For years, Britain and America have claimed that their militaries wage war ethically and with accuracy. Words like precision weapons, legal oversight and sophisticated targeting procedures were bandied around and, to be frank, they were done so with a sense of exceptionalism. They were meant to be the waging of ‘civilised war’ and they distinguished Western democracies from the indiscriminate violence they condemn in others. But two recent developments suggest that such a moral high-ground – for all of its fragility and questionable claim – is no longer being so brazenly claimed.

The trend is that these two Security Council members are no longer putting the need to prevent civilian deaths at the front of their rules of engagement and this is most evidenced by a growing institutional reluctance even to measure such deaths.

In Britain, a Ministry of Defence commissioned review revealed that the UK military has no coherent system for tracking civilian harm caused by its operations. As AOAV’s own Freedom of Information request also showed, there is no central register of allegations, no dedicated casualty assessment unit and no systematic mechanism for reviewing post-strike civilian deaths. Earlier systems developed during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have, according to the review, “fallen into disuse”.

In America, the picture is similar. A Pentagon inspector general’s report found that the Trump administration has effectively dismantled much of the military’s civilian harm mitigation infrastructure. Funding has ended, personnel have been reassigned and oversight mechanisms designed after years of criticism over civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have died on the vine.

Together, these developments seem to suggest, at least from AOAV’s perspective, towards a palpable shift in Anglo-Saxon Western military culture. Namely, that Civilian protection, once presented as a moral necessity and a strategic requirement, is now treated as an almost operational inconvenience.

That change appears to even being articulated openly inside defence circles. AOAV understands that, at a recent defence workshop in London, a senior British military official reportedly described efforts to retrain personnel away from what was characterised as the “Herrick generation” mindset: the belief, developed during Afghanistan and Iraq, that soldiers should do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.

Participants, it is understood, left with the impression that current British military thinking increasingly accepts higher civilian harm thresholds as Britain prepares for future state-on-state conflict. Some attendees privately expressed concern that British doctrine may be drifting closer to the permissive targeting cultures now visible among certain allies and partners.

Whether or not such views become formal doctrine (and you can predict this would be denied by the MOD who routinely say they follow International Humanitarian Law, even when inquiries into SAS killings in Afghanistan suggest this is not the case), the wider trajectory is unmistakable.

In short, for those who follow such things, it seems clear that those systems designed to monitor civilian harm are being weakened at the same time as political rhetoric around military “lethality” strengthens.

This is all against a backdrop of dubious past claims, anyway. During Operation Shader against Islamic State, the UK officially acknowledged – outrageously to some – causing just one civilian death. Research by AOAV found at least 29 likely civilian deaths from nine RAF strikes between 2016 and 2018, while the casualty recording network Airwars documented at least 26 civilian deaths in six strikes in Mosul alone.

That was then. Now, the current rhetoric, cuts and mood seem to reflect a growing accountability vacuum in democratic warfare. It’s there with the United States attacking Venezuela and Iran. It’s there with American military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean. It’s there with the West’s military assistance of Israel.

Of course, the British Ministry of Defence insists civilian protection remains “deeply embedded” within British military culture. Yet the same review admits there is no coherent oversight framework to verify such claims. So how can they claim the know they are not killing civilians when they are not counting such harm?

Of course, it is inevitable that civilians will die in war. As AOAV’s data shows: when explosive weapons are used in towns and cities, 90% of those killed or injured will be civilians.

But democracies that stop systematically counting civilian deaths risk abandoning something fundamental: the principle that the use of force must remain publicly accountable to the societies in whose name it is exercised.

Britain and the United States should heed this concern – for without it they risk becoming the evil they are fighting to end.