I would like your assistance with gathering rational outside view so that I can make better moral decisions. The general context is that I consider myself an effective altruist with mostly Utilitarian ethics, and I have some more time of mandatory service in which I have considerably high degree of freedom to choose my path. The dillema is dependent on many questions, but my goal here is mostly to debias myself on questions relating to the moral stance of Israel or armies in general (although I care much more about the expected impact of my actions, irrespectively of whether it's done in the name of good or evil).
Hoping for a discussion, here are some questions I'd like to get an answer to, which are mainly here to give a broad sense of what I think might be relevant. Any helpful comments would be greatly appreciated, even epistimological tips to help me make better decisions on this topic would be of great help.
- Are there armies in any time in history in which individuals should have served in the military to do the most good in expected global utility? If so, what seems to be the criteria?
- What are some possible implication of increasing/decreasing Israeli's millitary power?
- Even if I conclude that Israel is a force for good (or for evil) in the world, am I likely to think so 20 (50) years from now?
- Should I expect a random EA who has done some ammount of (non-combatant) militry service to regret the actions she has done? Since I am taking a Utilitarian perspective, assume that she had an option not to serve in the military.
Arguably the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII were doing a tremendous amount of good that they wouldn't have been able to match doing other things. But in the context of conscription, this kind of thing seems extremely unlikely. Not only does it depend on a comically evil yet powerful enemy, it also depends on the ability of a handful of individuals to make an outsized contribution to the war effort by means of their scarce, special skills. There does not seem to be anything half as dangerous as Nazi Germany that we can fight by military means, and it is not clear that there is a comparable niche in which people with special skills can do much good in. Of course, even if there were such a niche, chances are you would not have the ability to exploit it, almost by definition.
I suspect that for the typical person in the developed world, working their usual job and donating any surplus income to effective charities vastly outweighs the marginal good they would do joining any military in any capacity. So I believe that the answer to your last question is Yes, you should expect a random EA to regret joining the military (assuming that the only thing that motivates them is EA concerns). And I believe that the factors in favour of not joining are so overwhelming that the answers to your second and third questions, no matter what they may be, would not change the calculus.
A large part of why the code breakers produced so much value was that there was an open war and ending open wars is high utility. Given that there's no open war between Israel and Iran it's unlikely that you would get similar gains even if you think Iran is evil (whatever a country being evil is supposed to mean).