Air University Review, January-February 1983

The Code of Conduct:
A Guide to Moral Responsibility

Dr. Edna Hunter's article raises some interesting questions about free will and the ability of captives to distinguish rightful action during hostile captivity. She poses the following questions: "When one is subjected extreme stress, does one really have free will should coercive persuasion relieve one from the responsibility for acting in a manner that ordinarily would be considered criminal behavior?" Referring to Private First Class Robert Garwood, Patricia Hearst, and the Korean turncoat experiences, she suggests that some "threshold" may exist where harsh treatment of captives blurs their ability to distinguish right from wrong. The major issue Dr. Hunter raises is whether captives "step" or are "pushed" across this threshold.

Dr. Hunter suggests that the captor may be able to push captives beyond the threshold. She affords the captor much greater influence over the captive than the military services have acknowledged. She asserts that the captor can, acting beyond the captive's ability to influence events in any significant way, determine who gets favored treatment, who survives, and, to some extent, who will be welcomed home as heroes or collaborators. She also implies that strict interpretation of the Code of Conduct's guidance contributes to a captive's difficulty by confronting him with obligations that may be humanly impossible to meet. This implication is tied to the inferred conclusion that any captive can be "broken" regardless of the code's dictates. While there may be some truth in each of these premises, there is also some omission and misinterpretation.

To support her thesis, Dr. Hunter presumes that one's ability to determine rightful action is closely tied to his psychological state and thus susceptible to prolonged psychological stress. She justifies this assumption by noting that the American Psychiatric Association has recently recognized a new category of mental disorder called "Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder." Partially based on conclusions from Vietnam prisoner-of-war (POW) studies, this category represents the "cluster of symptoms resulting from a psychologically traumatic event, such as coercive persuasion (brainwashing) or being held captive or hostage, that is outside the range of usual human experienced."

Dr. Hunter does not present sufficient evidence in her article to support what may be a plausible thesis. Her thesis appears to offer some explanation for the conduct of PFC Garwood, Patty Hearst, and the Korean turncoats but does not explain the conduct of the great majority of POWs and hostages who honorably survived harsh captivities and steadfastly refused to cooperate voluntarily with the captor. The possibility exists that Garwood and the others may have cooperated with the enemy because they did not understand their moral obligation to resist or lacked the proper training on how to conduct themselves. It is also possible that they lacked the character to stand by their moral responsibilities in the face of mental and physical punishment. There is ample evidence in the experiences of Korean POWs to support both of these possibilities. Finally, the whole issue of free will and the ability to determine rightful action may be better addressed in terms of moral responsibility. Dr. Hunter admits that acceptance of her thesis will inevitably require an ethical and moral judgment.

Moral responsibility is outlined by the code. It provides the goal and general guidance for all military captives. It is founded on the most honored values of the military profession and the principle of eternal free will. In a hostile captivity, these two concepts provide the captive the ability to distinguish right from wrong. It permits them to disassociate forced external compliance from voluntary internal acceptance. It places responsibility for crossing the threshold with the captive and not the captor.

There are few military documents more widely interpreted and perhaps more profoundly misunderstood than the code. To some it is a new set of commandments to be rigidly followed. To others, it is a set of philosophical guidelines that point the way but do not plot the course. All the services have officially acknowledged that the code is a moral guide, yet many officers and enlisted personnel still perceive it as a directive or a legally enforceable standard.

In order to propose an alternative to Dr. Hunter's thesis, it is necessary to clarify the code's objectives, its role in outlining moral responsibility, and its contribution to protecting personal values and free will. Key to any such discussion, however, is the forthright acceptance by the reader that the code is a moral guide and not a vehicle for judgment or retribution. Recognizing the service affiliation of the majority of the readers, the subject is approached using an Air Force interpretation of the code.

The U.S. Air Force has taken the formal position that the code is comprised of its spirit and intent and its supporting guidelines. The spirit and intent or goal is simply to Survive with Honor. The guidelines are the articles of the code applicable in wartime and the expanded guidance provided for peacetime., The services' responsibilities for preparing their personnel for possible captivity are properly limited to explaining to them their individual moral obligations under the code and providing them adequate guidance and training to meet those obligations.

Moral responsibility relates to how well a captive lives up to the tenets of the code. It is primarily the product of the captive's will and determination rather than of the captor's maltreatment. The key concern is not the number of violations of the code but how hard each captive tried to meet his or her moral obligations. One of the complex and unfortunate characteristics of modern captivity is that there are too few black and white alternatives open to the captive. The captor's motivations and the circumstances of detention, especially in peacetime, are so diverse that attempting to follow a rigid interpretation of the code can work unrealistic results which are unwarranted by the code's goal to Survive with Honor.² It is interesting to note that the three USAF hostages in Iran admirably met their moral responsibilities yet followed separate courses of resistance. Each determined proper conduct based on slightly different interpretations of the code's guidance and their individual situations.

One of the common arguments made against the code is that it provides the captor a lever with which to "break" the captive. In the case of a determined captor, it often asks the captive to resist beyond human limits. Dr. Hunter notes that virtually any POW can be "broken." The services accept that any captive, submitted to sufficient physical and mental stress, can be forced to comply with a captor's demands against his or her will. It is an improper conclusion, however, to assert that captives having resisted to their full ability but forced to submit have been "broken" and have violated the code. This again attaches to the code the quality of a strict legal standard rather than a flexible moral guide. It suggests that the captive has been forever pushed across the threshold of voluntary compliance. The code is not a bridge that can be burned. It is always "there" as is the moral obligation to follow it. The captor may "bend" his prisoners but not involuntarily "break" them. A captor may force conduct on a prisoner, but as long as the prisoner resists and is not a volunteer, he has not been broken.

In this light, it is difficult for the services to address the question of free will outside the context of moral responsibility. First, the services are strongly attached to the code for no less reason than that it is based on the cherished concepts of duty, honor, country. Second, experience indicates that the code's positive aspects far outweigh its negative ones or the prospect of no code at all. Finally, the code may offer the best assurance that crossing the "threshold" requires voluntariness, not a forced submission.

This latter prospect can be better explored if we presume that the roots of one's ability to distinguish right from wrong are in the belief structure or system of values that provides the underlying basis for all personal decisionmaking. There has been enough work done in cognitive processes to justify this approach. The actual processes are too complex and too speculative to detail here, but generically we can say that individuals who act contrary to their belief structure induce varying levels of guilt and anxiety with which they must subsequently deal. The induced stress can vary widely, depending on such factors as the degree of divergence from one's beliefs, the severity of the threatened punishment, the attractiveness of the promised reward, or the inability to choose between alternatives. Whether compliance is forced or voluntary, captives will experience psychological stress unless they have altered their belief structure to match the captor's own concepts of right and wrong.

Traditionally, Communist interrogators have been adept at exploiting this psychological phenomenon in their efforts to gain information and use their captives politically. Simply, the process involves continually confronting the captive with Hobson's choice of refusing the captor's demands and receiving "external" punishment or complying with them and inducing "internal" punishment. For the interrogator, the grand prize is the captive's voluntary submission and cooperation. This objective goes far beyond forced compliance. It entails a conscious attack on the captive's belief structure. The common technique is to use moral arguments, which if accepted will alter the captives' value systems and subsequently their concepts of right and wrong. In reality, success has been extremely difficult to achieve without the conscious and voluntary cooperation of the captive.

A serious attempt was made in Southeast Asia to alter the belief structures of a select group of American POWs. Despite some of the most brutal treatment ever suffered by U.S. captives, the effort failed, primarily because the captives refused to alter their existing concepts of right and wrong and continued to resist the captor's every attempt. In this endeavor, the captor appeared capable of inducing traumatic psychological stresses within each captive for considerable periods of time but was not able to force compliance except with the continual threat or use of punishment. The determined and successful effort of this select group of POWs suggests that crossing the threshold is the captive's personal decision--an act of free will.

Although we know little about what happens at the threshold, we can logically presume that voluntarily crossing it requires the individuals to alter their belief structures more in line with that of the captor's in order to reduce the psychological stresses induced by their actions. One of the important functions of the code is to help captives preserve their belief structures regardless of the mental and physical pressures placed on them. The code offers in succinct language an indelible standard of right and wrong based on the very values the captive has sworn to uphold. Moral responsibility does not turn on a single event or an outwardly forced act. It is a state of mind not always revealed by the captive's actions. The code seeks to preserve and strengthen free will, not constrain or weaken it.

How does one fulfill moral responsibility without established guidance as to what one's obligations are? The answer is with great difficulty and considerable uncertainty. The civilian hostages in Iran had no such guidance, and their experiences indicate that individually and collectively they paid a higher price than their military colleagues. They did so precisely because they, as civilians, lacked a consensus as to what constituted proper conduct. Each had to probe the "mine field of survival and personal dignity" using intuition. Each had to agonize over which of the captor's demands justified compliance and which did not. Demands determined as justified by one hostage were viewed by others as demoralizing and unacceptable. Military hostages appear to have had a discernible advantage because they understood their overall moral responsibility and could channel their efforts accordingly. In light of the Iranian experience, the State Department has recently published moral guidelines for its foreign service personnel to rise in future hostage situations.

THIS discussion suggests an alternative hypothesis to the one proposed by Dr. Hunter. The relationship between moral responsibility and criminal culpability is inexact and is largely shaped by judgments regarding the presence or absence of free will. Specific conduct is morally unacceptable if the individual's undesirable conduct was undertaken voluntarily. It could also be criminally culpable if the act violated appropriate legal statutes and the individual possessed the requisite state of mind. The loss of one's ability to determine rightful action indicates either the altering of the individual's belief structure or a deterioration of one's mental capabilities. Morally undesirable conduct may or may not warrant legal action depending on the requirements of the law for prosecution, but it is fair to say that legal prosecution always consists of morally undesirable conduct. The requirements for legal prosecution exceed those for morally acceptable conduct.

The majority of experience indicates that inducing changes in a captive's belief structure requires considerable effort by the captor and may even be impossible without the individual's cooperation. The code when properly understood and followed makes the captive's belief structure increasingly resistant to any external efforts to alter it. Under the code, the individual never loses free will. The military, therefore, often has difficulty understanding how captives can enjoy excessive privileges denied their comrades without voluntarily surrendering their moral obligations under the code. If they are incapable of knowing that such acceptance is wrong, wouldn't this indicate a major deterioration of their mental state and be easily discernible by other abnormal behavior? Wouldn't these individuals require major psychological treatment when they return from captivity? It is hoped that Dr. Hunter and her colleagues will be able to shed more light on these questions. Until then, it is difficult to ignore past experience, which says that captives who enjoy special favors denied their comrades have generally earned them. It is difficult to accept such favors without also forfeiting moral responsibility.

In her article, Dr. Hunter has shown a keen knack for highlighting the really tough questions. This review suggests only a few answers while raising more questions, and it may encourage others to join the discussion. Today, hostile captivity is a dynamic problem that is becoming increasingly complex and difficult. Hostile revolutionary governments and terrorist groups are confronting military captives with major new challenges. These challenges demand moral guidance that is flexible and Suited to both armed and subnational conflict. Such guidance can come only with an enlightened application of the Code of Conduct and a much deeper understanding of the whole captivity problem.

HQ USAF

1. The Air Force has long been concerned about the suitability of the Articles of the Code of Conduct in peacetime hostile detentions and has published expanded guidance. The most recent policy guidance, 23 July 1982, expands the code's guidance to cover illegal hostile detentions by foreign governments and terrorist groups.

2. For examples of this, see Lieutenant Colonel Richard E. Porter, "Military Hostages: What They Need to Know and Don't," Air University Review, January-February 1982, p. 95.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard E. Porter (USAFA; M.A., Duke University) is assigned to the Assistant Director for Special Plans, Hq USAF. Some of his previous assignments have been with Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service in Vietnam and England; as Assistant Professor of History at the Air Force Academy; and as Rand Research Fellow, Santa Monica, California. Colonel Porter has a command pilot rating. He is a previous contibutor to the Review and Armed Forces and Society. Colonel Porter is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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