Your boss issues an order that you judge not just to be a matter of policy, but one that goes to the heart of the nature of the military profession and its moral obligations and norms you have sworn an oath to uphold. What do you do? Salute and execute even if it means undermining and damaging these norms and violating these moral obligations?
This is a recurring theme in the history of the U.S. military, such as with General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman in 1951 and the with Joint Chiefs' initial resistance to allowing gays in the military under President Clinton in 1993. Recent commenters have opined that former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer was insubordinate and disobedient in not immediately carrying out the President’s 21 November 2019 order (by tweet) to prevent the Naval Special Warfare community from stripping Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Gallagher’s warfare pin (Trident) during a standard warfare administrative review process following the chief’s conviction at court-martial. The argument goes, “If you disagree with a lawful order of the President, it’s either ‘Aye, aye, Sir,’ or resign.”
Are those really the only two options when an order is given? Judging from many reliable media accounts, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis refrained from immediately carrying out some of the President’s orders until he had an opportunity to discuss it further with him or find a way to meet his intent without doing lasting damage to the department.
Assuming former Secretary Spencer’s actions have been accurately characterized and that a social media tweet constitutes a lawful order, the argument appears to be correct in appealing to a long tradition of obedience as a bedrock principle in the military profession. While Richard Spencer was a civilian appointee, as Secretary of the Navy he answered directly to the Secretary of Defense and Commander-in-Chief, and therefore could rightly be considered a member of the military profession during his tenure. Just war theorist Michael Walzer notes that “no military force can function effectively without routine obedience, and it is the routine that is stressed. Soldiers are taught to obey even petty and foolish commands.”1 Similarly, Samuel Huntington argues that obedience (along with loyalty) is a core virtue for the military professional.2
However, given the circumstances surrounding Spencer’s firing, on deeper examination this argument is problematic in that it lacks important context and ignores complexities of the subject of obedience in a military setting. While all officers and civilian appointees serve at the pleasure of the President, and the Secretary of Defense was within his authority to remove Spencer, the narrow treatment of Spencer’s apparent disobedience is not one that will prepare young military officers to be critical thinkers with a clear narrative of moral and ethical issues and questions.
All junior officers (and some noncommissioned officers as well) will inevitably find themselves in situations where they will have an obligation, morally and ethically, to ensure their superiors fully grasp the implications of decisions or orders before they are carried out. Generally setting aside time-sensitive combat situations where lawful orders must be followed immediately, military officers will often have to respectfully request greater clarification of an order, and in so doing have moral and professional obligations to see that (to the best of their ability) the senior understands the potential adverse effects of the order in both the short and longer term. This obligation is even more important when the senior is a civilian with no military background because of the civil/military relationship and the role of civilian advisors to the Commander-in-Chief.
My new book, On Obedience, is a philosophical exploration of the idea of obedience in both military and political communities of practice that examines how these professionals think about what obedience is and what grounds its moral necessity. Drawing from a variety of disciplines including classical studies, philosophy, history, international relations, literature, and military studies, it considers many classic and contemporary examples of obedience and disobedience and what they might tell us about the topic from the standpoint of our initial intuitions and assumptions. Serious engagement with the deeper philosophical questions around obedience, disobedience, and the shades of gray in between requires more in-depth analysis and discussion of the conceptual landscape of obedience, especially in terms of its moral status and place within a system of moral—and in the case of the military, professional—obligations.
In former Secretary Spencer’s case, he was very concerned that the President’s decision to preempt Naval Special Warfare’s process (as part of the obligation of the military profession to exercise autonomy and police their own members) to determine whether a SEAL can retain the sacred Trident would undermine morale and good order and discipline in the long term. It is correct that Spencer could have immediately resigned in protest, but Spencer chose another route, one I examine in chapter 8 of the book, “Obedience as Negotiation.” The term negotiation usually conjures an image of a business practice, where two parties in roughly equal power positions are trying to gain the most advantageous terms relative to their desired outcome. However, in a military context obedience is “negotiated” between authorities and members of a community being commanded relative to certain normative restraints that inform and limit that process.
There are countless examples in history of military commanders having to exercise judgment and discretion in obeying an order that may require kinds of obedience other than the conventional expectation of doing exactly what one is told in the way one is instructed. In some circumstances, rendering (or refusing) obedience may require judgment and discretion to determine what is appropriate, and actions may be on a continuum of obedience, nonobedience, less than obedience, or even disobedience (my first case study in the chapter is of the French 5th Infantry Division on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918). We typically think of these cases as the relatively rare illegal or immoral order, but such borderline cases are much more common than we might expect and occur in both normal and extreme circumstances.
With the burden of protecting the morale and good order and discipline tradition in Naval Special Warfare and, for that matter, the entire Department of the Navy, and likely conscious that his authority derived its legitimacy in part from those he lead, former Secretary Spencer opted for obedience as negotiation in seeking a solution that would satisfy the President and the uniformed Navy beneath him. As his resignation letter attests, he did this not as a personal matter, but as a member and leader within the military profession as a community of practice with certain moral norms, obligations, history, and identity. He admittedly erred in not keeping the Secretary of Defense informed of his discussions with the White House, but based on my knowledge of the case, he was not unnecessarily disobedient in the full sense. His search for a solution that would protect the integrity of the military organization for which he was responsible—a solution that would probably not have materialized as the result of an instant resignation—was not only an act of moral courage, but also an example of a type of obedience in a broader sense required at times by those in the military profession.
More from Dr. Pauline Shanks Kaurin:
USNI Press: On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community
From the Proceedings Podcast: Episode 146 - Leadership, Obedience, and the Conduct of War
- Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 311.
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1957), 73.