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. 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. 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. My point was that the military officer is not an automaton. 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. But what disturbs me most about the story is not that the request was made, but that someone in uniform obeyed it. The request was brazenly political and ethically questionable. sailors in Japan last month, calling the incident “the latest blow to the norms of military nonpartisanship.” They are right to be concerned. McCain during the president’s visit to 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. 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. ![]() 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. ![]() 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. During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, a Prussian officer defended himself from reprimand by arguing that he was simply following orders.
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