Rickover’s Paradox and the Civilian Deaths in San Diego

In Leviathan Devours a Family, William Grigg comments at length on the deaths of San Diego resident Dong Yun Yoon’s baby daughters, wife, and mother-in-law in a fighter jet crash, and on Yoon’s “astonishing stoicism” in the face of unfathomable grief. Yoon’s incredible fortitude and ability to forgive are commendable, but as Grigg reminds us, it should have been the pilot and not the civilian who displayed such fortitude and grace under pressure. Grigg uses Rickover’s Paradox to illustrate this conviction:

About a quarter-century ago, while reading a movie novelization by the immensely talented award-winning science fiction author Vonda McIntyre, I stumbled across the concept of Rickover’s Paradox, which was used to test the moral attitudes of officer candidates at the U.S. Naval Academy. The most famous version of this conundrum, according to McIntyre (who, when I asked her, couldn’t remember where she had encountered it), is the following:

Two individuals, the only survivors of a tragic shipwreck, are adrift in a small, damaged lifeboat. The water is pitilessly cold and infested with ravenous sharks. The boat itself is irreparably damaged in such a way that it will only be able to carry one of its occupants. If nothing is done, both occupants will perish. But whichever is cast into the sea will die very quickly.

One of those aboard the stricken lifeboat is a highly trained military officer with valuable – perhaps irreplaceable – technical skills. A huge sum has been spent on his training, which is of critical importance since the country is at war.

The other is an innocent and law-abiding person of no particular achievements or aptitudes. Few if any would notice that person’s absence, and the community at large would be impoverished in no discernible way if he were thrown overboard.

Since only one can be saved, which of the two should it be?

The only morally sound answer to this predicament is that the military officer must sacrifice himself on behalf of the civilian. That, after all, is what he was trained to do, what he had promised when he enlisted. To do otherwise would be to nullify the entire stated purpose of having a military establishment in the first place. Any other conclusion would be based on the assumption that the civilian population exists to defend the military, rather than the reverse.

Those serving the Regime under which we live regularly acts on the latter assumption in ways both great and small. Consider, for example, how frequently the behavior of police (who are now effectively part of a militarized internal security force) reflects a paramount concern for “officer safety,” even when that concern leads to the use of military tactics that leave innocent people dead.

In The War at Home I discussed the tacit assumption that civilians will be sacrificed in war and the buildup for war:

When we talk of war and supporting our troops, it is easy to think only of the presumably willing combatants. And though their sacrifices and suffering may indeed prove enormous, they are not the only players: in every war, or even in the buildup of a military, there are casualties of women and children and the elderly of both sexes, who never signed up to risk the horrors that befell them.

Grigg reminds us that the sacrifice of civilians is a perversion of the notion of defense: the stated purpose of the military and police forces is to protect innocent civilians, giving up their own lives if necessary to uphold that purpose. In practice, however, it is the innocent civilians who are sacrificed to protect the military and police, even when the latter are rampaging either domestically or abroad. Though this is becoming increasingly and shamelessly apparent, there is still a nod to the letter if not the spirit of solicitude for civilians. Therefore civilians are killed at home in the name of “protection” and abroad in the name of “liberation.” “You are State chattel and owe us your money and lives” doesn’t quite make for inspiring political speeches that simultaneously uplift and subdue the masses.

I am sure a little Googling would reveal that there are those who would indeed label the pilot’s actions “defensive,” that is, if confronted with Rickover’s Paradox, they would drown “the innocent and law-abiding person of no particular achievements.” After all, the pilot has been the recipient of vast sums of money and time spent on training, and he has an entire nation to defend! So I’m sure that many would perversely argue that the pilot is worth more to the collective than a handful of Korean women and children, and that in carrying out his training exercises, he was merely preparing to protect the entire nation—these women were defended to death, if you will.

This seems to be the prevalent mindset of our times: that the individual can be sacrificed for the greater good, and also that some individuals are worth more than others—again weighed by their value to “the greater good.”