Officer Resignation and the Space Between Theory and Practice

The Civic Republican Tradition

Officer Resignation and Theory and Practice

In his disputatio, Mueller (2017) raises several important philosophical questions regarding officer resignation, citing a few civic republican thinkers to do so, namely, Machiavelli and Aristotle. First, he enquires about the connection between theory and practice, noting the particularly dangerous space that senior officers inhabit: “Critiquing their actions from an armchair is a comfortable pastime, but the consequences of mistakes in doing so are never significant” (Mueller 2017, p. 4).

By contrast, senior officers do not deal in untested abstractions but mistakes in their judgment visit disaster upon the physical world. The fraught questions of conscience and moral agency are inherently tied to questions of theory’s application to practice, and these questions are more complicated by the particular character of civil–military relations. As Clausewitz (1984) claims, “all wars can be considered acts of policy”; consequently, the realm of war is not autonomous but rather bound to the political (p. 88). Military forces, however, are not equipped to be self-contained vessels of political deliberation but instead are rightly instruments of the government institutions that are charged with political judgment, although as Snider (2017) points out, citing the work of Cohen (2002), there are no “bright lines” distinguishing between the role of advising political institutions bright lines and the activity of creating policy (p. 7). The critical problem emerges when the institutions charged with right judgment fail in their task, and senior officers are asked to become tools for the advancement of deeply problematic or immoral plans.

In the course of their service to a regime, senior officers are inevitably involved in important moments of discernment that inevitably summon questions of not only judgment but conscience—and as Dubik (2017) argues—there is not a moment at which the moral agency of such persons is suspended (p. 18). The difficulty is that such moral agency occurs within a realm of immediacy and political necessity; this poses a counterweight to the exercise of their agency that civilian individuals may not encounter in their own profession as a matter of course. Consequently, we often see the concept of “dirty hands” (Bárcenas, 2015; Walzer, 1973; Wolin, 2016) employed here to argue that political life requires a willingness to step outside of the boundaries of normal morality in order to preserve the structures and society that make that normal morality possible. Quoting Machiavelli, Mueller (2017) highlights the fundamental problem—“[a] man who wants to live virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous” ( p. 4). When our moral practice is derived from “imaginary” republics and principalities, we are doomed “for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation” (Machiavelli, 1998, chapter IX). If this is the case, then granting senior officers the possibility of resignation presents a dangerous temptation leading officers away from political necessity and toward a different kind of ruin than the one that comes from officers’ obedient to terrible political judgment.

But what are the kinds of things that Machiavelli’s ethic opens us up to? Although his thought is often mischaracterized by the aphorism “the ends justify the means,” Machiavelli (1995) does isolate only one end that justifies any means—the end of the “common good” (p. I.9-10). But for the sake of the common good, Machiavelli is willing to countenance acts as horrendous as the murder of children to ensure the elimination of enemy bloodlines (Machiavelli, 1998, chapter IV) and the murder of one’s own sons (Machiavelli 1995, III.3) or brother (Machiavelli, 1995, I.9-10) to obtain or consolidate power.

The presumption behind Machiavelli’s claim that that the end of the common good justifies any means is that a leader must sometimes engage in cruelty to be kind. Such a leader will “with very few examples…be more merciful than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue” (Machiavelli, 1998, XVII). In this way, Machiavelli’s self-abandonment into the realm of realism actually returns us to the arms of theory. What is the science of judgment that allows one to determine when necessity permits injustice, and when it is too much? And what happens to the man or woman who commits or allows injustice for the sake of a greater good? Do they retain their ability to disdain cruelty or injustice or learn to love violence for its own sake? Does their conscious decision to dirty their hands somehow slowly dilute their ability to discern right action over time? Who is this person who can keep the integrity of their judgment intact and their devotion to the common good alive as they pursue acts that typically disorder the human mind and soul?

The capacity for balancing a commitment to justice with the demands of a reality filled with so many “who are not virtuous” represents the struggle between the real and the ideal and that struggle requires the human virtue of prudence, which Mueller notes in his reflections on officer resignation. Mueller (2017) uses Aristotle to present this point. Courage is a mean between rashness and cowardice but where does the practice of officer resignation fall on this continuum? “Would a principled resignation by a senior officer be an act of courage, or an act of rashness or cowardice, recognizing that the reason for the resignation will likely remain and become someone else’s problem?” (Mueller, 2017, p. 5).

Prudence is the faculty we rely on to make such a determination, but what exactly is prudent? At this point, I return to a civic republican thinker, Aristotle, and one of his best interpreters, Aquinas.

For Machiavelli, who we have dealt with up to this point, it is building “dikes and dams against fortune” (Machiavelli, 1998, chapter XXV) and Aquinas (1920) acknowledges (quoting Isidore) that “A prudent man is one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen, and he foresees the event of uncertainties” (Question 47, Article 1, Respondeo).

But prudence is more than only far sight. To concretize the discussion of prudence, Aristotle begins by imagining how the prudent man would act. He deliberates “nobly about things good and advantageous for himself, not in a partial way—for example, the sorts of things conducive to health or strength—but about the sorts of things conducive to living well in general” (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.5). Prudence is distinctly “bound up with action pertaining to the human goods” (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.5) and pertains to things that “admit of being otherwise” (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.6). It is not a faculty concerned with theory but with what is tangible and real, though it is still tethered to a search for the human good, which modern’s often think of as a strictly theoretical enterprise. Instead, prudence requires knowledge of universals and particulars, while emphasizing the latter (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.7). Therefore, “[h]e who is a good deliberator simply is skilled in aiming, in accord with calculation, at what is best for a human being in things attainable through action” (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.7). For this reason, experience becomes a primary concern when it comes to prudence because “prudence is also of particulars, which come to be known as a result of experience” (Aristotle, 2012, book VI.8). Here, Aristotle affirms that the prudent person is the one whose past experience and understanding of a particular situation make them especially suited to deliberate with an eye to the common good.

But prudence cannot lose sight of the common good, otherwise, it is merely a kind of cleverness. In fact, an inability to adhere to the common good corrupts a person’s ability to be correct about their appraisal of what “principles are bound up with action” (Aristotle, 2012, Book VI.11). A moral sense is an essential part of prudential decision-making, and because of the connection between the good and decisions about right action, “it is manifest that it is impossible for someone who is not good to be prudent” (Aristotle, 2012, Book VI.11). Therefore, making prudent judgments—the kinds of judgments that involve the real world and not theory strictly—are dependent in some way to a kind of moral awareness of right action. This is true even for the political world, under the name of what Aquinas (1920) calls “political prudence” (II-II Question 47, Article 11), which is “directed to the common good of the state.” The common good of the state is the end, and prudence does not regulate the end, but rather the means to that end (Aquinas, 1920, II-II Question 47, Article 6).

Prudence and Officer Resignation

To return to the question of prudence’s role in navigating the space between the real and the ideal, under what category would an officer’s resignation fall? Prudence concerns “that which can be otherwise,” meaning that which is not always the same everywhere. Officer resignation is the kind of thing that is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not. In some cases, a resignation would be cowardly, in others rash, and in some cases, it would fall under the golden mean of courage. The determinative factor would not only be an identification of the end of the “common good,” but a correct assessment of what the common good entails and of what means are appropriate pursuant to this end.

Prudence, then, gives us the flexibility that we need to recognize and maintain the moral agency of the officer while also grounding him or her in what Mueller calls the “reality of politics.” Prudence abounds in the spaces carved out by authors writing in support of a limited possibility for officer resignation. Snider (2017) suggests that the following are moments at which officer resignation is appropriate, emphasizing that each of these occasions have come to pass: when civilian leaders commit to the zero nuclear option, when civilian leaders command a war of aggression or a war that manifestly will fail to fulfill strategic goals, or when civilian leaders will not furnish resources to the armed forces in the case of highly likely future military conflict (pp. 13, 14). He argues that officer resignation would be appropriate in such cases because of their “moral gravity” and “grave implications for our national security” (Snider, 2017, p. 13). Mueller (2017) lists “irreconcilable disagreement” with government officials about policy, derogation of responsibility of command, or the reception of an unlawful government command as moments when officer resignation is prudentially appropriate (p. 6).

Dubik (2017) describes the environment under which resignation is permissible: If there is no recourse because of a deliberate choice of civilian leaders to ignore criticism and realities that do not fit with their plans “‘exit’ or resignation may be the only way to get the organization’s attention…the last resort to demonstrate that something is seriously awry or that ground reality doesn’t match senior leader reality” (p. 20). Dubik here echoes the moral wisdom of Martin Luther King, who in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail notes that the creation of a productive tension through direct, nonviolent action can lead to negotiation where is no prior possibility of such and can change discussions from “monologue to dialogue” (King, 1963, p. 5). ²

But questions of prudence are also present in the objections of Kohn (2017) and Feaver (2017). Kohn (2017) writes that the “practical effect on the particular policy or decision behind the rupture is likely to be negligible and even deleterious” (p. 45). The effects of officer resignation make it prudentially unwise. A senior officer has more power and influence if he or she stays to advocate for their ideas. A senior officer who resigns for a matter of conscious incurs the toxic effect of abandoning the men and women under their command (Kohn, 2017, p. 46). Officer resignation is also likely to diminish civilian authority in military policy, undermine the military profession in the eyes of civilians, and endanger civilian military control (Kohn, 2017, pp. 44 and 46). Lastly, it is unlikely in Kohn’s (2017) estimation to cause any actual change in direction (p. 46).

Feaver (2017) expresses similar concerns as Kohn, arguing that “these costs obtain even if the resigning-in-protest individual happens to be right,” though he makes an exception for the case of “unstable command authority” (p. 34). In Feaver’s (2017) opinion, aside from unstable, impaired command authority, any scenario one could imagine for officer resignation could perhaps be met instead by the unsavory but in his opinion less deleterious act of “leaking” (p. 35).

In my opinion, Feaver and Kohn point out real prudential concerns about officer resignation. But these concerns do not prudentially outweigh the concerns that emerge if a senior officer does not have the capacity to withdraw his leadership from service to a deeply morally corrupt or reckless enterprise that does not achieve the good of the state, nor does the method of “leaking,” identified as less deleterious by Feaver, seem substantively different in terms of the potential harms it causes to the political community. By contrast, the potential costs that emerge if we take the potential for senior officers’ resignation off the campus are substantial. If critics of officer resignation’s ultimate concern is political instability, the destabilization that occurs from “remaining silent or remaining in position in the face of serious wrongs or…sustained…ineffectiveness” are also great (Dubik, 2017, p. 20). Greater still is the needless spending of what Dubik (2017) calls the “war’s coin” (p. 21):

War risks, damages, changes and often ends lives: the lives of the innocent who are always caught up in every war and the lives of the citizens who become the warriors who fight on behalf of their nation. War can also substantially alter the life of the political community itself, even if the war does not involve an existential threat. The set of national security organizations involved with waging war, as well as the set of civil and military leaders who head these organizations, form the very heart and brain of wartime decision making. These leaders should set a very high bar to ensure the lives they use are “used well” not used poorly or wasted.

Conclusion

In the end, it is a prudential call whether in an individual case the cost of the disruption or loss of belief in political institutions is worth the officers’ resignation, but rather than ruling out the possibility altogether, it is better to foster the capacity for prudence in senior officers so that they may, in times of extreme duress, be able to walk the fine line between necessity in politics and a commitment to the common good that also regards moral agency and pursue their coresponsibility in the protection of the political community. The Naval Academy’s practice of teaching midshipmen about ethics and judgment through courses jointly taught by professors of philosophy and officers with combat experience, and the form of Marine training that combines physical maneuvers and exercises with the inculcation of related virtues, are both commendable starting points for the training of officers in prudential judgment. Future leaders cannot avoid the demands of prudence and the task of judgment, but this capacity can be conscientiously cultivated in them through a fusion of theory, practice, and guided experience.

Taking away the possibility of officer resignation not only serves to risk the legitimacy and stability of institutions and to meaninglessly spend the “coin of war,” but to also eviscerate the practice of sound politics itself, which the senior officer plays a role in protecting. This is not an inversion of Clausewitz’s subordination of military leadership to political leadership, but rather, a way that that order is best served and preserved. Hannah Arendt (2018), a 20th-century civic republican, reminds us that the point of ethical traditions is to teach judgment and that the real political actor learns to “think without banisters”—that is he or she learns to cultivate political judgment, instead of to simply rely on prohibitions or maxims that may lead them astray when applied to politics, which admits of alteration (p. 472). The need for prudence cannot be avoided in political life or in life generally. Turning to the resources of the civic republican tradition helps to clarify the need for the possibility of senior officer resignation and to ground such a capacity within the boundaries of political realism and the tradition of constitutionalism.