What is acceptable for a soldier to do? Where does following orders stop and an ethical stand against one's own government begin? When does one's loyalty and duty to one's country become a moral burden that can no longer be carried? When is it lawful for a soldier or officer to disobey orders?
This was supposedly decided in the Nuremberg Trials, in which Nazis were accused of and tried and convicted for crimes they committed while obeying orders. The outcome of these trials was codified in the Nuremberg Principles. They are commonly summarized in the negative, in vernacular fashion, in the statement, which is usually spoken in a mock-German accent: "I vuss chust followink orderss."
You can read the Wikipedia article on the Nuremberg Principles, or spend a month reading all the Google hits. To oversimplify and summarize:
- I. If you commit a crime under international law, it is you who will be punished for it, not just the person who ordered you to do it. In other words, you have a duty to civilization that overrides your duty to your commanders.
- II. Even if international law does not specify a punishment for the crime, it is still you who are responsible for having committed it, not just the person who gave the order. In other words, you can be convicted of a more prosaically defined crime such as rape or murder, if this provides a mechanism for punishing you.
- III. Being a head of state or any government official does not exempt you from such responsibility. In other words, the principle of sovereign immunity does not apply to evil.
- IV. The fact that you were following a direct order from your commander or any authority in your government does not exempt you from such responsibility. This was specifically included because "I was just following orders" (in any language
) had always been a legitimate defense in the past. This principle has been elaborated extensively and is the basis for granting refugee status to a conscientious objector if his own government does not recognize conscientious objection as a reason for deferment from military service, or if it will punish him for his conscientious objection.
- V. Anyone who is charged with violating international law is entitled to a fair trial. In other words, you can't execute someone without a trial just because you have him on videotape.
- VI. Specific acts are predefined as violations of these principles. Crimes against peace include planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; and participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of those acts. Crimes of war include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity. Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
- VII. Just in case Principle VI. wasn't clear enough, complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is specifically defined as a crime under international law.
I realize that the O.P. also asks about justification for going to war in the first place, but you've gotten lots of responses to that part. I have answered the first part of the question. If you are already at war, and the world acknowledges that you are at war, the Nuremberg Principles list some very important things
that you still can't do.
But note that the Nuremberg Principles do not anywhere state that they only apply during war! IMO the fact that you can't do those things
when you're not at war is becoming more important. War is being supplanted by terrorism. There is no state, no command structure, no acknowledged leadership with whom to negotiate, from whom to accept a surrender, or to whom to offer one. Much of today's fighting is not war. No conflict in which the USA has engaged since the end of WWII has been a proper war because war was not formally declared by Congress, as required by our Constitution.
That doesn't matter. Our military personnel still can't violate the Nuremberg Principles.
I dream of that "Crimes against peace" thingie being enforced more vigorously in the future, perhaps in a future in which one single nation doesn't have a bigger army and more weapons than the whole rest of the world. Surely, a national leader who plans and orders the overthrow of a sovereign government, justified by a premise which he knows is fraudulent, is initiating a war of aggression and is guilty of a crime against peace.
