Telling classified secrets to spies for self-serving reasons (e.g. because the spy will sleep with you or give you money) is treason. We can agree on that, right? People have been executed "for treason" for doing that, many many times throughout history.
The crime of treason doesn't involve/imply a mens rea of being an insurrectionist / working toward an enemy nation's goals. It instead implies a much more limited mens rea: that you knew that what you're doing would help an enemy nation win a war against your nation, and you did it anyway.
> Or is it treason if a woman refuses to have a child because she is ‘sabotaging the future war effort’? Or a car thief who steals a truck, because that truck ‘could be used to transport supplies’?
No, because (among other reasons) in both of those cases, those are hypothetical gains lost, rather than concrete losses realized. The military didn't already own the child, or the truck.
If you steal a truck that's actually transporting supplies to the front — and thereby also steal the supplies — then yes, that is treason!
And, slightly more niche — if this is a monarchy, and the child would become king, and the mother bears the child but then kills it — then yes, that's treason too. At the moment that the child becomes an important state asset, killing them becomes a treasonous act.
Though, focusing on the truck, another reason this could be "not treason", is that a civilian stealing a random truck (presumably not a military-painted supply truck) isn't aware that it's a military asset.
Likewise, if someone hears a classified secret and repeats it, that's usually not considered treason.
In both cases, that's because civilians haven't been told that this truck, or that information, is important to the state. To them, it's just a truck, it's just gossip, etc. So they're just punished for whatever common-law crime they committed, if any.
But soldiers are told these things. They know that the truck is carrying supplies; they know that the info is classified. And so when they steal the truck/leak the info anyway, that's considered a betrayal of their country: treason.
The crime of treason doesn't involve/imply a mens rea of being an insurrectionist / working toward an enemy nation's goals. It instead implies a much more limited mens rea: that you knew that what you're doing would help an enemy nation win a war against your nation, and you did it anyway.
> Or is it treason if a woman refuses to have a child because she is ‘sabotaging the future war effort’? Or a car thief who steals a truck, because that truck ‘could be used to transport supplies’?
No, because (among other reasons) in both of those cases, those are hypothetical gains lost, rather than concrete losses realized. The military didn't already own the child, or the truck.
If you steal a truck that's actually transporting supplies to the front — and thereby also steal the supplies — then yes, that is treason!
And, slightly more niche — if this is a monarchy, and the child would become king, and the mother bears the child but then kills it — then yes, that's treason too. At the moment that the child becomes an important state asset, killing them becomes a treasonous act.
Though, focusing on the truck, another reason this could be "not treason", is that a civilian stealing a random truck (presumably not a military-painted supply truck) isn't aware that it's a military asset.
Likewise, if someone hears a classified secret and repeats it, that's usually not considered treason.
In both cases, that's because civilians haven't been told that this truck, or that information, is important to the state. To them, it's just a truck, it's just gossip, etc. So they're just punished for whatever common-law crime they committed, if any.
But soldiers are told these things. They know that the truck is carrying supplies; they know that the info is classified. And so when they steal the truck/leak the info anyway, that's considered a betrayal of their country: treason.