Introduction
This paper examines the deaths of six military cadets, the Niños Héroes (boy heroes), who died during the Mexican-American War at the Battle of Chapultepec. The justness of these deaths primarily depends on the Doctrine of Discrimination, so a detailed analysis of that doctrine is performed. The deaths are then evaluated according to this doctrine. Finally, the relation between the justness (or unjustness) of those deaths is related to the justness of the Mexican-American War as a whole.
"The War Between the United States and Mexico, Illustrated".
Historical Background
The Battle of Chapultepec occurred during the Mexican-American War on 12-13 September 1847. It is named after Chapultepec Castle, a fortification standing outside Mexico City. The castle was originally constructed during the time Mexico was a territory of Spain, and it served as a summer residence for the viceroy of the colonial administration. The castle’s use changed over the years, and at the time of the battle, it was the site of a military academy.
The task of defending Mexico City from the Americans fell on General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He had 25,000 men at his command but positioned most of them to the south of the city, where he expected the Americans to attack. General Winfield Scott decided that the best approach to capture the city was to capture the castle, which lies to the west.
The battle started at dawn on the 12th with an artillery barrage that caught Santa Anna completely unaware. He was unable to move his forces to the castle and was only able to watch from afar as General Nicolás Bravo attempted to defend it. On the second day Scott switched to an infantry attack. Meanwhile, Bravo’s men dug trenches but were unable to oppose the Americans. General Bravo ordered his men to retreat then surrendered on the morning of the 13th.
During the battle, cadets from the military academy at Chapultepec Castle participated in the fighting. When the order came to retreat, five of the cadets and one of the cadets’ lieutenants continued fighting. Five of them were shot, and one of the cadets jumped from the castle’s roof, wrapped in the Mexican flag to keep it from being captured by the Americans. These cadets became known as the Niños Héroes, the boy heroes. They ranged in age from
In terms of Just War Theory, the deaths of these cadets would seem to run afoul of the Principle of Discrimination. Does it?
The Principle of Discrimination and a Practical Extension
Assuming that on both sides of a war there are innocents and non-innocents, the Principle of Discrimination stipulates that non-innocents are the only legitimate targets of attack. Just War Theorists then moves discussion from innocents vs non-innocents to legitimate vs illegitimate targets. Still, an additional requirement is required: the judgement whether an individual is a legitimate target must be easy to make. This is important from an eminently practical perspective: in situations like urban combat, it is highly likely that a warfighter will encounter both legitimate and illegitimate targets in very close proximity. A warfighter must be able to make this distinction rapidly, and JWT requires that it be made accurately.
The International Committee of Red Cross, among other agencies, has devised conditions to rapidly determine whether someone is a legitimate target. The conditions are:
- He wears a uniform
- He belongs to a hierarchical organization
- He’s carrying a weapon
- He is not hors de combat
A combatant is hors de combat if either1:
- He is in the power of an adverse party (e.g., a prisoner who is not attempting escape)
- He clearly expresses an intention to surrender
- He is wounded to the point of being combat-ineffective.
The primary beneficiary of uniforms are civilians: “Combatants, when engaged in military operations, have to distinguish themselves from the civilian population to protect it from the effects of hostilities and to restrict warfare to military objectives.2” The uniform also allows the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets to be more abstract, meaning that it allows us to think about potential targets in terms of their ideology instead of their race, for example. It isn't clear whether the ICRC intended this or if it is just an unintended consequence.
The wearing of a uniform and the carrying of a weapon are obvious markers, and being hors de combat is frequently obvious, but what about belonging to a hierarchical organization? Determine whether a potential enemy is indeed a member of such an organization requires looking for unit insignia, rank markers, as well as behavior - saluting, for example.
Reasons for the importance of belonging to a hierarchical organization are hard to come by, but perhaps it can be justified as follows: belonging to such an organization means that the combatant is not a completely autonomous moral agent - he can be acting on orders - and this precludes rational discussion with said combatant. Of course, being in a war zone would already preclude rational discourse!
The ICRC classification doesn't match our expectations for who counts as a legitimate target, however. Most people would identify munition plant workers and weapon system researchers as legitimate and not innocent.
Legitimate Targets and Types of Warfare
Frowe compares the process of catching the right targets with the casting of a net3. If cast too wide, then all combatants plus some non-combatants would be legitimate targets. If cast too narrow, then some (but not all) combatants are considered legitimate, and no non-combatants are legitimate targets.
The example of the munitions plant worker and weapons researcher imply that we should cast the net wide. Catching all combatants has problems all its own, however: restricting discussion only to military personnel, there are some personnel who are certainly legitimate targets (e.g., front-line members, the “teeth,” who are armed and standing 10 feet away), and some whose legitimacy can be brought into question (e.g., logistic support personnel, the “tail,” operating behind the lines).
This would imply not a binary distinction, but rather a continuum of legitimate “targetability” or “target-worthiness”.
Even allowing for a sliding scale there are still complications: in traditional warfare such as the two World Wars, front-line combatants are considered the most target-worthy4. In asymmetric wars such as the Revolutionary War, logistic support personnel are usually more target-worthy5. Thus, the conditions needed for being a legitimate target depends on the type of war currently being fought.
A "Realist War Theory" Critique and Approach
An assumption that needs to be checked is the "innocence" of non-combatants. It may be more accurate to call them "supporters" or "enablers," or at least some of them. Their innocence is problematic because of the way the general citizenry frequently gets along in a totalitarian country such as Imperial Japan or East Germany. When Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall, lists of collaborators, informants, and other people who worked with the East German Stasi were released, and those were not short lists!6
Combining this analysis of combatants and supporters with the above observation about a continuum of target-worthiness would lead to the following: every person of the enemy country is a legitimate target, and the target-worthiness is prioritized by their capacity to cause harm.
As an aside, the "journalists" who screeched for war, the politicians who clamored for war, and the defense contractors who profit before, during, and after the war make for far better targets than the actual combatants due to the amount of harm they cause. Of course, this can also be argued from a JWT standpoint depending on the grasp of Frowe's net.
Applying the Doctrine to the Niños Héroes
We are now able to evaluate Battle of Chapultepec. The battle itself was a militarily necessity. What about the cadets? According to the customs of many nations, including the US7 8 and Canada9, cadets are not part of the military10.
This custom is difficult to justify - cadets would meet the ICRC's conditions for being legitimate targets. A more essential fact is that, depending on the military academy and the number of years an individual was enrolled there, the cadet may have knowledge and skills that exceed a typical front-line combatant - the cadet is lacking experience not training.
Still, assuming we equate target-worthiness with being a member of the enemy military, this custom makes the cadets illegitimate targets.
Another problem is that these cadets were children, and this may be enough for some Just War Theorists to make their targeting unjust. Reflecting this back into the civilian world via Frowe's "domestic analogy," the cadets are akin to the young people that die every weekend in Chicago or Baltimore. Their targeting by gang members or police officers would also be unjust, though it makes the news only when the police are involved.
The moral status of children is of course an enormous issue, something too large to even begin to address here. If the cadets, the children, are being used as human shields, their status would be clear: they would not be legitimate targets, but their deaths can be rationalized by the principle of double effect. But they were active participants, not human shields, and the principle of double effect would not be applicable in this way.
A Realist War Theory would view both issues (that they were cadets and that they were children) simply as follows: doing adult activities makes one into an adult. The training those cadets received makes them into military members (though not exactly members of a country's "primary" military force), and the act of fighting at Chapultepec makes them imminent threats and legitimate targets.
Conclusion
Based on the Principle of Discrimination, the deaths of the cadets in the battle of Chapultepec were unjust: by convention they were non-combatants.
How does the unjustness of their deaths get rolled-up into the justness of the particular battle or into the justness of the whole Mexican-American War? JWT has been used to evaluate the treatment of prisoners, single battles, the use of types of weapons, and whole entire wars, so it should be applicable to individual fatalities as well.
One approach to solving this problem is to use the Principle of Proportionality - the idea that the harm caused to non-combatants by a military action does not exceed the actual or anticipated benefits. The cadets were, technically, non-combatants, and they were certainly harmed. The actual benefit was the capture of the castle. So, while the deaths were unjust, the battle itself was just, all other things being equal.
Patrick Tomlin claims11 it is possible that each and every act of a war can be proportionate but the war as a whole is disproportionate, and that it is also possible for each act to be disproportionate but the whole war is proportionate. If he is correct, then the overall justice of a war is not related to its battles, its constituent parts.
Footnotes
- ICRC Casebook, “Hors de combat.”
- Toni Pfanner, “Military uniforms and the law of war.”
- Helen Frowe, The Ethics of War and Peace.
- I wish to avoid the term “high value” because it has meaning in other military situations.
- This gives a colorful way of contrasting symmetric and asymmetric warfare: the fighting in traditional wars is teeth-vs-teeth, while in asymmetric wars it is teeth-vs-tails.
- Peter Wensierski, "East Germany thrived on snitching lovers, fickle friends and envious schoolkids."
- N/A, “Defense Primer: Military Service Academies.”
- N/A, “Army ROTC FAQ.”
- N/A, “The Cadet Program.”
- Research about the military status of Military cadets was inconclusive, either for today or in 1847.
- Patrick Tomlin, "Proportionality in War: Revising Revisionism."
Bibliography
N/A. “Defense Primer: Military Service Academies.” Congressional Research Service, 2023. Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF11788.pdf
N/A. “The Cadet Program.” Canadian Cadet Organization, N/D. Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://www.rangers2799.com/the-cadet-program.html
N/A. “Army ROTC FAQ.” University of Arkansas, N/D. Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://armyrotc.uark.edu/
Frowe, H. The Ethics of War and Peace. Routledge, 2022.
ICRC Casebook. “Hors de combat.” International Committee of the Red Cross, N/D. Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/hors-de-combat
Pfanner, T. “Military uniforms and the law of war.” International Review of the Red Cross 86, no. 853, (March 2004). Retrieved 27 April 2024 from https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/irrc_853_pfanner.pdf
Tomlin, P. "Proportionality in War: Revising Revisionism." Ethics 131, no. 1, (October 2020). https://doi.org/10.1086/709983
Wensierski, P. "East Germany thrived on snitching lovers, fickle friends and envious schoolkids." Australian Financial Review, 23 December 2015. Last retrieved 28 April 2024 from https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/stasi-snitches-all-around-records-reveal-true-extent-of-telling-on-others-20151116-gkzu44
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