The greatest danger in Trump’s vision for the U.S. military

Since the election, a series of stories have proved — if proof were needed — that President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the U.S. military against political opponents should be taken quite seriously.

First, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s team is considering creating a board of retired senior officers to review serving generals and admirals. (BLN has not been able to confirm the report.) These were then followed by multiple reports of Trump planning to fire the most senior officers and replace them with generals and admirals more closely aligned with the president-elect. The third step was the naming of Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his choice for secretary of defense. Hegseth has made many extreme statements about the U.S. military, including questioning the efforts to build a diverse force.

All together, these reports, if accurate, indicate that the long history of the United States having a nonpartisan military may be at an end.

Even the most competent of these officers are far more likely to make major mistakes as they try to anticipate what might curry favor with the president.

Why is this so important? First, keeping the U.S. military out of partisan battles and keeping partisan bickering out of the military has been key to American military might for generations. When political loyalty replaces merit for promotion and selection to key commands, effectiveness suffers. Such militaries are led not by the most qualified officers, but by those who have most professed fealty to the chief executive. Even the most competent of these officers are far more likely to make major mistakes as they try to anticipate what might curry favor with the president rather than focus their assessments on battlefield realities.

The American military watched this dynamic firsthand when training the Iraqi forces in the late 2000s and early 2010s. When their officers were promoted based on merit, the Iraqis did well. But as partisan dynamics increasingly shaped promotions, the Iraqi army crumbled against the Islamic State’s attacks in 2014.

Second, civilian control of the armed forces depends on officers giving professional advice to leadership so that the civilians can make the big decisions concerning when to go to war, where to focus one’s efforts and so forth. Partisan generals and admirals would only tell the president what he wants to hear, making it more likely the U.S. blunders into a crisis. Again, we have seen this repeatedly happen around the world, including most recently with Russian generals telling Vladimir Putin that defeating Ukraine would be quick and easy.

Third, making partisan identity more important within the armed forces threatens to disrupt the cohesion of American military units. The irony here is clear — that those who have argued against women in combat roles and against efforts to create a diverse force, as Hegseth has, usually cite the threat these people pose to unit cohesion. Yet it is precisely the politicization of the military, making promotion contingent on partisan identity, that is most likely to create suspicion, distrust and rivalry within the American armed forces. Members of the armed forces will view the promotions of others as due to their political connections and loyalty to an individual and a party rather than to the Constitution.

Finally, the greatest danger is that the president might use American troops against the American people. Trump promised in his campaign to use the military against the “enemy within,” referring to his political foes. While the National Guard has been called out frequently in American history to deal with natural disasters and riots, the regular forces have been used rarely over the past hundred years. Famously, presidents from both parties, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, called out the U.S. Army to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings on integrating schools. In neither case was the military using force against the president’s opponents, but instead enforcing the court’s decisions at a time when the court was not seen as a partisan actor.

The strains and divisions and distractions are simply bad for military effectiveness.

Trump, by contrast, threatened to use the Insurrection Act in 2020 to deploy the military against those protesting police brutality. With a much more compliant secretary of defense and with more partisan generals, after purging those who were promoted via normal procedures, Trump is far more likely to use the Army to put down protests in his second term. This, in turn, would divide the military, as not all members will follow such orders even if they are lawful. In addition, another pattern of civil-military relations is that the more a military is used for domestic order, the less effective it is at fighting foes abroad. The strains and divisions and distractions are simply bad for military effectiveness.

While the second Trump administration has not begun formally, its early preparations indicate a desire and, yes, a plan to make the military subservient to one politician and one party, rather than serving the country and the national interest. This will be more harmful to the American military than the defeat in Vietnam or the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And it will weaken U.S. standing in the world even as America’s adversaries are increasingly aggressive.

Stephen Saideman

Stephen Saideman is the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University and director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network.