Would working for another nation&#39;s armed forces be treason for US troops? I am writing a historical fantasy story, and have come to a rather sticky in-universe legal situation. My main characters are the crew of a US Navy seaplane from WWII, and they've ended up in a new world of similar tech level. Now, they're still loyal service members of their nation, but they don't have any knowledge of this place they've been dumped into nor any contact with the United States but they have made contact with the local's military. The major problem the bomber's crew has is that they have no money or identification here, aliens in more then one sense of the word. They can't refuel their plane here without committing a crime and stealing the fuel, and spare parts are limited to the few onboard that they were carrying on their bombing run. One theory for their next course of action would possibly have the crew make an alliance of sorts with the local military, possibly agreeing to trade some knowledge and/or the services of their aircraft to the locals in exchange for fuel, parts, identification, and possibly cash to sustain themselves and their aircraft. So, what I'm wondering is if they can somehow pull this off without committing treason against the USA by military law, or are they in a real Morten's Fork situation here?
It's only treason if they wage war with the US Treason is unique in American law: It is the only crime that is defined in the Constitution. It is made a crime in the US code (18 USC §2381) not &quot;military law.&quot; Following the Constitution's Treason Clause, USC §2381 has two prongs. To be guilty of treason, one must either: Levy war against the United States; or Adhere to its enemies, giving them aid or comfort. Since this country is not at war with the US, the first prong does not apply. &quot;Enemies&quot; has been interpreted narrowly, to mean only enemies in a real war. Thus, one can only be guilty of treason in the US during wartime, so the second prong does not apply either. The Founders defined treason narrowly and put it in the Constitution to de-politicize it. According to James Madison (in Federalist 43), in the past, “violent factions” had often used “new-fangled and artificial&quot; definitions of treason to “wreck their alternate malignity on each other…” To keep from repeating this sorry history, the Constitution “opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger,” by defining what constituted treason and specifying how it was to be proved. Exactly how narrowly treason is defined can be seen in the Supreme Court's 1807 decision in Ex Parte Bollman. This case arose out of the Burr Conspiracy, Aaron Burr's plan to carve a new country out of the US. Bollman was charged with conspiring with Burr. The Court ordered Bollman released. In his opinion, John Marshall explained why: However flagitious may be the crime of conspiring to subvert by force the government of our country, such conspiracy is not treason. To conspire to levy war, and actually to levy war, are distinct offenses. If you want to read more about treason, here's a short article by a law professor, and here's a nice overview of the topic from the Congressional Quarterly. Denationalization: Another problem they probably don't have to worry about If you are looking for reasons for these patriots to worry about joining the military of another country, treason is not the only legal danger they face. Volunteering in the armed services in another country's military can also lead to losing one's citizenship, even if that country is not at war with the US. During WWII, loss of citizenship was controlled by §401 of the Nationality Act of 1940. Under §401(c) US citizens could serve in foreign armed services if &quot;expressly authorized by the laws of the US.&quot; Otherwise, the law only provided for the denationalization of any citizen who served in a foreign military in which he had or acquired nationality. The 1940 Act said nothing about serving as an officer or intending to renounce American citizenship. Those provisions were added in later Acts. How to apply real law to an imaginary world You will have to stretch the words of the Nationality Act of 1940 and the &quot;Neutrality Acts* to get them to apply to this imagined situation. Instead of parsing these texts ever more finely in the hope you can figure out how to apply them to a situation those who passed these laws did not (and probably could not) imagine, a simpler and more direct approach would be to interpret these laws light of their purpose. The purpose of §401 of the Nationality Act is clear: If an American citizen shifts (or splits) his allegiance from the US to another country, he will lose his citizenship. §401 lists various acts that will be taken as evidence of shifting (or splitting) allegiance. So unless your guys do things that show they have changed their allegiance, they will be fine. Keeping your guys on the right side of the Neutrality Acts might be a little trickier. Their purpose is simple: To keep anyone from dragging US into war before Congress declares it by making sure every American remains neutral between &quot;belligerents.&quot; Unless you've built this world in such a way that the US could be easily dragged into a war on it, it seems your guys won't violate the purpose of the Neutrality Acts. (The Neutrality Acts are about &quot;belligerents,&quot; so unless there's a war in this other world, the Acts probably don't apply anyway.)
It's a bit of an oversimplification. You're correct that there is a federal law against murder, 18 USC 1111. However it applies only to a murder committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. This covers situations like crimes committed on federal lands such as national parks or federal buildings, or crimes on US-flagged ships at sea, aircraft in flight, or in space. It does not apply to &quot;ordinary&quot; crimes committed at most locations within the US. 18 USC Chapter 51 covers a few other situations, such as murder of a federal officer, foreign diplomat, by incarcerated or escaped federal prisoners, US nationals murdering each other while abroad, and so forth. The idea is that these restrictions keep the laws within the enumerated powers of Congress as stated in Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution. A federal statute covering all murders throughout the US would probably be unconstitutional for this reason. So while what he says is not strictly correct, it is true that in the vast majority of cases, murders are covered by state laws and not by federal laws. Even if one was to agree with Ramaswamy that medical abortions are a form of murder, even still, no federal murder law currently on the books would apply to a typical abortion, except under very unusual circumstances.
18 USC 960 provides a disincentive against such actions. Whoever, within the United States, knowingly begins or sets on foot or provides or prepares a means for or furnishes the money for, or takes part in, any military or naval expedition or enterprise to be carried on from thence against the territory or dominion of any foreign prince or state, or of any colony, district, or people with whom the United States is at peace, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both Also see 18 USC 959, covering enlistment. &quot;At peace&quot; is not statutorily defined, so it is not obvious whether the US is &quot;at peace&quot; with Ethiopia (Tigray war) or Russia (various offenses). A formal state of war has not existed between the US and another nation for 70 years.
Does he have some kind of libel or invasion of privacy case? The description of the "art work" is somewhat inconclusive. I will assume that the red lipstick and blue eye shadow in the fictional poster are suggestive of that soldier's "makeup". If the World War Two soldier were still alive and a straight male, he might have a claim of defamation insofar as the poster portrayed him as having a sexual orientation which is inaccurate, detrimental to his reputation, and tending to dissuade others from associating with the soldier. Policies against sexual discrimination aside, no straight male likes being falsely characterized as to sexual orientation (in part because of the undeniably harmful, lasting impact something like this would have in his environment). The defendant's possible allegation that the "art work" was hyperbole would be unavailing. That is because the suggestive poster is likely to impinge on viewers a detrimental concept of the soldier even if it is obvious to those viewers that the poster was not an actual, color photograph taken of him during the World War II. In most jurisdictions in the US, the defamed soldier would need to file suit within a year from the publication of the poster (an exception is Tennessee: six months) because the statute of limitations for claims of defamation is shorter than most others.
There is no possibility of legally holding a country &quot;to account&quot; for an action. An individual could be legally tried for a crime (murder), and a country could via a political process be made to suffer the consequences if a leader performs some act (it need not be illegal). Germany, Iran and Russia have historically suffered certain consequences of actions held to be &quot;officially sanctioned&quot;, and individuals such as Adolf Eichmann have been specifically punished; Fahad Shabib Albalawi and 4 others were sentanced to death for involvement in Khashoggi's murder. Punitive recourse against a country is always via political / military action. Khashoggi, specifically, was apparently a lawful permanent resident of the US, which is probably sufficient connection to the US for a suit based in the Alien Tort Statute. There have been various suits filed against individuals under this act, some of which succeeded, for example Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876. An individual could be sued under the Alien Tort Statute, but a foreign government enjoys sovereign immunity (the US government has limited its liability on that grounds, but Saudi Arabia has not). His fiance might then sue some individual, but Saudi Arabia itself could not be &quot;held to account&quot;.
It would be a violation of 18 USC 1001, which is the law against making false statements to the federal government. Paul Mozer, who was a Salomon Brothers trader, received a four month sentence for doing something along those lines in 1994. Bidding on something implies an intent to pay for the thing, which in this case is a falsehood: in so doing, one "falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact" (that you don't intend to pay for the thing).
Probably The US, like all other nations, has absolute sovereignty over its airspace. There is no clear line between airspace and space but 60,000 feet is clearly in the former. The US, like all other nations except Lichtenstein for some reason, is a signatory to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation which, among other things, makes it an act of war to use force against a civilian aircraft. Now, acts of war are not, per see, illegal - there are international laws about armed conflict and there are philosophical arguments about just and unjust wars but war itself is a political rather than a legal construct. Article 5 of the convention gives the right to all other states the right to operate civil aircraft within US airspace (and vice-versa) without prior permission (apart from regularly scheduled flights which do require permission) subject to compliance with the convention. Relevantly, unmanned balloons are dealt with in Annex 4 - it states that permission is not needed for light meteorological balloons but is needed for any other balloon which might enter foreign airspace. The Chinese claim that the balloon was “mainly” meteorological but the convention requires it to be “exclusively” meteorological. It also requires it to be “light” meaning having a payload weighing less than 4kg - unless the payload of this ballon was made of unobtainum, it weighed more than 4kg. They also argue that it drifted off course and entered US airspace inadvertently. This would be a legitimate claim if the entry of US airspace was unlikely at the planning and launch stages of the operation. We simply do not have the information to assess this claim. The US claim that this was a surveillance aircraft. If this is so, then the aircraft is not a civil aircraft and the Chicago Convention does not apply which brings us back to pure sovereignty - the US can do what it likes with things in its own airspace. There is a treaty between NATO members and former Warsaw Pact members dating from the 1990s that allow surveillance overflights of each other’s territories. However, there are two problems with this: China was never a signatory, and the US withdrew during the Trump Presidency. So, if this wasn’t a balloon that inadvertently and unexpectedly drifted off course, the US was allowed to shoot it down.
It is true that any work of the US government is not subject to copyright in the United States; it may be subject to copyright abroad (the relevant law excludes US government works from US copyright protection; other countries have their own copyright laws that generally don't explicitly exclude US government works, and so the works may be copyrighted there). A government work is defined as something produced by a government employee in the course of his official duties. It doesn't include everything released by a government agency; for instance, if a contractor makes something and the contract specifies that the government gets the copyright, the work is copyrighted (since it wasn't made by a government employee). If a foreign cosmonaut or astronaut composes and sings an original song in a livestream, then NASA may not have copyright in the livestream but the foreign astronaut would have copyright in the song. That said, NASA has a page of guidelines for reuse of their media, where they say that their stuff normally isn't copyrighted unless otherwise noted. They don't make any sort of guarantee, but they suggest you'd probably be fine embedding it, at least as far as they're concerned.