Just watched the movie Hacksaw Ridge. Got me thinking can people in the military turn down an order because they disagree with it on sensible grounds? Like Trump ordering them to invade CN?

For future reference, the two letter code for Canada is CA 🇨🇦. China is CN 🇨🇳

Yes, they are legally obliged to disobey illegal orders.

But ultimately, its the judicial system that would decide if their refusal of the orders were acceptable or not.

Soldier facing a court-martial in the US get a panel of their peers, similar to a jury. So their peers could, in theory, do a "jury nullification".

But, in a court martial, only 3/4 is required to convict, and a general court-martial, where death penalty is not a possible punishment, it requires only 8 members. So you need 3 of the 8 to even try to hang the jury, you need 6 of the 8 to acquit.

(Not a legal expert, just googled it)

There is zero chance that the current composition of the US military will invade Canada.

They'll need a lot of military purges, and then take like a decade to use propaganda to turn the people against Canadians.

And given the long friendship between USA and Canada, this is very unlikely to happen.

Americans would riot, soldiers to refuse orders. The entire military would splinter into Pro-Constitution and Pro-Maga. A civil war would be fought before the battle ever reached Canada

The Pro-Constitution side would get help from Canada (obviously), so will many European countries.

Russia would probabbly help the Pro-Maga side.

I think China would just not get involved, and focus on their own thing: Taiwan.

They are legally obliged to refuse to carry out illegal orders. “Just following orders” is no defence against war crime charges.

I retired from the US military 3 years ago. Yes, they can refuse unlawful orders. If I was still serving, I'd be abusing the hell out of that regulation right now.

During Trump's last presidency, our intelligence community actually held back a lot of details in his intelligence briefings because we knew he couldn't be trusted to keep his mouth shut. He has a top secret clearance, not because he could be trusted with it, but because it was a requirement for his job. And he also reversed our decision to withhold clearances from sketchy members of our government, so a lot of untrustworthy people also got access to our sensitive data, and thanks to that, we had a lot of compromised missions during his first tenure as president.

But we also had a majority Democrat government, which kept him in check. This time around, he's attempting to replace everyone he can with his "yes men" so he gets no push-back. He's even been trying to replace military generals with his own loyalists. If he can control the military, he can basically stage a coup overnight and no one will be able to stop him.

Things are getting really dangerous right now, so that regulation about refusing unlawful orders is very important, and I hope our current military members are willing to exercise it as needed.

This is why they fired the JAG lawyers at the Pentagon: there won't be any legal expert opinions in the military to tell the soldiers the order is illegal.

You can refuse to disobey an illegal order. The military has a fairly clear list of what constitutes "illegal," like executing unarmed non-combatants. The UCMJ makes allowances for this; it protects you from being court martialed for refusing to obey an order. However, the soldier doesn't get to decide whether the order of illegal; it can't just be something they disagree with, like invading Canada.

I do believe that, if such circumstances came about, a soldier could probably get away with a fairly broad interpretation of "illegal orders." However, this is mostly theoretical.

First, if you thought peer pressure on high school was bad, it's nothing compared to the Army.

Second, it doesn't stop there from being immediate consequences, some of which might very well result in you being dead, many of which would just make your life hell. There are an almost unlimited number of legal orders you could be given that would make your life hell.

Third, it's really predicated on the illegal order being given fairly low down the chain. If the commander of the US forces sends down orders to kill all the orphans in a town, the USMC isn't going to help.

Fourth, the person giving you the order could threaten to kill you, right there, unless you obey. Sure, they might get in trouble later, but that doesn't really help you now, does it? And maybe they won't get in trouble. Maybe they say they gave you some other legal order you disobeyed, and no-one is willing to gainsay them.

But really, your question is whether there's any protection if you disagree with an order, and the answer is "no." There's a narrow set of defined "illegal orders" which you can, theoretically, disobey.

In peacetime, you can decide to become a conscientious objector, and look forward to spending some time in prison. Once you join, you have almost no option for rejecting a legal order, without facing some sort of punishment.

Not active duty or a vet, but have had a lot of family in the forces;

Their duty is to uphold the constitution and protect the nation ostensibly, so they’d be obligated to refuse an illegal order. Realistically you won’t see that play out amongst the rank and file in part due to the culture of ‘discipline’ in the US military, and also the reality of court martial/dishonourable discharge. If something like this did occur it would likely be the five and/or four star generals that make the call. Now you have two powerful factions at odds with potentially catastrophic results.

Either way there’s gonna be court martials.