The United States (and other countries with large immigrant populations, I’m guessing) has fair numbers of non-native and non-citizens in the military ranks. In fact, becoming a soldier can put a person on the fast-track to citizenship in some cases.
What happens if the US then goes to war with the country where that person originated? For some, there’d be no question since they left their original country for a reason and might not feel any loyalty. But let’s say when a person immigrated to the US their country was friendly in the past, but now is an enemy. Could that person claim to be a conscientious objector and request to be posted somewhere from the war zone? Would the military take that into account and keep that person away from duty just to be on the safe side?
I’ve also wondered this about people who are born in the US but still have strong ties to their ancestral homeland who might ordinarily be model soldiers. Say the US and China went to war over Taiwan. Could Chinese-American sailors and soldiers refuse to fight on the grounds they might be killing their own families? Would that qualify them for conscientious objector status?
I’m mainly curious about actual military laws and regulations on the subject, from the US or any other country where this could happen.
During World War II, the American-born Japanese were interned, but later in the war this nation accepted volunteers from the camps. A Japanese unit fought in Italy (not Japan) and is famous for being highly decorated.
But on second thought I can’t tell you whether the volunteers were all American-born or included Japanese-born, although they had certainly been lumped into the category of “treat them as enemies”.
My WAG -I’m guessing that there were many US soldiers of German dissent that were fighting the Germans in WWII, and I doubt that they got any special treatment that you describe.
I think that if you emigrate from one country to another, you should have already considered the possibility of that happening and factor that in your decision BEFORE you emigrate.
When you become a citizen you swear an oath that includes, among other things, that you abjure all military loyalty to your country of origin, and also that you will obey the U.S. government’s orders to fight in a war, should the draft ever be reinstated. Naturalized citizens can conscientiously object, in the same way that natives can; but it would be an interesting situation if a naturalized moral objections were based on any sort of cultural legacy or loyalty from the old country. I’ll leave it to the legal people here to discuss that, if they want.
The objection would have to be based on an opposition to killing personally, or to all war as a moral or religious belief.
The identity of the enemy would not be a legitimate reason for being a conscientious objector.
This is based on my reading of the law, which I’ve been doing since I was appointed to my local Selective Service Board. I have not yet had my formal training from the SSS, however.
My brother’s FIL, who was Jewish, escaped from Austria in 1938, on the last boat. A few years later he was in the American Army Ski Patrol, fighting the Germans back on his home turf. I’m sure he had no moral objections to fighting the Nazis, but I was surprised to learn that Jewish refugees were sent back over to fight in the countries they had fled. I would have thought the risk of atrocities in case of capture would be too great, and that those soldiers would have been sent to the Pacific Theater.
Indeed, there are a very large number of aliens enlisted in the US armed forces. (I don’t think non-citizens can become commissioned officers, though.)
Even if you can legally be forced to fight against your own countrymen, is that neccesarily a desirable thing from the army’s point of view? It sounds to me like an unmotivated soldier is going to be more of a liability on the field.
Uh, right, because there were no atrocities commited in the Pacific theater against POW’s :rolleyes:
No, really, the risk of Something Really Horrible happening to a Jewish soldier captured in either Europe or the Pacific was probably about the same - in Europe because he was Jewish, and in the Pacific because he wasn’t Japanese.
We keep the system in place, but I believe it would need to be a much larger conflict to actually activate it again. Doing so, too, requires congressional approval.
The military services, too, are used to the professional military personnel that come in through volunteering. They’re not currently set up to accomodate draftees, and don’t really want them.
But “volunteering to be in the military” = “volunteering to obey all lawful orders of the President of the United States and his appointed officers”. And “go there and fight your former neighbors” is a lawful order.
'Way back when I enlisted in the USMC, I signed a paper to the effect that there was no country in which I could not fight. I’m sure that was intended to prevent that sort of argument.
Others may have more recent experience than I in this matter, though.Uncle Bill, are you out there?
General Pershing in WW1, and General Eisenhower in WW2, were both of German descent.
When the US sent troops into Somalia, one of the Marines was a Somali national, the son of one of the more powerful warlords. During the “famine relief” phase, he worked as a translator, and everybody was happy. When the Marines were ordered to hunt down his father, there were problems. As I understand it, the USMC still expected him to fulfill his contract and oath.
I looked at the enlistment contracts and any other type of paperwork I could think of. I would certainly think that the “Obey a Lawful Order” issue would answer the question fairly cleanly, with the “Conscientious Objector” a debatable “out”.
I had a guy placed into my Stinger Missile Battery when his Battery deployed to Desert Shield (we didn’t go over until December, they deployed in September). He was a Muslim (converted) who did not want to have to be put into a position to kill other Muslims, and he was applying for C.O. status. He wanted to fulfill his obligations as a Marine, though. He ended up deploying with the Battalion Staff as a driver for the Battalion Commander, and was not required to carry a weapon. I do not think his C.O. application process was rejected (although I do not know for sure), I think he reached a compromise that would satisfy his desire to honor his commitment without the need for killing brother Muslims. (For the record, noone in the Battalion killed any Iraqis anyway).
I personally know of no other cases involving combat operations and foreign nationals in the service.
What about the legal vulnerability of these soldiers? I read about a Russian citizen who’s serving in the US Army. Suppose we went to war with Russia and he was sent to fight. If he was captured wouldn’t the Russians be able to execute him as a traitor for fighting against his own country? What would be the legal difference between this soldier and John Lindh?
