The Limit of Soldierly Obedience. How Far Will Military Leaders Go to Follow Trump?

Thoughts as Trump Becomes Commander in Chief

“It is a lack of character and insight, when a soldier in high command sees his duty and mission only in the context of his military orders without realizing that the highest responsibility is to the people of his country.” Ludwig Beck

On August 15th, 2019, President Trump pardoned three convicted American war criminals against the strong objections of the Department of Defense and the military services. With one stroke he took back military justice to the day when President Richard Nixon for all practical purposes overturned the military Justice system’s conviction of Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai massacre by commuting his sentence to house arrest.

It took decades for the United States Army to recover from the stain My Lai and other war crimes committed of in Vietnam. Likewise, it took the Presidency years to recover from the stain of Richard Nixon. Unfortunately, the President Elect, the one and the same Donald J. Trump is now 33 days from his inauguration and the beginning of his retribution and revenge term, and he has already begun by bringing the leaders of corporate American, and corporate media to heel. Only independent media, and foreign media not under control of Trump allies will even try to tell the truth through well researched investigative reporting. However, as long as corporate media empires who control much of the broadcast media, and the already cult-like conservative media produce the bulk of the news people see, Trump’s propaganda will be the story, and he will be the star of the show.

That being said, when presidents condone war crimes and pardon war criminals convicted by the military justice system, they open the door to more war crimes. When incoming presidents threaten the careers, and or lives of senior active and retired generals and admirals, promising to remove them and installed loyalists, the military rapidly devolves into a criminal organization.

Trump’s pardons of the three war criminals happened during a week where I have been doing a lot of reading on the Japanese War Crimes during the Second World War, and was reviewing my previous studies about the Nazi War Crimes, and watching a mini-series about the Tokyo War Crimes Trials.

I was appalled at Trump’s despicable defense of, and pardon of these men, all convicted of war crimes by U.S. military courts. Truth matters, law matters, and justice matters, but not to Trump or his Secretary of Defense nominee, the completely unqualified Pete Hegseth, who has commanded nothing larger than a platoon. Likewise, Hegseth admires war criminals and calls them heroes. Likewise, he was the man who convinced Trump to pardon the war criminals. So, if Hegseth is confirmed as the Secretary of Defense and Trump appoints his lackeys to the highest military positions those in the military will obliged to comply with criminal orders, resign, or face the consequences of their disobedience. Hegseth told an interviewer in early November 2024 that he would fire officers not sufficiently loyal to Trump, beginning with General Charles “C.Q.” Brown, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump too has said that he would fire officers “woke” Generals, and prosecute retired and active duty Generals. They both expect that their threats will subdue any resistance among the officer corps. Sadly, I expect that many will comply, certainly not all or even a majority, but enough.

The pardons that Trump issued in 2019, have the potential release unprecedented evil in the coming months and years. Many otherwise honorable men and women will excuse their conduct by claiming that they are just following orders, or in the case of Christians committed to Trump, believe that whatever they do to obey Trump, is approved by God. There are more of them in the military than you would expect.

I take this very seriously. War Crimes are war crimes whether committed by Nazis, Communists, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, or American soldiers. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who organized the Nuremberg Trials and prosecuted the leading Nazis in the major war crimes trials conducted by the International Military Tribunal, noted before the trials began:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Justice Robert Jackson International Conference on Military Trials, London, 1945, Dept. of State Pub.No. 3080 (1949), p.330.

Unfortunately, the United States Congress never approved U.S. membership in the International Criminal Court. The refusal to join a body that American jurists and military lawyers were instrumental in creating, means that we do not take war crimes seriously if they are committed by our soldiers. In doing so we make a mockery of justice. In the case of Trump, they don’t matter even when our own military seeks justice. In 2019, President Trump overturned the our military justice system to set convicted war criminals free. Trump dishonored the country and the military that is sworn to obey the law and the Constitution.

When Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative Catholic majority on the Supreme Court have ruled that a president is immune from prosecution of crimes committed as part of his official duties, they opened a Pandora’s box of problems for military personnel order to commit crimes in direct contravention of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, U.S. Law, and international treaties signed by the United States which govern the conduct of war.

Based on his campaign promises, which we must take seriously, Trump will use the men and women to commit crimes against American citizens in the United States, and use it to commit war crimes when he chooses to employ it abroad. The rule of law does not matter to him, nor does the fact that, the military personnel who commit those crimes bear personal responsibility for them. As Robert Jackson said at Nuremberg: “Of course, the idea that a State, any more than a corporation, commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. While it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a State or corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal immunity.

The Charter recognises that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of States.”

As such, to say that one was following orders when committing a crime is no defense. While very low ranking personnel might not be prosecuted, any officer or noncommissioned officer who commits them or orders them is guilty.

German General Ludwig Beck was the Chief of Staff of the German Army in 1938. He resigned in protest rather than participate in Hitler’s planned invasion of Czechoslovakia. He help lead conservative German resistance against Hitler and participated in the attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, and was given the choice to be executed by firing squad or because of his stature, killing himself that night when it failed. He chose the latter.

He wrote something that all military commanders need to remember now and after the inauguration:

“Final decisions about the nation’s existence are at stake here; history will incriminate these leaders with bloodguilt if they do not act in accordance with their specialist political knowledge and conscience. Their soldierly obedience reaches its limit when their knowledge, their conscience, and their responsibility forbid carrying out an order.”

That is what it comes down to. How does one speak for human rights and against war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet stand by and watch, watch the President of the United States make a mockery of justice, or even help him carry them out because they were “just following orders”?