Loyalty applies not only to immediate friendships but also to the nation, humanity, and to moral principles like truth. Your ultimate loyalty should be to higher values like the state and the military. Placing your loyalty to your friendships above loyalty to the military and the state can lead to behaviour which breaks rules and laws. Trust is a vital component of cohesion, breaking of the rules brings trustworthiness into question.

• If you place loyalty to your friends and comrades above loyalty to the military and the state, this can lead to behaviour which breaks rules and laws.

• This is not to say that you should not be loyal to your comrades, but you should be prepared to resist peer pressure so that you do the right thing.

See 8 of Clubs.

Paul Robinson, ‘Integrity and Selective Conscientious Objection’, Journal of Military Ethics, 8 (2009), p39.