Cluster munitions for Ukraine

 The New York Times editorial of July 10, "The flawed moral logic of sending cluster munitions to Ukraine," opposed the U.S. decision to do just that. It tried to rebut some of the arguments made in favor of the plan, but it missed at least one, the fact that most of the area involved would already be littered with mines and unexploded cluster munitions used (extensively) by Russia, so the additional care required to try to avoid them later would already be required.

The editorial, the statements of governments opposed to the plan, and some of the published letters to the Times, seemed to follow the principle that these munitions are morally wrong, whatever the consequences. Such absolute principles are, in the sense I have used (e.g., Baron and Spranca, 1997) protected values. Ideological adherence to such values surely has considerable political influence. These commitments may be held unreflectively. When people are forced to confront specific situations where the principle conflicts with some other principle, such as avoiding terrible consequences, they often admit that their principle is not absolute after all (Baron and Leshner, 2000).

In "Rules of War and Moral Reasoning" (1972, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2264969), R. M. Hare criticizes the "absolutist" deontological views of Thomas Nagel, who advocated strict adherence to accepted rules, such as those prohibiting the use of poison gas, or attacks on the Red Cross.

"The defect in most deontologica theories ... is that they have no coherent rational account to give to any level of moral thought above that of the man who knows some good moral principles and sticks to them. He is a very admirable person, and to question his principles ... is indeed to 'show a corrupt mind'." However, to achieve such an account, "we have to adopt a 'two-level' approach, ... to recognize that the simple principles of the deontologist, important as they are, have their place at the level of character formation." Although we should be careful about violating principles that have been drilled into us (including those inculcated by military training), we need to be willing to override them on the basis of a higher level of analysis, that is, to make exceptions when they clearly lead to worse consequences than some alternative, even if our attachment to the broken rules leads us to feel guilty (just as the failure to prevent terrible consequences can also lead to guilt feelings).

Absolute rules represent a hardening of moral intuitions that are usually sufficient but should sometimes be overridden by more reflective reasoning, as suggested by Greene ("Moral tribes") and others. The opponents of cluster munitions seem to illustrate these hardened intuitions, which are protected values. Once having decided that cluster munitions are morally wrong, whatever the consequences, some opponents then engage in belief overkill, finding ways to ignore relevant facts on the other side, or to exaggerate the probability of harmful consequences resulting from action.