When Not to Obey Orders
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When Not to Obey Orders
Andrew Milburn
July 8, 2019
Commentary
When Not to Obey Orders
#Civil-Military Relations
#Readiness and Training
Andrew Milburn
July 8, 2019
During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, a Prussian officer defended himself from reprimand by arguing that he was simply following orders. His commander, Prince Frederick Charles, reportedly replied: “His Majesty made you a Major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.” It’s a simple vignette, but the question that it raises is anything but simple: When should a military officer disobey orders? I have always believed that those who answer, “only when those orders are illegal,” have probably not thought hard enough about the question. An officer’s oath of office, professional ethics, and obligation to subordinates may at times require him to dispute or even disobey a legal order.The story of Frederick Charles and his overly obedient major came to mind last week when I read David Barno and Nora Bensahel’s article “The Increasingly Dangerous Politicization of the U.S. Military.” In it the authors recount how members of the White House staff asked the Navy to conceal the name of the USS John S. McCain during the president’s visit to U.S. sailors in Japan last month, calling the incident “the latest blow to the norms of military nonpartisanship.” They are right to be concerned. The request was brazenly political and ethically questionable. But what disturbs me most about the story is not that the request was made, but that someone in uniform obeyed it.<br>Nine years ago, while a student at the Marine Corps War College, I wrote an essay entitled “Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Professional,” in which I argued that under certain circumstances, a military officer is obligated to disobey orders — even legal ones. My point was that the military officer is not an automaton. He has an obligation to the nation, derived from his oath to defend the constitution, and to his subordinates, implicit in the extraordinary position of authority he has over them, to exercise some degree of moral autonomy in the gap between receipt of order and execution. The higher an officer climbs in rank, the closer he comes to the nexus between policy and military strategy, and the weightier that obligation becomes.<br>Published in the Joint Forces Quarterly, the article elicited what I can only describe as a storm of protest from civilian academics and political pundits who perceived it as a wholesale challenge to the concept of civilian control of the military. Richard Kohn of the University of North Carolina excoriated the article, writing, “It should be assigned in every military school from pre-commissioning through Capstone so that it can be exposed for what it is: an attack on military professionalism that would unhinge the armed forces of the United States.” Although flattered, I noted he had missed my point completely. Admitting that military officers have moral autonomy and the obligation to act according to their conscience is not the same as granting them the license to do so free of consequences. The risk to career and reputation involved in such decisions means they will never be taken lightly.<br>Despite Kohn’s concerns, the Marine Corps saw fit to allow me to remain on active duty for almost a decade after writing that article, even promoting me to colonel and giving me command, without causing a noticeable drop in good order and discipline. And I remain convinced — perhaps even more so than when I wrote the article — that neither the military nor the nation is best served by having an officer corps that unquestioningly accepts Samuel Huntington’s injunction that “loyalty and obedience are the highest military virtues.”<br>To be clear, I am a proponent of the traditional view of civil-military relations in which military leaders offer their best military advice to civilian policymakers — the secretary of defense, the National Security Council, and the president — in a discussion that should be frank and forthright. Whether or not this advice is taken, the military leader’s role is then to execute or speak up and, as a last resort, resign. It isn’t the military leader’s job to challenge the executive on questions of policy. That is the role of Congress.<br>But I have one problem with this traditional view, or — more accurately — the manner in which it is commonly discussed and presented: It assumes an absolute clarity in interpretation that doesn’t...