The Code of the Warrior: Ideals of Warrior Cultures Throughout History

Abstract

This issue of JCLI goes to press simultaneously with the U.S. Air Force Academy’s 24th annual National Character and Leadership Symposium, focused this year on “Warrior Ethos.” The essay which follows was originally delivered in 2004 at the Academy, as the 47th Harmon Memorial Lecture in Military History. The insights Dr. Shannon French shared at that time, illuminating “the values and ideals of warrior cultures throughout history,” are still relevant today and appropriate to highlight for JCLI’s readers, because the character of warriors is of exquisite importance to the society they serve. Continuing human conflicts inextricably draw civilian and military leaders together into difficult decisions at all levels of warfare and policy-making, and the pressures of advancing technology and changing social mores arguably add to the complexity of the restraints, moral codes and cultures that define warriors and guide their conduct. Dr. French opens with reference to a November 2004 incident in Fallujah, Iraq that was investigated as a war crime, making clear the gravity and complexity of combatant decisions involving the taking of life as a springboard for this brief but powerful synopsis of warrior codes and cultures.