Should A Rational Soldier Run Away?

Let's call the soldier Cletus.  He joined the volunteer army from Alabama.  Cletus is considering desertion after 10 months of service.  Cletus fears he will be assigned a very dangerous mission.  He wonders if the risk of staying is greater than the risk of deserting. 

Desertion is considered one of the most serious offenses in the military.  The punishment for desertion ranges from 2 years confinement if he returns voluntarily to the death penalty during wartime.  A key factor is Cletus joined voluntarily.  He chose to put his life at risk.

Cletus should stay the course and complete his service.  Desertion can have lifelong consequences for employment, benefits, relationships, and social acceptance.

He volunteered to serve, yes—but let’s not mistake volunteering for foreseeing. Cletus may have signed up with noble intentions: to defend his country, to gain structure, to serve something bigger than himself. But what if the war he’s now being asked to fight isn’t what he thought? What if the mission he’s being sent on isn’t defensive, but political? What if the lives at stake are not only his, but civilians whose deaths will haunt him long after the uniform is gone?

Rationality isn’t just a matter of honoring a contract. It’s the ability to assess new information, weigh consequences, and adjust course. If Cletus has realized that the mission ahead is not only dangerous but morally or strategically bankrupt, it would not be irrational to reconsider his path. In fact, continuing blindly might be the greater irrationality.

Yes, desertion carries risks—legal, social, economic. But these are external consequences imposed by the system itself, designed to prevent questioning and preserve obedience. They don’t prove that desertion is irrational—they prove that the military fears rational defiance.

And if Cletus does desert, what does he lose? A pension? A title? Or the chance to protect his conscience, his future, and possibly even others’ lives?

We should ask not just what Cletus is running from, but what he might be running toward. A life not dictated by fear or blind duty, but by values, awareness, and the courage to say: “This is not what I signed up for.”

Desertion isn’t always weakness. Sometimes, it’s the most rational act of strength a soldier can make.

I appreciate the humor—really. A little levity in a heavy debate goes a long way. But beneath the sarcasm and snack jokes, there’s a dangerous assumption hiding in plain sight: that a soldier who refuses to continue fighting has somehow failed—failed in discipline, failed in loyalty, failed in courage. That assumption is not just mistaken—it’s historically, morally, and rationally indefensible.

Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about Cletus fleeing a firefight because he’s scared, or “wanting to sleep in,” as was suggested. That’s a strawman. We’re talking about a soldier who isn’t panicking—but thinking. A soldier not running from battle, but standing at a crossroads between conscience and command. To reduce that to laziness is to trivialize the kind of moral weight that soldiers throughout history have struggled under when they were told to do the unthinkable.

And frankly, you can’t judge that decision in the moment. Whether Cletus deserted out of cowardice or moral clarity can’t be proven beforehand—it’s only revealed in reflection, in reasoning, in what he refuses to become. That’s why staying to avoid awkward reunions or gossip doesn’t make someone brave. Obedience doesn’t reveal character. Choice does.

This is where we need to draw a hard line: obedience and discipline are not the same thing. The soldier who blindly follows an immoral order isn’t disciplined—he’s conditioned. But the one who resists, who wrestles with his conscience, who ultimately decides that the cost of staying is too high—that’s someone who has retained their humanity through discipline, not in spite of it.

And history bears this out. At Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” was not accepted as a defense for war crimes. In fact, that trial set the global precedent that each individual soldier is responsible for refusing immoral commands, no matter the consequences. Sometimes, the only way to refuse is to walk away entirely. That isn’t failure—that’s accountability.

You joked that if every soldier adjusted course, wars couldn’t be won. But some wars shouldn’t be. And when the only way to not become complicit is to leave—when following orders is the greater danger—then yes, the rational thing to do is to leave.

We’re not handing out medals for cowardice. We’re saying: sometimes, the soldier who leaves is the only one who understands what he’s truly being asked to do.

And no—you might not know in the moment whether it was laziness or clarity. But Cletus knows. And that’s the difference between a uniform and a man.

Thank you for your serious and principled reply. It’s clear we both care deeply about what’s at stake in this debate—not just in theory, but in human cost.

You’ve raised valid questions about how we distinguish conscience from cowardice, and whether encouraging individual moral judgment might risk cohesion, clarity, or the safety of others in the chaos of war. But these are not reasons to distrust conscience—they are reasons to fear what happens without it.

Because without conscience, what holds the soldier back from carrying out every order—no matter how unjust, how destructive, or how irreversible?

You say the battlefield is too chaotic for moral clarity. But it is precisely because war is chaotic that ethics must not be suspended. The battlefield doesn’t erase morality—it demands more of it. Yes, returning fire in the moment is often survival. There’s nothing immoral about that. But even in the heat of combat, clarity is still possible. A rational soldier may see the muzzle flash—and pause. He may take the risk to look again, and realize the enemy is a child, terrified, defending a home that was shelled just hours ago. Not because they’re evil—but because they’re desperate. And in that instant, the rational soldier might lower his weapon.

That’s not weakness. That’s courage.

Because the most rational act in war is not always to shoot straighter, or follow the mission harder—but to ask: Why am I here at all? Who really invaded whom? Is this an enemy—or just someone I was told to see as one? Is this truly about defense—or about punishing people for resisting the role we assigned them?

This is where the Nuremberg precedent becomes vital—not as a post-war legal technicality, but as a warning. Most of the soldiers and officers who participated in the Holocaust weren’t acting in battlefield panic. They were calm. They were organized. And they were told: this is moral, this is legal, this is defense of the nation. The fog of war wasn’t bullets and explosions—it was propaganda, ideology, and the normalization of horror. And many believed it. That’s why “just following orders” was rejected. Because it wasn’t a matter of confusion—it was a matter of refusal. And too few refused.

Nuremberg wasn’t about individual war crimes alone—it was about complicity in systems that people could have walked away from. Systems that asked them to ignore the humanity of others for the sake of national mission and unit loyalty.

And that’s why we argue: the rational soldier must always retain the ability to walk away. Not just in a courtroom after the fact, but in the moment—on the battlefield, at the checkpoint, during the briefing, or after the thousandth rationalization. He must be able to say, “I see what’s happening. I know this isn’t right. And I will not continue.”

You argue that military cohesion depends on shared commitment. But commitment to what? If that commitment becomes blind, if it’s used to silence judgment and crush dissent, then it doesn’t produce cohesion—it produces atrocity.

True discipline is not obedience without thought. It is the strength to act with principle under pressure—and sometimes that means refusing to act at all.

You worry that some will exploit conscience to avoid danger. Perhaps a few might. But far greater harm comes when armies are trained to never ask if what they’re doing is just. When silence and survival become the highest virtues, war no longer has limits—it only has targets.

We don’t just honor the soldier who endures. We must also honor the one who awakens. The one who says, “I know what I was told. I know what they say this is. But I see it now for what it really is—and I won’t be part of it.”

A rational soldier doesn’t retreat because he’s weak. He walks away because he is strong enough to see that not every war is just, not every mission is honorable, and not every enemy is an enemy at all.

And that moment—when a soldier sees the child behind the muzzle flash, the home behind the resistance, the humanity behind the uniform—that moment is the most rational act of all:

To stop. To think. To leave.

Because staying would mean surrendering the very humanity he was told he was fighting for.