Logotyp: till Försvarshögskolans hemsida

This study draws from Zygmunt Bauman´s theory that a governmental policy of values can reduce the personal responsibility and moral choices for employees, to focus only on maintaining the government’s internal rules and regulations. The apparent risk with this type of moral attenuation is that the employee is deprived of the possibility to react morally on conduct of the government’s external misuse of power. In this study, this theory is connected to the Swedish Armed Forces’ policy of values, as these values do not include a critical standpoint for officers and soldiers. The policy is instead aimed at maintaining the internal rules and regulations of the Armed Forces, thus neglecting moral functions’ for officers and soldiers applicable to the use of force.The purpose of this study is to show how development of the current policy of values can make it possible to mitigate the risk of moral attenuation, by using a postmodern theory for ethics. The study analyses the decision to use force in Afghanistan, and finds that the ethics for military violence are based on a liberal ontology. With a postmodern paradigm on ethics, the study then criticizes the liberal ethics at hand for the use of force in Afghanistan.The study concludes that the policy of values set by the Swedish Armed Forces could be revised by adapting an ethical awareness to the risks of moral attenuation. Further, the study suggests that the policy should include the fact that the use of language can dehumanize groups of people, with the apparent risk that the use of force aimed at these people, is morally unsound.