Toxic warrior identity, accountability and moral risk/ Jessica Wolfendale and Stoney Portis

Academics working on military ethics and serving military personnel rarely have opportunities to talk to each other in ways that can illuminate their respective experiences and approaches to the ethics of war. This article draws on the experiences of First Lieutenant (1LT) Portis’s experiences in combat to provide a unique examination of questions about the relationship between oversight, accountability, and the idea of moral risk in military operations. In this article, we outline a particular experience of 1LT Portis’s that formed the basis of our discussions, before elucidating the ethical issues this experience raised. In particular, we see 1LT Portis’s experience as, first, illustrative of the problem of moral risk, when military personnel are placed in situations of moral temptation. The problem of moral risk, we propose, is best understood through the framework of the military’s duty of care. Second, we see his experience as highlighting tensions within the dominant moralized warrior model of the military profession. What we call a toxic warrior identity can negatively affect the attitudes of military personnel toward rules, policies, procedures, and accountability mechanisms. In conclusion, we address the need to balance concerns about toxic warrior identity with legitimate criticisms of an overly demanding bureaucracy.

WARRIOR IDENTITY, PROFESSIONALISM, MORAL INJURY, NEWARTICLS