The idea that it's not okay to arm the military is a position of privilege. The ethical issues are around how the military chooses to use its abilities, not around giving them the tools to do their jobs. We're talking about folks who are willing to give their lives up for others. If you're not going to serve yourself you should at least be willing to help them live. This has nothing to do with whether or not you support the political uses of the military. If world war 3 breaks out and you are forced to serve, you may find yourself feeling differently.
Yes and... that's a position of privilege that anyone in the position should ethically take.
It's unfair to sweep provision of methods to the military under a "respect the service" catch-all justification.
Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) individuals serving in the military are making sacrifices (in terms of pay, family life, personal safety) that deserve respect and (2) the military as a political institution will amorally deploy whatever capabilities it has access to, to achieve political aims.
There's a reason the US stopped offensive chemical, biological warfare, and tactical nuclear device research and production -- effective capabilities will be used if they exist.
With respect to the weapons programs, I'm not a historian, but I was not under the impression that the US stopped development of these weapons unilaterally or out of good will. My understanding is that it was due to a mixture of not perceiving a need or use for the capabilities, along with formal or informal international cooperation eliminating the need for deterrence.
Just a couple of thoughts since it seems like the next issues in this space are rapidly arriving or already here.
As far as I've read the literature from the 60s and 70s, tactical nukes were eventually eliminated in order to assuage western Europe's concerns that large portions of their countries would be turned into irradiated wastelands for decades / centuries if war erupted between the US and USSR.
It was also the product of perceived overmatch on both sides -- the Soviets believed they had superior mass of armored formations (and they did), while the US and allies believed they had technological supremacy (and they did). Ergo, neither needed tactical nukes.
It didn't hurt that it helped both in the eyes of the then vehemently anti-nuclear European movements.
Offensive bio and chemical weapon limitation is a more nuanced decision.
In both cases, their primary use was either local mass lethality or terrain denial, neither of which were important in the then-gelling American doctrines of maneuver.
The sole use case they seemed viable for was industry denial (e.g. contaminate a high capital cost industrial center), a task at which strategic sized nuclear weapons were equally adept (and more easily stored). So, if you had to have strategic nuclear weapons for deterrence, and they were capable of the same task, why have fiddly bio and chemical weapons?
But in both cases there was also a constant radiant pressure of scientists and the public campaigning against them, and being unwilling to work on or tolerate them.
Absent that, who knows how history would have turned out? Normalization is a powerful opinion shifter.
I'd feel much better about supporting military actions of the people that are becoming part of that system if they exercised some fucking free will and not follow criminals in our government into wars that do not support our people, or our country. We have a serious problem in our government and it being connected in anyway with what is happening in that institution gives me great pause in believing in people of this country. People are stupid to not be fight this government tooth and nail.
