The 2020 and 2021 winters have been good to me – with many spectacular ice routes climbed in The Rockies and on the West Coast. Swinging tools into frozen waterfalls never gets less fun. Below is a selection of some of my favourites from the last two winters.

Till next winter!

On 19 November 2020, a redacted version of the Brereton Report was released to the public. While it satisfactorily vindicates years of media reporting, it is sad to reflect on how long it has taken the Australian public to believe what happened.

With the recent establishment of the Office for the Special Investigator, the reckoning for these crimes is finally beginning and many in Australia are now coming to terms with what the report’s findings mean.

My most recent commentary is available here but my voice is not the most important voice. We need to start listening to the Afghan victims. They were never believed. In some ways, they’re still not. From hereonin, this must change.

ABC News (with Patricia Karvelas)

NPR (with Diaa Hadid)

Triple J Hack (with Avani Dias)

The following article appeared in The Conversation

***

Four years into a constant stream of misconduct allegations, it’s hard to know how to process the latest revelations about the actions of Australia’s special forces in Afghanistan.

In village after village — in places like Darwan, Sara Aw, Zangitan, Patan, Sola, Shina, Deh Jawz-e Hasanzai and Jalbay — we have seen plenty of evidence to support allegations that some Australian special operators committed war crimes in Afghanistan. These stories are now a well-entrenched part of the Australian news cycle.

Oddly though, and despite photographic evidence, video evidence, document-based evidence and witness statements from Australians, Afghans and Americans, there are still doubters out there.

Some defence commentators seem to cling to the strange fiction that if an allegation has not been rubber-stamped by the inspector-general of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) or proven in a court, we cannot decide for ourselves whether or not it is true.

As important as Justice Paul Brereton’s long-awaited report into alleged war crimes is though, we do not need his nod of approval to know there is a problem in Australia’s special forces. Something has to change.

Minor changes are not enough

Certainly, there are indications minor changes are already being implemented. According to the army, these changes include the introduction of a new ethics training package and a new special forces selection course.

But this is not enough. Rather than a solution, the special forces selection ritual is actually part of the problem — designed as it is to elevate and separate an anointed few from the rest of the military.

This process, which concludes with the receipt of a specially coloured beret, has many of the classic features of a cult initiation — a central part of the “code of silence” that prevented whistleblowers from coming forward for so long.

Then there is the fact that key figures behind the new ethics training were early critics of the media’s reporting on alleged misdeeds in Afghanistan — with the coverage described as “cheap shots” against Australian soldiers. This denialist viewpoint has remained strong within the command until only recently and seems to persist among some sectors of the public.

Indeed, the most prominent factor that led to these incidents in Afghanistan is the decoupling of special forces from the command relationships and discipline structures of the conventional army.

Currently, Special Operations Command (the umbrella organisation that manages Australia’s special forces) recruits and trains completely separately from the rest of the Army — deploying small groups for a variety of sensitive tasks abroad. But this step away from the rest of the Army (and its long-tested disciplinary norms) appears to have led to all sorts of improprieties in Afghanistan.

Also problematic is the fact those who are implementing the new changes (the chief of the defence force and chief of army) are both ex-special forces officers. This is not to suggest generals Angus Campbell and Rick Burr are compromised in some way — only to point out that extant unit loyalties are formative in any soldier’s thinking.

There are also signs that Burr, in particular, does not understand the cause of the problem.

For example, despite strong evidence that the practice of giving excessive authority to junior leaders created an unaccountable “brotherhood” and a general culture of impunity, Burr continues to describe this “command and control philosophy” as an “imperative” for the special forces.

Disbanding the special forces

Naturally, the fate of Australia’s special forces should ultimately be a captain’s call from Australia’s civilian leadership — perhaps the prime minister himself. And here, there is a compelling argument to be made that the command be disbanded.

To some, this might appear a radical suggestion — a sweeping change without precedent. But military units have been moved, shuffled, re-branded, disbanded and reactivated frequently throughout Australia’s history. Surely, a pattern of war crimes allegations is as good a reason as any to make some major institutional changes.

The Australian Defence Force will, of course, still require a special operations capability for complex operations abroad. Special forces do provide an advanced infantry skill set that is sometimes useful for policymakers — be it for a counter-terrorism raid or light-footprint reconnaissance tasks.

But these needs can be met without continuing to feed billions of dollars to an elite force that is isolated from the rest of the military.

Instead, the Australian Defence Force could create special operations-capable companies in the conventional infantry battalions. This would mean teams of highly-qualified soldiers who are rapidly deployable, but still governed by traditional “green army” rules and strictures.

Rather than being “selected” and cloistered away from the rest of the force, these soldiers would simply be “trained” — that is, up-skilled and returned to line units, ready for special deployments abroad.

This is comparable to the French Groupement des Commandos Parachutistes (GCP) model, in which special operations capabilities are fully integrated with the rest of the force.

It would also be in keeping with the finest history and traditions of the Australian Army. Elite fighting units like the 2/2 Independent Company have previously been integrated with a regular infantry force (as seen with the Sparrow Force during the Battle of Timor in the second world war).

Whatever our leaders decide — and again, it should be stressed the Cabinet must be front and centre in these changes – Australia’s sullied special forces are not salvageable, at least in their current structure.

Irrespective of what the IGADF and Commonwealth prosecutors are able to prove, the organisation has lost its credibility. It must be disbanded.

The following article appeared in Alpinist.

***

Between September 30 and October 2, climbers Ethan Berman (US) and Uisdean Hawthorn (Scotland) completed a new line on the Emperor Face of Yuh-hai-has-kun (Mt. Robson, 3954m), the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. Their climb, Running in the Shadows (VI AI5 M6 A0, 2000m), follows a distinctive gully on the right side of the face.

Running in the Shadows is the culmination of three years of thoughtful preparation. The idea for a new route on the mountain’s most impressive aspect began in the fall of 2017 when Berman, a remote sensing scientist who splits his time between Squamish and Canmore, hiked out to Berg Lake during a work trip to Alberta.

“It was a bluebird and pretty cold day and the wind was just howling over the ridge,” he says of the first time he laid eyes on Mt. Robson’s northwest (Emperor) face. “It was the most beautiful and intimidating face that I’d ever seen and I could just imagine how terrifying it would be to be on the mountain that day. That’s when I spotted the line.”

The line he reconnoitered shares its initial approach pitches with the Kruk-Walsh Route (VI M6, 2000m) before entering a right-trending gully system once the true difficulties of the face begin.

Ethan Berman high on the face, shortly before falling onto his tool leash. [Photo] Uisdean Hawthorn

Logging this information for later, Berman spent the next three seasons honing his skills on classic waterfalls in the Rockies and big routes in Alaska. By the 2020 winter’s end, Berman felt ready to try the unclimbed line, which he attempted in the spring with partner Pete Hoang. Denied by warm temperatures and unfavorable snow conditions, the pair retreated.

After waiting for the fall weather window, on September 29, Berman returned to the mountain with Uisdean Hawthorn, a Scottish climber currently living in Canada. On the walk out to the backside of Robson, rain and billowing clouds hampered the pair’s motivation.

“It dried up by the time we got to [Berg Lake],” says Hawthorn. “But the upper third [of the face] where the harder pitches were, we couldn’t see that at all. That was a bit daunting because that could have been covered in snow.”

A discussion about the feasibility of the objective followed that night. In the end, inspired by glimpses of dry conditions on the lower face and with a promising forecast ahead, they decided to attempt the route. The pair set their alarms for 1:30 a.m. and began climbing at 3 a.m. It was their first day on ice tools for the season.

Uisdean Hawthorn enjoying neve in the upper gullies of the Emperor Face. [Photo] Ethan Berman

After ascending rock bands low on the route, Berman and Hawthorn moved quickly through the infamous “Jaws”—an intersection of multiple gullies where debris flushes down from the upper face. At the top of this feature, they roped up and veered right into completely new terrain—a prominent gully that enfolds a series of neve-choked goulottes, broken up by incipient sections of rock and thin, laminate ice.

“Really reminded me of Scotland,” Hawthorn said of the climbing.

The crux of the route, as it turned out, was high on the face—approximately six pitches from the exit onto the Emperor Ridge. Up front on the sharp end, Berman attempted a direct line through a thinly iced face but was unable to find adequate protection. He backed off.

Unsure if the pitch would go, Hawthorn stepped up next. Moving right towards a steep, snowed-in dihedral, Hawthorn found that with enough excavation, a splitter crack and stances for feet could be reached at the back, permitting a cam to be placed, and progress to continue.

Hawthorn excavating a snow-choked dihedral near the Emperor Ridge. [Photo] Ethan Berman

Partway up a mixed section on the next pitch, Berman fell onto a tool-leash when his left tool ripped from a tenuous hook. Below him, a “good” cam and the full expanse of the Emperor Face. Regaining his position, Berman continued upwards into the guts of a long pitch, connecting runneled sections of ice separated by run-out, psychologically taxing rockbands.

Reaching the crest of the Emperor Ridge at 10:30 p.m., the pair stamped out a bivy platform, rehydrated and went to sleep after a total of 23 hours on the move. The next day, with a forecasted mass of clouds socked in around them, Berman block-led the upper section of the mountain to the summit, avoiding the rimed gargoyles guarding the upper ridge by traversing beneath them on the west face. Low-visibility route finding across convoluted terrain was a persistent challenge that day but the clouds also offered protection from the worst of the midday sun, which helped minimize the objective hazard posed by falling rime. 11 hours later, the pair reached the summit.

Berman and Hawthorn on the summit of Mt Robson. [Photo] Uisdean Hawthorn

Alone on the highest point in the Canadian Rockies, Berman and Hawthorn watched the last glow of redness in the west, while behind them, a full and luminous moon hung in the east. They bivied there in a sheltered depression in the snow. A 10-hour 3000-meter descent the next day brought the team to the valley and to their car in a pullout on the Yellowhead Highway.

Staying true to what Berman calls “the Robson experience” was central to the team’s approach during this ascent. By walking the whole way into Berg Lake, climbing a new route on Mt Robson’s most intimidating feature, linking the upper Emperor Ridge and west face traverse to the summit, only to then descend the southeast ridge, the Kain Face and the Resplendent Glacier to reach the Kinney Lake basin, Berman and Hawthorn pulled off a circumambulation of the peak that involved a human-powered interaction with almost every aspect of the mountain. The pair’s fealty to everything-on-foot ethics is notable in a time where the approach to the Emperor Face is frequently cut-cornered with the assistance of helicopters.

Running in the Shadows is named for a lyric from Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” and follows 14 full-length pitches of independent climbing to reach the Emperor Ridge and, ultimately, the summit of Mt. Robson.

The following article first appeared in the Squamish Chief

***

After more than a month of blocked gates, taped-off trailheads and padlocked parking lots, on May 14, British Columbians woke to the news that BC Parks was rescinding an earlier decision to ban all access to our public lands.

As the subject of widespread dismay when the policy was first implemented, that the system-wide closure has now been reversed even before the provincial state of emergency is over shows just how arbitrary this decision was in the first place. article continues below 

In ordering all parks to close, executive director of BC Parks, Robert Austad claimed that he had done so on the advice of the B.C. government’s medical experts —asserting that his department was closely “following the recommendations set out by the provincial health officer and the minister of health.”

But this does not seem true.

The Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry’s messaging on the public health benefits of outdoor recreation has been consistent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 13, while opining on the importance of spending time in the open air, Dr. Henry noted that “this virus does not transmit when people go outdoors.”

On April 29, she echoed this statement, stating that the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 cases had been traced, not to outdoor settings, but to clusters of people “in close proximity indoors.” 

Asked about it again on April 30, Dr. Henry made the point even clearer. “Being outside is important for us to be able to release when we’re going through stressful times,” she said, adding, with special emphasis, “it was not me who closed the parks.”

 Given then that Dr. Henry’s evergreen advice clearly contradicts Austad’s justifications, one wonders why this decision was made in the first place — especially on grounds of public health. Some observers have retrospectively speculated that the decision to close was a staffing or budgetary issue (a “clean washrooms” problem) — but this week’s re-opening seems to disprove that.

Even more damning for BC Parks, a May 12 response to  a freedom of information request for communications to and from BC Parks and the Ministry of Health show that neither medical experts nor the BC Centres for Disease Control epidemiologists had been consulted in the months prior to the closure of the parks — a remarkable revelation when one considers the enormous social impact of this decision. 

So why was this recreation-preventing decision made? One logical possibility is that instead of seeking out sage medical advice on viral transmission in green spaces (“infinitesimally low,” according to Dr. Henry), the system-wide closure was a knee jerk response to mounting community hysteria that outdoor activities, in and of themselves, were an imminent threat to public health.

Throughout March and April in B.C., the COVID-19 information environment was even more feverish than it is today. On social media, Facebook pages, outdoor users groups and lifestyle magazines had begun issuing their own “advisories” beyond and on top of the BC Centre for Disease Control official advice. Meanwhile, social media influencers had deployed to trailheads and to Instagram in order to spread the word about the novel coronavirus — posting incorrect information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces like bin lids, handrails, and access ladders. Much of this vigilante advice spread quickly — often outpacing the speed with which official information could be disseminated.

In my capacity as a working anthropologist, my job during this crisis has involved monitoring the impact of misinformation on our society as we ride out the COVID-19 pandemic.

Much like an infectious disease, one thing we know about misinformation is that it can transmit “virally” through networks, undergoing rapid mutation (like a game of broken telephone) as it spreads. In the context of COVID-19, the impact of misinformation has been observed prominently in the proliferation of online conspiracy theories among anti-lockdown activists. At their most extreme, these warped ideas have led to the destruction of 5G cell phone towers.

But misinformation can also be less insidious — as seen, for example, in the public’s confusion about social distancing versus self-isolation versus isolation (which are all different prevention categories). It’s worth pointing out that no one is immune in this eco-system of misinformation. Indeed, even within government, the interdepartmental transmission of error-laden information seems to have been something of a problem during this emergency, such that Dr. Henry’s advice to stay local led to BC Parks construing that the entire system should be closed immediately.

The social repercussions of this closure, hidden though some may be, should not be understated. Certainly, in some communities, the consequences of this decision have been more than unfortunate. With park closures forcing the population indoors, health-promoting outdoor activities have been taboo for months — even when done safely, socially-distantly and locally. In particular, social media is now a platform for publicly shaming “selfish” recreators — an unfortunate development, which has ramped up local anxiety and compounded the effect of an emergent mental health crisis whose curve we are only now beginning to model.

The worst thing about BC Parks’ closure then is that it vindicated this misbegotten behaviour, providing a thin veneer of officialdom to a growing public attitude that was thoroughly antithetical to the common good. In times of crisis, the role of government is to be a steadying force in society: a steely-eyed quantum of evidence-based policy-making where the advice of specialists is valued first and foremost. In this, BC Parks has decisively failed. Indeed, that a public body was seemingly more attentive to the whims of social media influencers than it was to the advice of the provincial health officer speaks not only to a deafness to expertise but also to a fundamental failure of government.

British Columbians deserve better.

Military ethics is a complicated topic so I have made a helpful flow chart for those trying to decide if they should be an apologist for war crimes. I won’t @ anyone but feel free to @ others.

Some of the ethical chat surrounding lethal autonomous weapon systems is morally bankrupt. I’m sorry, but it is.

Specifically, I’m referring to the arguments of those that would have us remove “human dignity” from the debate.

“Dignity” of course – wound up as it is in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – is that which deals with the inalienable worth of a person.

What’s more, as a concept that has informed the wording of the Geneva Conventions in definite ways – say, in prohibitions against torture and corpse desecration – the codification of “dignity” into the laws of war has served as an excellent barrier against the worst of war’s excesses.

Even though war, as organized murder, is probably the best illustration of institutionalized indignity-dealing one can think of, it’s not hard to see why deifying the concept is a good stop-gap against the worst war can deliver.

Without an acknowledgment for the enemy’s dignity – the intrinsic worth derived from his humanity – then the enemy is just the enemy, his corpse is just his corpse and his children just his progeny.

“May as well gas him with sarin, piss on his corpse, and neuter his children – just for good measure,” a soldier lacking an appreciation for basic human dignity might conclude.

As applied to the drone debate, the “dignity objection” is prefaced on the assumption that only a human being is capable of seeing the intrinsic worth of another human being. A drone, meanwhile, sees only a “target” – ones and zeros.

Indeed, that lethal autonomous weapons could one day be deployed on a future battlefield to make life-and-death decisions without a human in the loop is worrying almost solely because that machine lacks the ability to compute dignity.

And yet, here we are, on the cusp of a paradigm shift in war, and some would have dignity stripped away from the regulations – the government of China most notably.

As Pop, a Swiss government diplomat, asks:

“… What is it about AWS [autonomous weapon systems] that renders them particularly reprehensible from the point of view of human dignity? I fail to see what the relevant argument could look like and have also not found any satisfactory explanation in the literature.”

Or take the view of Dean-Peter Baker – who sits on the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons.

In Baker’s view, “human dignity” is a malleable, new-ish concept – only as old as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, he argues, it is “awkward” and we shouldn’t really worry about it when crafting “rugged and realistic rules by which self-interested states might actually abide”.

“Exquisite ideals are anomalous” to the ethics of war, Baker proposes. As such: “they inevitably end up in a position of pacifism”. Though I suppose this is Baker’s way of suggesting we omit “exquisite ideals” from our efforts to regulate war, it’s not entirely clear why exquisite ideals “inevitably” end up in pacifism (I for one know plenty of idealistic warfighters). But these views are what they are.

On the whole then, the moral gymnastics flowing like liquid mercury through the discourse is breathtaking. All of these philosophers are capable, well-mannered people, I assume. And yet… Gyrating between consequentialist approaches and deontological approaches – dazzling each other with jargon and the names of various Enlightenment luminaries, the arcana of the academy – at the end of all this we are left, finally, with something like: “we don’t really need to think about human dignity when regulating lethal autonomous weapons”.

Ummm wot? The absurdity of it is astounding.

More specifically, it immediately summons Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem***. The banality of evil, and so on. How could it not, when a basic value like “dignity” – the inherent worth of a person – is under assault?

Eichmann, of course, was the Nazi bureaucrat tried and hanged for his role in the transportation of Jews to the concentration camps in the East. For the most part however, Eichmann was removed, both physically and emotionally, from the killing taking place – not unlike the remoteness of most of us from what is taking place in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan et al.

Neither did Eichmann have an overriding hatred of the Jews – his role was simply that of facilitator and logistician – a lifelong mid-ranker for whom, as Arendt puts it:

“… the most potent factor in the soothing of his own conscience was the simple fact that he could see no one, no one at all, who actually was against the Final Solution”.

Eichmann’s mediocrity aside, the most interesting part in all this is the awful philosophical method by which “the group” (and therefore Eichmann) arrived at the Final Solution.

As Horkheimer and Adorno have pointed out, the Nazis rationalized increasing levels of wrong-doing with the progressive logic of a syllogism. First came the confiscation of property. Then came the evacuation. Then came the concentration.

For the average Nazi, once human dignity was taken out of the equation and the basic worth of a person was removed from strictures of how to act – the final step, extermination, logically followed.

Thus, the Final Solution.

This is not to say, of course, that the philosophical discourse surrounding autonomous drones is identical to the method followed by the Nazis. Even if the theme of “progressive levels of bad ideas” is the same, the actual content is different.

Nor is this to say that inhuman rationalization of the unthinkable always leads to evil. A disinterest in “human dignity” does not “inevitably” lead to genocide in the same way that an interest in “exquisite ideals” does not “inevitably” lead to pacifism. The evolution from bad logic to mass killing is not an orthogenesis with an inevitable end-point. As Charles Darwin showed us, from a common ancestor there are infinite possible outcomes.

Secondly, before deciding if we should discard “human dignity” from the debate, it’s worth stewing on Eichmann’s claim that he lived his life according to Kant’s categorical imperative. Eichmann’s “approximately correct” description of the imperative was as follows:

“… the principal of my will must always be such that it can become the principle of general laws”.

Which is to say that Eichmann believed that Man must act in accordance with what makes the most sense as a “general law” for acting.

For Arendt, Eichmann’s absurd suggestion that participation in genocide would make for a good general law was “outrageous, on the face of it, and also incomprehensible”. Still, as she worked her way through Eichmann’s stupidity she realized there was something resembling a “household” logic to it.

For Eichmann, the most sensical “general law” was the same as “Führer’s law” so Eichmann’s decision-making was, in fact, rational – at least insofar as it followed on from an initial (mis)interpretation of the word “general”.

But returning to drones, let’s work the categorical imperative into a thought experiment and apply it to our own actions – the act of actually having this debate about “dignity” and drones. Meta, I know.

If we are bound to act as if the action makes for a good “general law”, then imagine for a moment we are not only the ones having the debate about drones but also the ones who are on the receiving consequential end of the debate about drones.

Imagine, for instance, that rather than blogging this blog and reading this blog and producing criteria for the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons, there was a reasonable chance that we could be on the receiving end of one of these lethal autonomous weapons – a drone whose existence is, in part, the consequence of the laws this debate will produce.

Imagine, for example, that we are Yemeni villagers in Abyan Governorate listening to the BBC disseminate news about what kinds of weapons might be headed our way. How would we feel, for example, if in the process of regulating autonomous lethal killing objects, the relevant panel had decided that the “dignity objection” was irrelevant?

“Why,” the panel had decided, “is it important that a human pilot knows that another human should be ‘valued and respected for their own sake’ but a drone does not?”

“Killing itself is an indignity,” said the panel. “So we may as well discard human dignity altogether. Dignity is just too ‘awkward’ to be worth paying much attention to.”

As a Yemeni villager soon to receive the thermobaric consequences of this debate, we’d probably feel like our dignity had already been taken from us.

But I digress. Philosophical debates and momentary empathy with the Other aside, let’s think about some actual case studies. Case studies which show why “dignity” is important to the debate about drones – especially when it comes to the unique human capacity to exercise that intangible thing called “discretion”. The International Committee for the Red Cross, for one, has offered that many of the ethical concerns about dignity “are about process as well as results“.  So let’s have a look at this process.

Case Study #1 – Counterinsurgency Operations

Imagine for a moment, that a 5-strong reconnaissance patrol is posted in a mountain layup point overlooking a village in, say, Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.

In Scenario #1, the patrol is manned entirely by humans – fully bombed up with a double load and ready to break contact in the event that the position is compromised.

Presently, a juvenile is seen ascending the hill beneath the position. Clearly moving with purpose, the juvenile walks over to a pile of boulders, reaches between the rocky gaps and procures a small bundle. Inside the bundle is a military-style bandolier, a high-powered spotting scope and a walkie-talkie. Although not armed, the child is quite clearly a “spotter” for the enemy. Therefore, by most interpretations of international humanitarian law, he is “directly participating in hostilities” and can legally be shot.

Then, something unfortunate happens. The boy spots the patrol. The patrol now has two options. Option #1 – they can legally kill the boy. Option #2 – they can peel-back with a “tunnel of love” back to a previously-designated rally point.

For a patrol manned entirely by human beings this is something of a moral dilemma. Killing the boy could easily be justified before a court of law. Still, some in the patrol might object to killing the boy on the basis of his age or the fact that the boy’s reasons for directly participating in hostilities may be unknown. The boy could be the victim of coercion. And, the boy is a human being with inherent dignity – taking away his life is something that should be stewed on before pulling the trigger.  More yet, killing an unarmed juvenile could lead to moral injury for the shooter – undermining the tactical health and well-being of the patrol for future operations.

There may also be another tactical reason not to shoot the boy. The muzzle flash could compromise the patrol’s position. Thus, regardless of the option chosen, the patrol might be doomed for “a compromise” anyway. In any case, legally the decision is the patrol’s but it is up to the humans on the ground to decide what is the rational and-or humane thing to do.

In Scenario #2, the reconnaissance patrol is manned entirely by ground combat drones. As soon as the walkie-talkie and spotting scope are seen, the boy is marked for death. There is no dignity objection here for lethal autonomous weapons. No discretion awarded either.

Lights out, see you later, someone down in the valley below lost their son today.

Case Study #2 – Violent Protest

Changing scenes now, let’s move to a civil disturbance scenario – say, a violent protest at the Gaza-Israeli border fence.

In Scenario #1, after receiving information that a specific telephone number is linked to a recently-stitched suicide vest, a team of electronic warfare (EW) operators triangulates the position of the bomber among the crowd.

The EW operators, in turn, pass the information onto a sniper in an overwatch position. The sniper, in turn, locates the bomber with his telescopic sight and sees that the bomber is a woman. The woman is also carrying a radio, a backpack and looks terrified. The woman is an imminent threat. But then… she’s a woman with inherent human worth. What does she know about the local terror networks? Perhaps she might defect. Is there some way the sniper could spare her, in order to glean information from her?

The sniper has two options here. Option #1: he can legally shoot the woman – she is a suicide bomber after all. Or, Option #2: he can request that the EW team jam the signal, which, they assure him, is technically possible. Then, once she reaches the border fence, authorities can pick her up and learn something from her.

By contrast, in Scenario #2, a future variant of today’s IAI Harop – a so-called “loitering munition” – has been loitering in the skies above the protest. As soon as the suspect telephone number is input into the drone’s system it geo-locates the number and flies into the woman, self-destructing with a high-explosive warhead.

An avoidable death probably, but with the drone set free to do whatever it will do, the call to end that life was only the drone’s to make.

Case Study #3 – Conventional War

Now, finally, let’s move away from so-called “low-intensity conflict” and look at a hypothetical large-scale conventional war between two states – let’s say between a Western country and Donovia.

In Scenario #1, a helicopter gunship has been dispatched to destroy an enemy command and control position in support of an advancing infantry company. Taking out the central nervous system will leave the enemy nodes situationally blind. After the Hellfire is fired and the command post destroyed, the human pilot sees someone crawling away from the position. It is unclear who the individual is. The individual might, for example, be an enemy intelligence officer or, even the commanding officer – a possible treasury of information.

It is also unclear if the person is still armed. He may, for example, still have his sidearm on him.

Per Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention the person would be deemed hors de combat if (i) he’s detained; (ii) he’s surrendering; or (iii) he’s incapacitated by his injury.

Because of the pilot’s physical remoteness from the gruesome scene, the level of incapacitation of the wounded man is unclear. It is also unclear if the wounded man has surrendered. To whom would the man have surrendered to? There is no one on-scene (another ethical problem offered by remote warfare).

Anyway, with the available information, the wounded man who might still be armed is probably not quite “out of combat” per se – killing him could probably be justified before a court of a law.  The pilot then has two options. Option #1 – the pilot could legally kill the man. Option #2 – the pilot could spare him, with the full knowledge that the man is a human being with inherent dignity and the infantry company down the road will probably be able to pick him up for tactical questioning.

Discretion. The main job was to wipe out the CP anyway.

In Scenario #2, there is no helicopter but a lethal autonomous weapon. The dignity of a human doesn’t get a say here so the drone deems the wounded person a combatant and double-taps him.

Thanks for playing but you lost the war. All that time you spent reading Clausewitz doesn’t mean much anymore, champ.

The point of these case studies is that every single option chosen would have been lawful according to the Geneva Convention. But would the decision to kill have been ethical? Maybe or maybe not. Depends on the moral code of the individual. Either way though, it seems like a good idea to have a human make that call.

Additionally, all of these case studies involve physical distance between the killer and the victim – the patrolman from the juvenile spotter, the sniper from the suicide bomber, the helicopter pilot from the enemy commander. In some ways, the remoteness – the physical separation between targeter and target – is part of the problem. If the spotter, the suicide bomber or the enemy commander were in close enough proximity that they could be bear-hugged and put in handcuffs, then there would be no moral dilemma.

In the last case study, it’s quite clear that remoteness was particularly problematic for defogging “the fog of war” for the pilot. Remember, it was unknown whether the wounded enemy was still armed – though it could be reasonably presumed.

It follows then, that on some level, making war more and more remote will also make war more and more “grey” – exponentially increasing the amount of unknowns when determining the morality of an action. But “remoteness” is not the silver bullet for lethal autonomous weapons that many anti-drone activists imagine it is. The advent of the bow and arrow, after all, has already made “remoteness” possible.

Indeed, as seen in the above case studies, the real problem here isn’t the drone’s “remoteness” per se but rather the drone’s “lack of humanness” – the drone’s inability to ask the big questions about the worth of a human, factoring in the inherent dignity of Man.

As a collective action that involves the deliberate killing of individuals by other individuals, war is the most intimately-violent act of social behaviour observed in humans. Why one would wish not only to maximize the remoteness of warfighting but also to vest a silicon-based life-form with the in-built autonomous capacity to kill a living breathing human without asking permission first is beyond me. More yet, why one would think it a good idea to remove “dignity” from the discussion altogether – to nullify human discretion and to treat humans simply as another carbon-based life form with no inherent worth – seems even more alien to me.

But such is the moral bankruptcy of the philosophical discourse surrounding drones – a demiurgic piling-on of increasingly bad ideas.

No doubt, in some distant, future battlefield, a soldier will be lying on his back, machinegun just out of reach, with blood and viscera slopping from his stomach cavity onto the ground. The drone bearing down on him has not determined that the soldier is hors de combat. A mere momentary glitch.

“Have you no dignity?” the wounded man will ask the machine as a gun barrel is levelled at his head. “And what about my dignity?”

But the word will not register with the machine. The “dignity objection” , after all, was struck off during the proceedings of the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons. The machine knows nothing of human dignity.

Then, echoing Baker’s words perhaps, the machine will reply: “an invisible dignity violation is an uncomfortably ethereal basis for regulating as crude and base a practice as the use of violence in war”.

*** = Side note: you’ll be hearing more about Eichmann in Jerusalem from me shortly.

The following appeared in Canadian Military Journal, Volume 19, Issue 1

Martin, M. 2018. Why We Fight: The Cognitive Basis of War. London: Hurst & Company. 224 pages (HC), $25.78. ISBN-10: 9781849048897

Scholarly attempts to understand aggression in homo sapiens are probably as old as the human sciences themselves. From the labors of IR scholars studying interstate conflict at the level of whole political systems, to micro-level examinations of the psychological structures that impel individuals towards violence, the existing literature on the subject is fatiguing even to summarize. The story of Cain the farmer and Abel the herdsman can convincingly be read as a retelling of a land war between agriculturalists and pastoralists at the dawn of civilization. Later, in ancient Greece, Thucydides surmised that the Peloponnesian Wars were explicable by three thematic motives: fear, honor, and interest. Looking inwardly, Sigmund Freud imagined aggression as a death instinct which arose in direct opposition to the creative, life-producing drive exemplified by sex.

Continuing unto the present, others, from Konrad Lorenz, with On Aggression, to Azar Gat, with War in Human Civilization, have also tried to answer the fundamental question – why do humans set out, purposefully, to kill each other? In the same scholarly tradition is Mike Martin’s Why We Fight. From the outset, and writing as a war studies scholar with expertise in biology and social psychology, Martin’s thesis is bold and clear. “Status and belonging are the two main drivers of human conflict,” he contends – a claim evidenced by examining the neurological and evolutionary impulses that steer all homo sapiens in analogous directions.

Central to the study of violence, Martin argues, should be a mutual agreement that humans, as animals, are subject to the fundamental laws of natural selection – a biological fact that frames his status-and-belonging model. In then rejecting “group selection” – a Darwinian theory which posits that evolution can also occur at the level of the group – Martin adopts the gene-centred view of evolution, whereby selfish genes are replicated across generations by the vehicle of status-seeking individuals.

An organism’s primary prerogative, Martin argues, is to propagate its genetic material. This means that in a state of natural competition, humans will seek first to maximize two important quantities: status (which helps one to secure mates and resources) and belonging (which helps one to form war coalitions in order to stave off the violent ambitions of aggressors). At a neurochemical level, Martin asserts, status and belonging are underpinned by the release of two hormones – testosterone, the hormone which spurs intraspecific competition and hierarchy-climbing; and oxytocin, the bonding hormone which strengthens in-group impulses and generates hostility towards out-groups.

In also examining wartime self-sacrifice, Martin argues that combat altruism in early hunter-gatherer bands originally evolved because of “inclusive fitness” – the notion that genetically-related kin were included, consciously or otherwise, into an individual organism’s survival calculus. By this reasoning, a warrior should be willing to die for two brothers or eight cousins because kin persistence would guarantee his genes’ survival. As societies then grew larger, the kin identification-and-preferencing mechanism came to apply to non-kin such that modern soldierly “bands of brothers” now resemble “imagined” or “fictive kin.” In-group-out-group divisions meanwhile, continue to cause wars, while the risk of dying in battle is seen, in biological terms, as a soldier’s membership price for belonging to the group.

Implicitly, the group is understood here as a mere marriage of convenience for the individual’s genes – an obstinate rejection of the group selectionist view, which would see self-sacrificial war service as a group-level survival adaptation. As a neurological, psychosocial and genetic account of warlike behaviour from the perspective of the individual, Martin’s thesis is comprehensive – intuitively sound, tested empirically, and with anecdotes from his own experiences serving in the British Army on operations in Afghanistan. Moreover, his distilment of individual motivations for fighting down to “status” and “belonging” is nigh-on as good as we can ask for with currently-available research.

Full disclosure though… Mike Martin is currently co-supervising my doctoral studies at King’s College London. As such, and to put his theory into practice for a moment, there are both “status and belonging” considerations at play here which, all things being equal, will probably influence how I review Why We Fight. Having said that, it might surprise the reader to learn that although I see Martin’s book as an important addition to the sociobiological study of conflict, he and I furiously disagree on the role played by group selection (and by extension, ideology) in how and why conflict occurs.

Indeed, where Martin’s grappling with human aggression seems most inadequate is in his discussion of the role of ideology – here defined as the normative beliefs and values which adhere groups and which individuals within the group are socialized into holding as self-evident.

We know, of course, that ideology can be a potent shaper of behaviour in wartime. It was bushido which drove Japanese kamikazes to fly aircraft into Allied ships during the Second World War. It was the mere thought of having dishonoured the Führer which drove Hans Langsdorff, captain of the pocket battleship Graf Spee, to shoot himself after defeat at the battle of the River Plate. It is the utopian phantasm of a global “caliphate” which inspires a jihadist suicide bomber to blow himself up at a roadside checkpoint. And it is the esprit de corps – the spirit of the [group] body – generated by recruit training at Parris Island which, over the years, has propelled more than one US Marine to dive on a grenade for his friends.

When influenced by deeply-embedded ideological structures, humans in the midst of fighting frequently put aside their own interests for those of the group. This seems obvious. Such frameworks of “moral sense,” as Darwin described them, can be weaponized to ensure that individual organisms are willing to serve the group, even to the detriment of genetic longevity. This is group selection at work. If not, then how could it be better or more parsimoniously explained?

The short answer is that most bona fide cases of combat altruism which result in the death of the individual probably cannot be explained in terms of individual, kin or “fictive kin” selection because when one’s comrades are not one’s relatives, there is no genetic advantage selecting in favour of self-sacrifice.

This applies especially to expeditionary wars, where the violence threshold is well below that of total war – i.e., where the survival benefit for one’s family back home is negligible. In these instances, social norms override the organism’s in-built gene propagation drive. Thus, the group and not the individual is the vehicle by which natural selection occurs. Although Martin’s individualist rationale probably holds true for many or even most explanations of conflict, the existence and persistence of combat altruism presents a puzzling outlier, as the earlier examples show. This is where recent research in the domain of “multilevel selection” – which posits that clusters of organisms can sometimes behave like a “superorganism” and that the process of natural selection can “toggle” between individuals and groups – might fill the gaps left by Martin. Individually-disadvantageous, group-advantageous behaviours among non-genetically-related kin are observed across the animal kingdom – from parasites living in the stomachs of cattle, to leaf-cutter ants, through to forest chimpanzees, and finally, to humans.

As such, and although Martin’s well-articulated status and belonging theory may explain many things about the ethological history of conflict in homo sapiens (and animalia, more broadly) the significant exceptions to the rule where altruistic ‘groupishness’ does exist requires more serious consideration. ‘Zooming out’ from the individual allows us to look in on the system-as-whole – allotting for holism and curiously, given the scale, greater detail. The question of ‘why we fight,’ it appears, will never be answered until we learn to see a war-band of humans, not just as a collection of individuals, but also as an occasional functional collective.

As 2018 comes to a tinsel-wrapped close, tis the season once again for lovers of the written word to share the contents of their year’s reading lists. I wouldn’t recommend all of the below books for my dear readers but I’m happy to report that I found something of value in each and every one of them.

Sometimes, I disagreed with the author’s conclusions. On occasion, I found the writing shit. Often though, I found myself nodding and acceding – awed by a particular turn of phrase and wishing I’d written it first.

I scribbled enough notes in side columns (connected with bedlamite arrows) to create a lengthy Word document – which I did, for scholarly purposes. The resulting annotated bibliography currently runs at 67 pages – which seems impressive but is not even enough words to passably analyse a Roman Quaedvlieg Tweet.

Some of these yellowing piles of paper were even re-reads, plucked and dusted from the bookshelf. The books that were “second-time-rounds” now bear the graffiti of two different pen nibs.

For better or worse, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut was the only novel I read this year (I confess I only did so upon learning that Vonnegut was a trained anthropologist).

That said, my better half informs me that we’re celebrating Christmas this year Icelandic-style with a tradition called Jólabókaflóð. Preliminary research indicates that it basically consists of drinking lots of hot cocoa and reading books. This I can live with. Perhaps the Jólasveinn will leave a novel or two in my stocking.

Here it is. The list of 2018.

Politics & Society:

• We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Democratization in the Maghreb, JNC Hill
• Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm
• On Anarchy, Noam Chomsky
• On Kings, David Graeber & Marshall Sahlins
• The Revenge of Geography, Robert Kaplan
• Earning the Rockies, Robert Kaplan
• Algerian Sketches, Pierre Bourdieu
• The Line Becomes A River, Francisco Cantu
• Tribe, Sebastian Junger

Conflict:

• The War is in the Mountains, Judith Matloff
• War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States & Indigenous Warfare, R. Brian Ferguson & Neil Whitehead
• Why We Fight: The Cognitive Basis for War, Mike Martin
• On Aggression, Konrad Lorenz
• On Violence, Hannah Arendt
• On Killing, Lt. Col. David Grossman
• Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger
• Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves

Biology & Evolution:

• Unto Others: The Evolution & Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour, Elliott Sober & David Sloan Wilson
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• The Theory of Island Biogeography, David McArthur & E.O Wilson
• The Social System, Talcott Parsons
• The Social Conquest of the Earth, E.O Wilson
• Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Peter Kropotkin

Novels & Sports Writing:

• Barbarian Days, William Finnegan
• True Story, Michael Finkel
• The Art of Freedom, Bernadette McDonald
• The Push, Tommy Caldwell
• Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut