Why, in a profession deeply rooted in and deeply concerned with moral values, might one hold that deception of any kind is morally acceptable?"The position that deception is morally permissible as long as it is directed toward one's enemies presents a host of difficulties. Certainly, in private conduct, one is almost never given moral license to act in an intentionally deceptive way.Moreover, governments (at least democratic ones) are rarely, if ever, recognized as having the right to deceive those subject to them, even if the deception is for an ostensibly good aim. 

Because deception involves the intentional misleading of moral agents, it seems to be tantamount to lying.To the extent that this is true, the claim that military deception is morally acceptable appears to be riddled with theoretical difficulties.In order to appreciate the magnitude of the moral-philosophical problem at issue, consider, for example (among many possible examples), the Kantian position on the moral status of lying.Kant holds that there exists no condition in which lying constitutes other than a morally blameworthy act.According to Kant, even if one defines lying as nothing more than “an intentionally untruthful declaration to another man,”[3] one still could not be justified in concluding that the lie did no harm.“For a lie always harms another; if not some other [specific] human being, then it nevertheless does harm to humanity in general, inasmuch as it vitiates the very source of right.”[4]If Kant is right, then lying in the context of armed international disputes should be a matter of particularly acute moral concern for soldier and noncombatant alike, because everyone -- both soldiers and noncombatants -- could fall victim to its ill effects.One of the most obvious ill effects of lying would be the erosion of confidence in any utterance made on behalf of a nation or its military.As Kant argues, “truthfulness is a duty that must be regarded as the basis of all duties founded on contract, and the laws of such duties would be rendered uncertain and useless if even the slightest exception to them were admitted.To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is, therefore, a sacred and unconditionally commanding law of reason that admits of no expediency whatsoever.”[5]Because Kant’s prohibition against lying is absolute by reason of its being “an unconditional duty which holds in all circumstances,”[6] the necessity to avoid it would seem to constitute a duty that extends both to soldiers on the battlefield and to the war-making politicians who direct them.

Whether one views lying from the Kantian perspective or from the perspective of some other standard framework of moral philosophy, the general disapproval of lying by the Western philosophical tradition is clear.Even though certain instances of lying might gain approbation under the terms of some (say, certain consequentialist) accounts of morality, still at least it may be said that to the extent that one regards lying as an intrinsically evil practice, the prohibition against it is necessarily absolute.Hence, if military deception amounts to nothing more than a specialized kind of lie, on what moral-philosophical grounds is it possible to justify it?

Three alternatives present themselves as possible accounts for the moral status of military deception:

We have already encountered the first alternative: simply to argue that military deception is tantamount to lying.In this case, as argued above, the practice seems difficult if not impossible to justify on moral-philosophical grounds.(Moreover, as a practical matter, while this alternative admits an elegant solution, namely, the discontinuance of all deceptive practices in war, it is by far the most difficult to imagine being put into multilateral practice within the international community.) 

The second alternative is to adopt the position of the military realist and to argue that although military deception may be nothing more than a kind of lying, because ‘all is fair in war,’ one need not have any moral scruples concerning its practice.However, this is totally unacceptable for adoption by the armed forces of the United States because it involves a moral stance that runs altogether counter to the demands of the customary law of war, the international treaties relative to the humane conduct of war, the Federal statutes that govern the conduct of U.S. military personnel, and the value system which the U.S. armed forces claims to espouse.

The third and perhaps most promising alternative is to argue that military deception is, in fact, something essentially different from lying as understood by Kant, such that the set of all morally permissible military deceptions is not coextensive with the set of all lies, as shown in the following Venn diagram:

This seems to be the position adopted almost universally by the prominent legalists and just war theorists since the Middle Ages.What is wanting, however, is an adequate account of how lying and military deception differ, and hence, of how military deception might be understood to constitute, within certain specifiable parameters, a morally acceptable activity.

Military Deception as an Institutionalized Practice

The law of land warfare makes specific provision for deceptions of various kinds.For example, the Hague Convention of 1907 succinctly states that “Ruses of war and the employment of measures necessary for obtaining information about the enemy and the country are considered permissible.”[7]However, it also states that “it is especially forbidden . . . To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army [or] To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy, as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva Convention [e.g. the red cross symbol, etc.].”[8]With respect to the duties of parlementaires appointed to enter into communications with an enemy, the convention states:“The parlementaire loses his rights of inviolability if it is proved in a clear and incontestable manner that he has taken advantage of his privileged position to provoke or commit an act of treachery.”[9]

The Geneva Convention provides a somewhat expanded treatment of the same themes:

It is prohibited to kill, injure, or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under rules of international law applicable to armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy.The following acts are examples of perfidy:

the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;

the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;

the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and

the feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.[10]

The Geneva Convention then offers a useful insight as to why certain kinds of deception in war are at least legally, if not morally, justifiable.It explains that "Ruses of war" such as involve the use of camouflage, decoys, mock operations, and misinformation are not prohibited because, while they may cause an adversary to act recklessly, they do not constitute acts that an adversary should not expect to occur as a part and parcel of war.[11]

"Good Faith"

Consistent with this principle, one might argue that because war is itself a social phenomenon, it presupposes a shared understanding among its participants of the social practices it entails.This is so even if the participants do not agree on the particular details of how war ought justly to be executed.As pertaining to the question, “What constitutes morally permissible deception in the context of war?” there seems to emerge from the writings of the canonical figures of just war theory the common view that the moral permission to deceive in war is not unlimited.Moral permission to deceive one’s enemy appears to be constrained largely by the jus ad bellum dictate that peace must be the ultimate objective of war, and that, accordingly, the only violent actions morally permissible in war are those that will hasten the restoration of a just and lasting peace. 

With this in mind, the idea of "good faith" imposes itself as the sine qua non of morally acceptable military deceptions.The relationship between peace as the ultimate objective of war and the expectation of good faith becomes evident in the words of 

de Vattel: without good faith, “War would degenerate into cruel and unrestrained acts of violence and there would be no limit to its calamities. . . . If there were no longer any faith between enemies, the only certain end to a war would be the complete destruction of one of the parties.”[12]

Why is it that the absence of good faith would destroy any basis for the restoration of peace?It is because the absence of good faith implies the intention by those who lack it not to comply with rationally shared expectations.Thus, without good faith, the absence of which is implied by the perpetration of illicit deceptions, there exists no rational basis for the minimization either of violence or of suffering, and hence no expectation that a just and lasting peace is actually the true aim toward which the war is prosecuted.As Grotius observes, 

Rightly . . . Cicero says that ‘it is an impious act to destroy the good faith which holds life together’.To use Seneca’s phrase, it is ‘the most exalted good of the human heart’.And this good faith the supreme rulers of men ought so much the more earnestly maintain as they violate it with greater impunity; if good faith shall be done away with, they will be like wild beasts, whose violence all men fear.Justice, it is true, in its other aspects often contains elements of obscurity; but the bond of good faith is in itself plain to see, nay more, it is brought into use to so great an extent that it removes all obscurity from business transactions.[13]

But how does the concept of good faith assist in the determination of what counts as a morally allowable military deception?Clausewitz observes that “war is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.”[14]To think of war as a duel is useful in the present context because it highlights the fact that both duels and wars presuppose the observance of certain conventions or practices and thus carry with them certain expectations.For example, a duel presupposes that the duelers will separate themselves a mutually agreed number of paces and that they each will fire at the other a certain number of shots in a mutually agreed manner.Therefore, if the shared expectation is that the duelers will separate themselves by an interval of, say, ten paces, and then turn and fire one shot, then, if one of the duelers turns after five paces and fires multiple shots, that dueler has clearly failed to act in good faith.

Perhaps a richer analogy might issue from a sport such as American football.This example is valuable for the fact that it features the shared expectation that each team deliberately will attempt to deceive the other.By any account, a football play that is successful by reason of its embodying a well-conceived and skillfully executed deception deserves the commendations of friend and foe alike.Indeed, it is entirely normal for a team that has fallen prey to its opponent’s deceptions to praise the opposing team for its demonstrated skill.However, that does not mean that the permission to deceive is unlimited as long as it constitutes a demonstration of skill.For example, if a team scored a touchdown with a play that included passing the ball out of bounds, into the spectator stand, through the stand from one spectator to another, and then back into bounds in close proximity to the goal, that team would receive fully justified scorn for the play.Clearly, this is so because the game of football includes no shared expectation that touchdowns be scored in a manner that requires the ball to be passed first out of bounds and then back in bounds.More accurately stated, it positively includes the shared expectation that all points will be scored as the result of play conducted completely within the boundaries of the playing field.Note that rules themselves are not sacrosanct; they are changed from time to time under the direction of organizations that govern the sport.Hence, it is not the presence or absence of any particular rule or practice that counts as an illicit act, per se; it is the violation of shared expectations concerning the extant rules, whatever the rules might be.

The same might be said of war as a social practice.For example, de Vattel, writing in 1758, observes, “It is reported that since the commencement of the present hostilities between France and England, an English frigate came within sight of the coast of France and made signals of distress in order to decoy out some vessel, and thereupon seized the boat and made prisoners of the sailors who generously went to its aid.”[15]He comments that “If the report be true, the contemptible trick deserves severe punishment.”[16]He then provides the justification for his position:"It [acting in bad faith by using a sign which, by commonly understood and accepted convention, is expected to be reserved for bona fide conditions of distress] tends to prevent the giving of charitable assistance, so sacred a duty among men, and so commendable even between enemies.”[17]“Besides,” he concludes, “to make signals of distress is to ask men for help, and thus impliedly to promise perfect safety to those who give it.Hence the act attributed to the frigate was a detestable breach of good faith.”[18]

We come now full circle to the question of whether it is, in fact, morally permissible to deceive in warfare in the light of the almost universal moral prohibition against lying, or deliberate deception.A possible answer to the question is that military deception is morally permissible because of the shared expectations that arise from the nature of war as a highly specialized form of social intercourse.Properly speaking, war is not a normal social setting.Hence, it admits of certain highly specialized -- and highly specifiable -- exceptions to the normal set of moral expectations for human conduct.For example, war permits the taking of human life, the restriction of personal freedom without due process of law, the destruction of public and private property, deprivation of the necessities of life, and so forth.It is at least plausible, therefore, that an institution that allows these things, and counts them as morally acceptable within the institutional context, could likewise allow deceptive practices that it counts as morally acceptable.

Given this approach to understanding military deception, it is possible to argue that lying per se and military deception are, in fact, morally incommensurable in the same way that murder and the execution of persons convicted of committing a capital offense (or the taking of lives of combatants in war) are, by some accounts at least, morally incommensurable.To the extent that lying and military deception may be found to differ, one may argue that they are subject to significantly different criteria (some of which may overlap but not necessarily so) for moral evaluation. 

Problems

Admittedly, this approach offers little for those who draw no moral distinctions between such things as murder and capital punishment.For that matter, it may be that those who find this solution to be morally deficient will encounter similar difficulties finding a moral justification for war at all.However, it should be recalled that the just war tradition is based upon a very strong presumption against war; it merely maintains that if a nation finds itself unavoidably confronted with the prospect of war, that nation is morally bound to ensure that it both enters into and prosecutes the war as justly as possible, and in a manner that minimizes suffering and facilitates the restoration of peace.With that in mind, it likewise should be noted that deception has been used many times in warfare to hasten the accomplishment of these ends.

For one who holds that military deception is merely an example of a special kind of lie, the original tension between the position that one is never justified in lying and the position that identifies war time as a permissible exception to the otherwise absolute prohibition against lying remains unresolved.The tradition that allows for military deception includes numerous safeguards designed to prevent abuse of the permission, granted by the tradition, to deceive an enemy.Nevertheless, if lying is an activity that rightly belongs to the set of those things that humankind should recognize as categorically morally forbidden, then no number of safeguards on the permission to lie or deceive in war will serve to eliminate the logical contradiction.Conversely, if military deception as sanctioned in the West is, in fact, something that should be regarded as morally permissible, then one of two conclusions must obtain: either the prohibition against lying is not absolute, or military deception is not lying per se.

At first blush, one might be tempted to dismiss the argument that lying and military deception are fundamentally different as a sleight-of-hand trick -- an attempt to have one’s philosophical cake and eat it too.Nevertheless, the argument that lying, by its very nature, always involves a breach of faith, whereas morally permissible military deception, by its very nature, never involves a breach of faith appears to offer a reasonable basis for distinguishing the two phenomena.Indeed, those who have addressed the topic throughout the history of Western warfare -- particularly within the context of the just war tradition -- have almost universally agreed that military deception, if practiced in good faith (i.e., in such a way that no explicitly made promises are broken and that no implicitly understood obligations to one’s enemy are disregarded), is morally acceptable by reason of its being mutually understood, at least tacitly sanctioned, and institutionalized as a regular practice among participants in warfare.

Another criticism which one might be tempted to levy against this argument is that if deception is immoral for individuals, it also must be immoral when it is perpetrated by the state.However, the state has long been recognized as competent to act in certain ways that individuals are not.For example, the state can proscribe or mandate certain behaviors, and it can take measures to enforce compliance with its edicts.It can try a person for life or limb, and it can imprison or execute those found to have defied its authority.More relevant to the present study, it can both declare war and prosecute the war by a variety of means, to include the practice of military deception.A private citizen -- or more properly, one acting in the capacity of a private citizen -- can do none of these things.Even one who acts as an instrumentality of the state can act only in ways that the state directs.

Of course, this does not mean that the state can do whatever it pleases without the need to concern itself with moral boundaries.Suffice it to say, however, that whatever problems this concern might raise for military deception, it also raises for any and all other activities that are morally forbidden to individuals but traditionally permitted to states.The crucial point for present purposes is that military deception as codified in the extant international treaties poses no additional theoretical problems that would lead one to conclude that the practice should be evaluated separately from, say, the practice of lying to suspects of crimes in police interviews as a part of the criminal investigative process.Both activities, right or wrong, are done at the behest of the state, and both activities claim moral justification at least on the consequentialist grounds that the overall good of humankind is better served by these activities than not.

This proposed solution in no way authorizes soldiers to deceive an enemy while acting in a private capacity.The permission to deceive, when it exists at all, extends only to persons who are acting in their official capacity as instruments of the state in the same way that an executioner acts as an instrument of the state when administering capital punishment.Of particular interest on this point is Plato’s argument that governments, acting on behalf, and in the collective interest, of the governed, can indeed lie: “The rulers . . . of the city may . . . fitly lie on account of enemies . . . for the benefit of the state.”[19]However, he quickly adds that no such entitlement extends to anyone except the rulers acting for the good of the state: “for a layman to lie to rulers of that kind [i.e., the political leadership] we shall affirm to be as great a sin, nay a greater, than it is for a patient not to tell his physician or an athlete his trainer the truth about his bodily condition, or for a man to deceive the pilot about the ship and the sailors as to the real condition of himself or a fellow sailor, and how they fare.”[20]Plato is adamant on this point because lies told to advance the cause of individuals, and not the cause of the collective good of the state, are by their very nature destructive to the state.

In company with these concerns, it should likewise be noted that what I have called the principle of shared expectations is not totally without difficulties.For example, it may be (and probably is) the case that not all cultures share precisely the same set of expectations concerning what is morally acceptable as wartime conduct.By way of analogy, consider the case in which a soccer team (that plays strictly by the rules of soccer) engages in a contest with a rugby team (that plays strictly by the rules of rugby).From the perspective of the soccer team, its opponent may appear to play with no rules at all.From the perspective of the rugby team, its opponent may appear to be unnecessarily particular in its insistence that the game be played in a ‘restrictive’ way.Both teams are playing by the rules -- their rules -- but neither team can have realistic expectations concerning the other team’s conduct on the playing field.Some will agree that this analogy illustrates important aspects of the British experience in the Boer Wars or of the American experience in Viet Nam: a rule-bound (if not generally rule-abiding) army engaged in combat against a guerilla force that, from the perspective of the former, did not conceive of war as an activity bound by moral rules.

Indeed, a guerilla force might raise a white flag of truce for the express purpose of luring a just opponent into an ambush.Some armies might conceal military headquarters in hospitals or send civilian children or other noncombatants into enemy camps to gain intelligence or to commit hostile acts against unsuspecting combatants.Deceptions such as these that involve breaches of good faith have always been present in combat and probably always will be.However, the fact that they exist does not justify the position that war should be fought, and deceptions perpetrated, without the restraint of rules.If both parties to a conflict practice illicit deceptions, then any hope for a speedy restoration of peace is greatly diminished.Failure to appreciate this point has led some to justify unlimited acts of violence, such as occurred in the My Lai massacre in 1968, that cannot meaningfully be described as moral by means of any rational account.Indeed, a nation might well be justified in suspending recognition of an unfaithful enemy’s flag of truce, in revoking the protected status of an enemy’s hospitals when its hospitals have been used as military command posts, or in treating as combatants any civilian who acts with hostile intent; but it is almost impossible to imagine a circumstance involving breaches of faith that would justify rapes, summary executions, and mutilations as occurred in the My Lai massacre. 

Finally, one can admit a certain discomfort over the analogies used in this argument.Notwithstanding the explanatory value of analogies that liken war to duels or football games, these analogies naturally have a pernicious quality about them; their seeming innocence can, if one is not careful, anesthetize one to the genuine horrors of war.The taking of human life is a serious thing, whenever it occurs.So is deception.My claim is not that deception -- even the limited case of military deception -- encourages the moral behavior of individuals and nations.Quite the contrary, any grant of permission to deceive under any circumstances is likely to have the insidious effect of self-propagation, of justifying its use in other morally questionable circumstances.Rather, my claim is simply this: The ends of morality would be served best by the termination of all wars and the realization of universal peace.However, given the inevitability of war in the present human condition, the next best way to serve the ends of morality is to conduct war in a way that ameliorates suffering and hastens the restoration of just and lasting peace.To the extent that military deception contributes to the realization of this imperfect aim, the claim -- its difficulties notwithstanding -- that military deception, as institutionalized in Western warfare, is a morally permissible practice appears to be one that will withstand honest philosophical scrutiny.

All of these difficulties merit careful reflection, and I do not wish to suggest that these brief reflections have served to lay them entirely to rest.I do, however, submit that the account offered here of the moral status of military deception accurately describes the logic that the Western world has used for over two millennia to determine which wartime deceptions can be tolerated on moral grounds and which cannot, to wit: that all acts of military deception be circumscribed by the imperative to act in, and only in, good faith in all of one’s dealings with an enemy.Whether that logic is altogether satisfactory, or whether humankind should take a different collective approach to its moral assessment of military deception is perhaps an interesting question, but one beyond the scope of this study.

A Word About "Institutionalization"

The idea of institutionalization as it has been invoked in this argument is one that merits specific comment.Institutionalized practices are practices that the members of a group share and that they expect others within the institution to observe.For example, Western society expects, as evidenced by The Hague and Geneva Conventions, that parties to international agreements (such as cease-fire agreements, peace treaties, non-aggression pacts, etc.) will regard those agreements as inviolable.By the same token, Western society also expects that participants in war will aggressively seek occasions in which to deceive opponents in war in recognized ways (e.g., sending false communications, feigning movements of combat forces, attacking at unexpected times and places, etc.).Indeed the expectation is so thoroughly entrenched that any party to an armed conflict that refuses to deceive in these and similar ways would be regarded by onlookers from the community of nations as naive in the extreme.

I do not intend to present the idea of ‘institutionalization’ as an argument for moral relativism -- the idea that something is morally right or wrong simply because a segment of society -- or even society as a whole -- wills it so.It is, of course, possible for a society to institutionalize morally repugnant practices (such as genocide in Nazi Germany).Nor do I wish to claim that such moral acceptability as military deception enjoys derives from a hypothetical social contract.Rather, I claim that it derives from the premise, which as best I can ascertain stands as an absolute moral principle, that human beings are obligated to deal with one another in good faith.Imagine, for example, a society in which everyone lied.If everyone lied, then no one would expect anyone else to tell the truth.Hence, there would be no breach of good faith via the act of lying.From this standpoint, the moral repugnance that attaches to lying results from the fact that there does exist among humans the expectation (in principle) that all people ought to tell the truth.Therefore, in reality, the idea of"institutionalization" or "shared expectations" as intended here might itself actually derive from some foundational principle that sounds very much like the Golden Rule.

Beyond the Horizon

The precise nature of the political order that will govern conduct among nations in the twenty-first century is yet unknown.This much, however, seems clear: the extent to which true and lasting peace and cooperation among nations can be established depends upon the extent to which nations trust one another.If nations in the twenty-first century find that they cannot resolve their differences without resorting to war, the wars they fight are likely to be shorter and, all things considered, less bloody if they avoid deceptions that involve breaches of faith.Tactics and technologies may change; government administrations and forms of government may undergo revolution; alliances may form and dissolve; but good faith has an enduring quality because it provides the logical basis for all covenants and promises.Indeed, without good faith, there is no basis for the exercise of any faith that a yet unfulfilled obligation will be fulfilled.One certainly could argue that the nation that sets aside good faith will gain the quickest advantage in war.However, that advantage is almost always short lived because, as human history attests, those who are thus deceived do not soon forget or forgive breaches of faith.Moreover, there is no particular reason to believe that the advent of high-tech military gadgetry will make morally deficient deceptions more desirable options for use on the battlefields of tomorrow.If anything, the highly sophisticated capacity for electronic surveillance that is now propagating around the globe should serve to make attempts at deceptions of all kinds, both licit and illicit, higher-risk propositions than they have been at any time in the past.Hence, it may well be that the challenges facing armies and nations in the third millenium A.D. will be such as demand that the moral dimension of deception operations be evaluated with greater care than ever before.