Authority in the Military

A definition more relevant to the military comes from Cf. Brian Barry, “What makes one an authority is the fact that his decisions become societal decisions. The commander of a military unit in the United States armed forces is an authority because his decisions, within societally [sic] (i.e., legally) established limits, are accepted by the citizenry as a whole as society’s decisions concerning the specific military unit.” Therefore, because the military society gives an individual his or her authority, a subordinate would not have to follow an immoral order from the authority because that subordinate is a part of that military society who gives authority.

Based on this definition of authority, the moral responsibility rests on the military member who is asked to carry out an order. The Nuremburg trials “tried to establish legal accountability for the aggression and violations of human dignity,” The consensus of the judges were that each individual is morally accountable for their own actions, regardless of the authority of the person who gives the order.

Obedience is another word which has special implications for the military. In the Armed Forces, people who are placed in positions of authority want obedience without question. Webster’s defines obedience as, “dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person” (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org). This is especially true for those serving in the military.

When tying to define obedience for the military, one must consider that to obey, one must first have an authority figure to obey. Obedience comes by first believing that an authority exists. Once that is established, then we can see that obedience is directly related to the value given to the authority. In the military, authority figures are given great value, and must be obeyed, a fact which is permanently ingrained in young recruits minds.

However, because the military society gives an individual his or her authority, then the choice of obedience rests ultimately with the subordinate. The subordinate has to make the choice to obey or not to obey the authority, based on moral judgments that the subordinate must make. The fault for obeying an unlawful order would ultimately rest with the subordinate, as would the responsibility for disobeying a lawful order.

It is important for each person, especially within the military community to determine what is right and what is wrong, or thier morals. The best way to go about understanding right actions and wrong actions are for a person to ask themselves, “Would I want this to happen to me?” Or, “Does the good outweigh the bad?” If the answer to both questions is, “No” then it can be concluded that it would be a wrong action, and subordinates should act based on those conclusions.

Throughout history, there are examples where people have followed authority and sacrificed their own moral codes. The Mai Lai massacre, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, these are all examples of instances where people have obeyed authority without questioning the morality of their actions. More recently, we have the Abu Ghraib scandal, where prisoners were tortured, an order which came from an authority figure. At any time, one of them could have stopped what they were doing, but they made the choice to blindly follow the authority which was placed over them.

By defining the seemingly ambiguous terms “authority” and “obedience” we can see that even with the results of the Milgram obedience experiments, it is clear that the subordinate has control of their actions, as 35% of the subjects tested did not follow their “authority” figures to the end, they chose to follow their own morals. The fault for doing immoral acts would rest with the subordinate, whether or not an order came from an authority figure.

It is important to change how these words are defined in terms of the military, in order to change a soldier’s perspective of following military authority. Now that we understand how these words work in the military, we need to work on changing them to so that soldier’s will better understand the balance between following orders, and following their own moral compass. Only when these changes are made, and understood, can we rest easy truly believing that our military can and will make the right decisions.