(ANALYSIS) How do U.S. Army chaplains perceive the legitimacy of American drone strikes and why should we care?

Though chaplains are entrusted by regulations to shape the moral use of force, scholars have not studied what accounts for their perceptions of legitimacy. Yet legitimacy is “potent” in shaping the durability of policy and strategy, helping to explain why it is also a principle of military operations.

It is also unclear if chaplains’ perceptions of legitimacy relate to legal or moral considerations, meaning the perceived compliance of operations with the laws of armed conflict or understandings of rightful wartime conduct.

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Indeed, scholars often assume that the legal and moral aspects of legitimacy can vary. It is possible, however, that they can diverge based on how and where drone strikes take place.

To explore this possibility, and with the endorsement of the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains, Major General William Green, Jr., I conducted a survey experiment among chaplains drawn from across the entire Army. In my survey, which I administered this past February, I randomly assigned each chaplain to a hypothetical (but realistic) scenario that varied two drone strike attributes.

These included the certainty standard for civilian casualties, ranging from lower (near-certainty) to higher (reasonable-certainty) expectations of collateral damage, and the location of strikes across both internationally-recognized (declared) and non-internationally-recognized (undeclared) theaters of operations.

These two mechanisms frame four patterns of strikes that chaplains advise through their counsel to commanders. These include stringent over-the-horizon strikes (near-certainty standard/undeclared theater), lenient over-the-horizon strikes (reasonable-certainty standard/undeclared theater), stringent battlefield strikes (near-certainty standard/declared theater), and lenient battlefield strikes (reasonable-certainty standard/declared theater).

After reading their randomized scenarios, I asked chaplains to gauge their attitudes for how legal and rightful they believe drone strikes are, as well as their support, using a five-point scale ranging from one (low) to five (high). Next, I used common statistical methods to analyze the data.

My analysis of this extremely rare data reveals three key findings.

First, chaplains’ understandings of the legitimacy of drone strikes in terms of their perceived legality and morality largely covary. At the same time, variation in the whereabouts of strikes can cause chaplains to emphasize their legality more. I find that chaplains discount the legal legitimacy of strikes in undeclared theaters of operations, even when they are more tightly constrained through the near-certainty standard to minimize civilian casualties.

Second, regardless of chaplains’ perceived legality or morality for strikes, they can support them less, reflecting a “legitimacy paradox” that suggests underlying compunctions with the implications of drones for the shifting character of war.

This is especially pronounced for what chaplains perceive to be the most legitimate pattern of drone warfare, stringent battlefield strikes. Why would chaplains not support drone strikes that they perceive to be legitimate, both legally and morally? My analysis suggests that chaplains question the legality of strikes, the veracity of intelligence, the territorial integrity of the targeted countries and the implications for national security.

Finally, I find some variation among chaplains for legitimacy outcomes. Specifically, a handful of instrumental, normative and experiential considerations exercise an effect on chaplains’ beliefs. These include understandings of the use of force globally, a perceived moral obligation to use strikes globally and the potential for political officials’ abuse of drones, which some experts refer to as a “moral hazard.” Chaplains’ combat experience also matters, with this crucible event reducing their perceptions of the legal versus moral legitimacy of strikes.

Together, these results offer the first experimental evidence for how chaplains perceive the legitimacy of U.S. drone strikes and relative to their attitudes of support. Whereas scholars have studied the legitimacy of drone strikes, they often conflate the legal and moral dimensions of legitimacy.

Similarly, they do not investigate the relationship between these two dimensions, how it may shift given the context of conflict and the implications for attitudes of support as well. Finally, they primarily draw on U.S. citizens to assess public attitudes toward drones, thus ignoring the military, including chaplains. Yet these “moral advocates” may view strikes differently based on how and where they are used.

Indeed, my results have important implications for policy, research and military readiness, which I will present l this coming September at both the U.S. Army’s Institute for Religious Leadership and the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting.

First, to better align chaplains’ overall attitudes with the current U.S. policy of over-the-horizon drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere, which American citizens broadly endorse until mistakes are made, policy-makers should more transparently discuss our country’s drone policy.

In doing so, they should explain the intelligence driving operations, risk mitigation measures and how strikes comport with or deviate from international law. Policymakers should also explicitly justify a transgression of other countries’ sovereignty or territorial integrity, should this happen in the course of using drone strikes, especially in terms of national security.

Second, researchers should extend my study, especially across the U.S. military and among allies and partners. How do the views of chaplains in terms of drone strikes relate to those expressed by military lawyers, who also advise commanders? There is also an outstanding question for how cultural differences across political communities shape perceptions of legitimacy and attitudes of support for drone strikes. What about variation in other conditions that may shape attitudes, including the type of conflict, target, munition, objectives, outcomes, incorporation of Artificial Intelligence and approving authority, ranging from commanders to presidents.

Finally, research shows that chaplains’ advising role may be exaggerated. One study finds that “chaplains have found past attempts to advise military commanders on tactical and operational objectives to be ‘difficult at best.’”

Ron Hassner, the Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkley, further notes that “there is no evidence of chaplains constraining, or even claiming to have constrained war.”

More alarmingly, the military’s martial culture also risks discounting chaplains’ advice, should they give it, which can contradict commanders’ targeting prerogatives making chaplains “vulnerable to censure.”

The Army should update regulations to reflect this arguable reality or instruct commanders to more meaningfully integrate chaplains into the targeting process.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Lushenko, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Director of Special Operations at the U.S. Army War College. He is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, the author of two books on drone warfare and has 10 combat deployments.