Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations
warontherocks.com
warontherocks.com
This is a lot of words for "Please for god's sake do not put us in the position of having to decide which of the two competing claimants for President is the legitimate one when one or both is ordering us to turn our guns on Americans".
(I remember a Romanian friend of mine explaining the situation after the fall of Ceaucescu; because there was no real legitimate succession, no democracy, and the leader had just been executed by his own security services, there were outbreaks of reports of "terrorism" that led to different army units firing on each other in the streets. It was an incredibly confused situation.)
I’d the SecDef is dead, or the post vacant, there’s a very long civilian order of succession.
"4. Civilian control is exercised within the executive branch for operational orders by the chain of command, which runs from the president to the civilian secretary of defense to the combatant commanders. "
.. however, that's not the full story. What if the SecDef is compromised? Inebriated? Insane? And issues some orders which would be disastrous or illegal? The generals, not unreasonably, are not going to blow up the world for a point of principle.
And in the event of a disputed election: are you sure who the SecDef actually is?
Like a lot of systems, there's an implicit assumption that people will pull together and try to figure out a workable solution in extreme circumstances. But hyperpartisanship changes that: officials are confronted by politicians reading completely different news sources holding completely different views of what reality is, without the good faith willingness to understand other people's point of view.
The us military is not one of those systems. The us military assumes everyone is an idiot.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war...
This situation was terrifying, in a way that I think the media didn't cover well at the time. I'm glad they're starting to, because it's terrifying, even existentially so.
> Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss Doyle Hodges’ recent article scrutinizing Gen. Mark Milley’s behavior in the waning months of the Trump administration. Journalists have rendered a relatively favorable treatment of Milley’s insubordination, but Hodges questions the long-term implications for civil-military relations. Should senior military officers be expected to follow lawful orders, even if they are morally objectionable? Or is resignation the only proper response when those in uniform cannot faithfully execute an order? And is the problem of civil-military relations unique to the Trump administration or does the Milley case portend a future in which the military’s standing is filtered through the same partisan lenses that inflict our politics across the board?
*1* For July 4, 2018, Trump wanted a North Korea style parade "in his honor". Some news articles call it a French Bastille-day type of parade [0] because his discussions of what kind of parade he wanted started after returning from the 2017 Bastille Day celebrations (July 17).
> But the gulf between Trump and the generals was not really about money or practicalities, just as their endless policy battles were not only about clashing views on whether to withdraw from Afghanistan or how to combat the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran. The divide was also a matter of values, of how they viewed the United States itself. That was never clearer than when Trump told his new chief of staff, John Kelly—like Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general—about his vision for Independence Day. “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump said. “This doesn’t look good for me.” He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.
> Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.
> “I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
> The subject came up again during an Oval Office briefing that included Trump, Kelly, and Paul Selva, an Air Force general and the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kelly joked in his deadpan way about the parade. “Well, you know, General Selva is going to be in charge of organizing the Fourth of July parade,” he told the President. Trump did not understand that Kelly was being sarcastic. “So, what do you think of the parade?” Trump asked Selva. Instead of telling Trump what he wanted to hear, Selva was forthright.*
> “I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,” Selva said. “Portugal was a dictatorship—and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t do that.” He added, “It’s not who we are.”
> Even after this impassioned speech, Trump still did not get it.
> It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
> “Which generals?” Kelly asked.
> “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.
> “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.
> But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.
Some of the generals mentioned in the New Yorker article have signed the statement.
*2* After Trump's attempted insurrection on Jan 6, 2021, many people were convinced that Trump would start a nuclear war because he was angry and was going to throw a temper-tantrum: Congress did not overturn the 2020 election, and no one hanged Pence. So some of the generals agreed that if he decided to "push the button" then they were not going to process the orders [1].
> In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley — then former President Donald Trump's top military adviser — took precautions to limit Trump's ability to launch a military strike or deploy nuclear weapons, according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post.
> In "Peril," Woodward and Costa write that Milley was afraid Trump had constructed "his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies" and was worried the former president could "go rogue," CNN reported.
> In an rare move, the outlet reported, Milley called a secret meeting of senior military officials at the Pentagon on Jan. 8 to review the process for military action — including launching nuclear weapons. He instructed those in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, not to take orders from anyone without his involvement.
> Milley also reassured Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that the U.S. had no intention of launching a strike against China, according to the paper. It was one of two secret phone calls shared with Li on the issue.
Holy cow! Calling his counterpart in China promising not to launch nukes if Trump went off the rails? [2]
[0] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war...
[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714
[2] - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/09/14/gen-...
But, good points in all.
Context on this isn’t just DJT, it’s a significant rot across all of those points since Iraq/Afghanistan started but it dates back to Vietnam.
First, The military internally was getting partisan in uncomfortable ways when I served. Mike Flynn or Mastriano in PA are the craziest example of this, but below the very professional wall of senior leadership, quite a lot of f-Obama and go-Trump went on in carefully angled speech. The junior officer who knew enough to be dangerous but still had a bachelors degree from Phoenix U in criminal justice were large offenders, paired with junior soldiers and their first line leadership from rural wherever.
“Civilian control is exercised within the legislative branch” disappeared as a concept a few years into Iraq/Afg. Authorizations for use of military force (ie congress votes to go to war) were replaced by repeat deployments directed via shady or at least very out of date authorizations. This started in Vietnam. Congress, and by extent the people, seemed to forget there was a war going on after 2006 or so, or take half measures that resulted in danger for deployed service members (what President Obama was accused of most internally).
Judicial branch - UCMJ exists for a very good reason, and there’s been more noise and criticism vs substance and nuance about why that should change, again resulting in a very confusing set of norms to navigate for the Commander.
Yes, all the Miley <> DJT stuff was ugly. Miley should go down in our history as a Soldier’s Soldier who navigated that all safely. When I got concerned over the last couple years, I’d look to Miley for a rough temp check on how bad it was getting. The more he left total silence and started targeted and veiled pushback against DJT, the more concerning it was.
Mutual trust - again, seems like people forgot there was a war (2 wars) on. Poor urban and poor rural and a handful of idealistic middle/upper class went on repeat deployments for years and suffered limbs and divorces. Seems like civilians checked out right around when the halftime show with a large flag ended.
Law enforcement - cops cosplay soldiers, soldiers join law enforcement and think they’re still soldiers, military vehicles and TA-50 end up on cops patrolling neighborhoods.
Public role - there hasn’t been a universally loud “disbarring” of Michael Flynn. DJT and “his generals.”
Elections - when Jan 6 happened, high speed units that usually are in and out of Africa or Middle East had to consult the manuals on if what was happening in DC counted as a special situation. That it even got this close is very bad.
The only best practice is to let _civils_ do "civilization", and _militaries_ deal with their "militias" until they rot.
Albania, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan.
There's 10 countries, I'm not even out of the B's yet, and this is still skipping any country for which I think anyone might try to argue for the military's main focus to be to "loot and plunder other countries," not whether I agree with that assertion. Hell, I excluded armies whose main focus could arguably be to loot and plunder its own country rather than other countries (hi, Algeria).
And note that there a more countries on my list in this alphabet range than not on the list. Truly, there are more exceptions than examples to your proposed rule in the modern era, a very far cry from "there isn't one" indeed.
The Austrian military orients its war plans around the plunder of Austria - i.e. to minimize the damage of other militarys' plundering the nation.
There isn't any other purpose for a military than to manage this factor, either as aggressors or as defenders. Pillage and plunder is what militaries have always done, and prepared for ...
If you are going to say "but Iraq 2003!" I would ask you to consider the money we spent funding that expedition vs. the supposed financial gain. The reasons to invade weren't great, but looting and plundering were not among them.
Anyone who has attempted to wean the world off the petrodollar has found themselves deposed, assassinated, or otherwise eradicated from Western history.
The Syrian oil fields are an example of plunder. 1/3rd of Syria is occupied by Western forces - specifically its oil fields.
This resource is being intentionally withheld from the Syrian people, to prevent them from using the wealth to rebuild their country.
That is plunder.
And, the invasion of Iraq? That was nothing but utter destruction of a sovereign nation that was not willing to play Western ball.
Iraq lost 5% of its population to America's heinously evil war - that is human plunder, indeed.
I'm sure there's a term for the slight problem that someone who's good at a job usually wants to do it - the Praetorian Paradox maybe?