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Can service personnel refuse to serve if they disagree with their government’s decisions?
What do you think? Is there a difference between an illegal order and one you simply disagree with?

• Soldiers have a duty to obey legal orders, and to disobey illegal ones.

• However, most soldiers do not know all of the relevant facts behind a government’s decision to go to war - many will be classified and secret.

• A soldier therefore cannot always make an accurate decision about the justness of a particular war, but they are more likely to be able to question the justness of tactical decisions when deployed.

 

‘Today, all professional militaries around the world acknowledge that there is a duty to disobey or disregard a blatantly illegal order. At the same time however, there is also a clear expectation that such duties are limited to tactical level considerations: it is not up to the soldier to question the policy of his of her government; so one can disagree at the ballot box but not in the barracks or in the context of combat. The assumption is that most soldiers are simply not in a position to know all the relevant facts about their government’s decision to go to war and so are not able to reach a suitably informed judgement on the justice or injustice of the war.’ (Whetham 2015)

“The military oath of office demands that servicemembers be willing and able to subordinate their personal beliefs to their professional obligations. By reflecting on constitutional ethics, military professionals can prepare themselves to recognize such dilemmas and determine which obligation prevails in a given situation. Servicemembers cannot begin thinking about such challenges only after being selected for senior leadership levels. Instead, they must challenge themselves and their subordinates to read and to think about the Constitution, the oath of office, and the role of constitutional ethics in their daily endeavors.” (Cook 2018)

David Whetham, ‘My Country, Right or Wrong: If the Cause is Just, is Anything Allowed? in James Turner Johnson and Eric D. Patterson (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics, (Ashgate, Farnham, 2015), p285.

Martin Cook, Right vs. Right:

Personal vs. Professional Obligations, Parameters 48(1) Spring 2018. http://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3544.pdf

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