It is part of the duty of the military profession to have to bear the awful responsibility for the expenditure of human life on the field of battle. But in the world of the future our naval officers will not only have to bear the weight of the demands of their profession, but also the weight of their responsibility as fathers for the kind of world which their children inherit.
Attempts to build a durable peace will call for the consideration of policies about which the military profession, as a group, will feel strongly. The military profession may be expected to be a potent force in the debates on the policy-making level concerning these policies. The arguments and motivations of this group will have to be considered if the search for durable peace is to be successful. While gauging the psychology of a group is at best a difficult and risky business, the following observations are offered in an effort to open up the problem of the role of the military in international organization for security.
Notwithstanding their interests as citizens and fathers in the prevention of war, professional officers in the United States typically have tended to be opposed to or at least skeptical of proposals for international organization for the maintenance of peace. This attitude has been brought to a focus in recent months by the issue of outright acquisition versus international trusteeship of the Japanese mandated islands. This opposition to proposals for internationalization is understandable, not only in the light of the history of the Japanese mandates, but also in the light of perhaps more fundamental motivations which lead to opposition by the military to other proposals for internationalization.
To some extent this opposition is apparently due to a conception of professional responsibility.1 Examination of this concept is pertinent to the issues which arise regarding the nature of participation by the United States in the United Nations Organization.
International organization for the prevention of war often carries with it the idea of international pooling of armed forces, in some form or other, and curtailment of national armament. This is so because, in the international anarchy which results from the idea that each state is its own judge and its own defender, the more one power prepares for what it sincerely believes is defense, the more suspicious other powers will feel, since they cannot be sure that such preparations will not threaten their security or interests. If states are to rely on an international security system for their defense, the military strength behind the system must be adequate relative to the level of national armaments; but states are reluctant to curtail their military preparations based on the self- help philosophy if the international security organization does not seem strong enough to protect them. The result is a vicious circle, and demonstrates that a workable international security system requires, if not the abandonment of the self-help philosophy, at least abandonment of exclusive reliance on it and its supplementation by an international security system with considerable power at its disposal. Since the military man’s responsibility lies in planning such self- help, it is not surprising that compromising it runs counter to his professional and patriotic loyalties as he conceives them.2
The professional officer’s traditional primary responsibility is insuring that his country’s military strength will be as great as possible in the event of war. This is a different thing from the prevention or avoidance of war. It is understandable that the military man advising on policy should be reluctant to take the initiative in compromising preparation for war in the interest of prevention of war, the very possibility of which will appear to him to be debatable. Some would argue, however, that the military profession has no obligation or right to oppose too energetically any effort by the appropriate civilian authorities to make such a compromise, since such a matter lies in the realm of high politics from which the military must abstain if their tradition of political neutrality is to be maintained.
While the job of the military profession is to see to it that any war in which the country may become involved will be waged as effectively and as cheaply in terms of lives as possible, the cheapest war imaginable in the atomic age will be too expensive to tolerate if it is possible to prevent it. The thoughtful citizen is coming more and more to believe that resigning himself to efforts to make war as cheap and as efficient as possible seems analogous to the actions of the inmate of an institution who mopped the floor instead of turning off the faucet.
The more typical and influential viewpoint among the military profession today apparently is that proposals for security by means of a truly international force are either impractical or inimical to our national security and interests.3 There are, however, a few examples of professional military men who apparently have been able, at least to their own satisfaction, to reconcile the obligations of their profession with support of an international organization with its own armed forces. Lord Wavell’s biography of Field Marshal Allenby records Allenby’s feelings toward his profession and toward the stupidity of war, and affords an insight into his feelings concerning the death of his own son in that war.4 It must have been these experiences that led him to espouse an international police force.5 An eminent French officer, General Gerard, took a leading part in the work of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies, offering a detailed plan for an international force.6 Admiral Sir Herbert W. Richmond has written on the problems involved in international policing of the seas,7 although expressing no explicit opinion as to its probable success. In 1911 an American naval officer suggested that “leading nations of the world unite for the formation and maintenance of an international navy” and presented a plan for its composition and command.8
Certain elements of the American military services today are apparently sympathetic to the idea of an international organization with force at its disposal,9 although they probably are in the minority. The above examples indicate that, to some military men, an international security organization with armed force at its disposal appears to be not outside the realm of possibility, at least from the standpoint of the technique of military organization and administration, and that there is nothing inherent in the professional officer’s responsibility which requires him to oppose, at the political level, a diminution of reliance on the self-help principle in the interests of an international security system.
The problem of reconciling the professional military man’s conception of his responsibility with the requirements of a viable international security system will become a very practical one when the time comes for implementing agreements between the Security Council of the United Nations and the member states whereby the member states undertake to make available to the Security Council “armed forces, assistance, and facilities. . . . ”10 If the contingents so placed by the United States under the Security Council are really to be a part of an effective international security system, the officers and men of these contingents will have to feel a certain responsibility and loyalty to the international authority. How can this obligation and loyalty be reconciled with the obligation and loyalty to the national security system?
To the extent that the military man’s conception of responsibility and loyalty flows from the oath which all members of the American armed services take, examination of this oath throws some light on the problem of the obligations of a member of a national United Nations contingent with respect to the international security organization. Under this oath, a member of the armed services swears: to “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America”; to “serve them honestly and faithfully against their enemies whomsoever”; and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the Rules and Articles of War.”11
This language suggests that it might be possible to form contingents to be placed under the command of an agent of the international security organization without modifying the oath or doing violence to the pledges contained in it. To do this it is merely necessary to accept the view that definition of true faith and allegiance and determining who are enemies of the United States are matters of high politics, to be made by the competent civilian authority. If that authority were to enter into treaty obligations declaring that those states or individuals—including United States officers—acting counter to the decisions of the international security organization were considered enemies of the United States, and if the President by directive were to order the members and commander of a contingent to obey the orders of the agent of the international security organization, there would be no problem of reconciling the individual commander’s or individual soldier’s responsibilities as a member of the national armed forces, as defined by his oath, and his responsibilities to the international organization.
Service in the contingents made available to the United Nations by the United States will provide an opportunity for military careers with a new orientation— the attempt to prevent war rather than preparing for or winning a war. Such service will afford opportunities for military careers which are dedicated, in a way in which traditional military careers are not, to substituting order for anarchy in international relations, without which no durable peace is possible. Such careers may have considerable attraction for those military men who, like Field Marshal Allenby after World War I, have been impressed by their war-time experiences with the full implications of their responsibilities as citizens and fathers with respect to the problem of war.
1. The extent to which this attitude is due to a view of human nature and international politics different from the view of those prepared to make some sacrifice of sovereignty is outside the scope of this paper.
2. “The military profession cannot recognize any duty above that which constitutes its very essence: insuring the safety of its country. A military delegation sent to discuss disarmament problems cannot and should not envisage them—as it is implicitly requested to do—in a somewhat general and abstract light.’’ S. de Madariaga, Disarmament, 1929, p. 91, quoted in Frederick L. Schuman, International Politics, McGraw-Hill, 1941, p. 474.
3. E.g., Captain William D. Puleston, U.S.N., “The Role of the United States Navy in the Post-War World,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May, 1944, pp. 504-505. Admiral William L. Rodgers, “An International Police,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 37, No. 2 (April, 1943), p. 305.
4. Allenby, A Study in Greatness, Oxford University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 78, 170, 171, 196. See also book review by P. W. Wilson, New York Times, April 6, 1941, in which similar sentiments were attributed to Field Marshal Haig.
5. Viscount Allenby, “World Police for World Peace,” International Conciliation, No. 323, (October, 1936).
6. Lord Davies, The Problem of the Twentieth Century, Ernest Benn and Co., London, 1934, Appendix D.
7. “The Role of Sea Power in International Policing,” and “Bases in a System of International Sea Control,” New Commonwealth, v. 8, July and December, 1942.
8. Commander T. W. Kinkaid, U.S.N., “Should There Be an International Navy?”, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 37, March, 1911, pp. 91-93.
9. Colonel James W. Snedeker, U.S.M.C., “Our Fighters Discuss Post-War Plans,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January, 1945, pp. 29-33.
10. Charter of the United Nations Art. 43.
11. U.S.C.A., Title 10, sec. 1581. Act of June 4, 1920 c. 227, subchapter II, sec. 1,41 Stat. 809.