Come Jan 20, civil-military relations in this country will be thrust into turbulent and uncharted waters, driven by a mercurial, domineering commander in chief unlike any other in American history. His oft-voiced disdain for the military and those in uniform, at the same time that he treats the military as his personal property, portends a prolonged period of ethical upheaval for a military institution whose prevailing ethos has, with few exceptions, always been one of disciplined restraint in its dealings with civilian authorities.
The price of a military sworn to political neutrality, public silence and dutiful obedience is the military’s reciprocal expectation that its civilian overseers will honor the sanctity of the relationship by conducting themselves professionally and tempering their own demands for politicization. Looking ahead to the next four years, all bets are off in the face of a newly empowered commander in chief who uniformly ignores, circumvents and undermines established norms of protocol and accountability for his own benefit.
So unusual, and so potentially taxing, is the period ahead that one must ask whether there is value in looking back in time to revisit incidents that could instruct the way ahead in preserving the health, dignity and integrity of civil-military relations. Let’s see.
A lesson past: The Billy Mitchell court-martial. Billy Mitchell, father of the U.S. Air Force, commanded all U.S. Army Air Corps forces in France toward the end of World War I. An argumentative, outspoken advocate for air power and the formation of a separate air service, he alienated nearly everyone who didn’t agree with his vision. Moreover, he openly criticized both Army and Navy leadership for incompetence. So contentious was he that President Calvin Coolidge ordered the War Department to court-martial Mitchell, which it did in 1925 under the catchall 96th Article of War, for statements considered prejudicial to good order and discipline, insubordinate, "contemptuous and disrespectful," and intended to discredit the War and Navy Departments. The court found him guilty on all counts and suspended him from rank, command and duty, with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances for five years. He subsequently resigned from the service.
A question for the future: The Mitchell court-martial was an act of small-minded pettiness that must be seen for what it was: an exercise in grand theater. To be sure, there is no one in uniform today possessed of Billy Mitchell’s thespian attributes; and Calvin Coolidge was, comparatively speaking, a minor-league retributionist. Only the incoming commander in chief can lay claim to being a grand master of the performative arts. Anyone who, by word or action, upstages him or gets in his way may well fall victim to reprisal on the order of the Mitchell court martial. As with leaders of autocratic regimes, nothing is too small or insignificant to serve as pretext for a grand show trial meant to demonstrate strong-man dominance over the military. We might ask, in fact, whether former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley isn’t already a potential scapegoat headed for the dock.
A lesson past: The Bonus Marches. In mid-1932, some 17,000 out-of-work World War I veterans suffering from the Depression, along with 26,000 families and other supporters, descended on Washington, D.C., to demand early payment of bonuses the veterans had been promised. They camped out on Anacostia Flats and other public spaces that served as bases of operation for their marches and protests. Despite their contributions to the war effort and their generally downtrodden postwar status, they were widely viewed as a public nuisance. President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to clear out the principal campsite, so Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur and then-Major George Patton led infantry and cavalry troops in doing so, burning the protesters’ shelters and belongings in the process.
Soldiers in gas masks advance on Bonus March demonstrators in Washington, July 1932. (Jack Benton/Getty Images)
A question for the future: The Bonus March affair wasn’t the first nor the last instance of government insensitivity to the plight of veterans who have sacrificed for the country, only to be summarily discarded as superfluous jetsam. The newly-infamous Project 2025 conservative policy agenda that serves as a shadow blueprint for the incoming administration calls for widespread across-the-board cuts in benefits and services, including for disabled veterans and the VA health care system. Will those affected and their supporters have the moxie and feel the urgency to engage in large-scale public protest? If so, are they prepared to be labeled insurrectionists and treated as such under the 1807 Insurrection Act? And will those in uniform who may be called on to serve as today’s MacArthur and Patton henchmen act dutifully on behalf of the state — the police state, some would say — or side with their protesting brethren?
A lesson past: Coup plotters and Smedley Butler. A perennial icon of the U.S. Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, including being the recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor. Over more than three decades, he fought all over the world in battles and campaigns that fed his own growing cynicism: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism." In retirement, Butler produced a small book titled "War Is a Racket" expressing his distaste over having been a tool for big-business interests. Ironically, he was approached in retirement in 1933 by a group of wealthy right-wing businessmen who wanted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Butler as president. He refused and took his story to Congress, which then produced a lame report that found no one culpable and held no one accountable for what came to be known as the Business Plot or the Wall Street Putsch.
A question for the future: There is no one of Smedley Butler’s stature in uniform today, and right-wing businessmen are laughably unlikely threats to a regime that exists largely for their benefit. Yet it isn’t totally frivolous to imagine other political, ideological or business factions that, seeing their interests threatened by a mercurial, impulsive commander in chief, would attempt to engineer his ouster. Though any propensity for the overthrow of government has long since been socialized out of America’s military, and especially out of its officer corps, it remains an open question whether newly generated circumstances of alienation and disenfranchisement might not energize latent, ideologically driven disaffection within the active or retired ranks that would coalesce with other restive elements of society. Were this to happen, the first-order question of whether the inflated public trust and confidence in the military would be lost will be subsumed by what, by any measure, would be the mother of all constitutional crises.
Gen Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marines, retired, pictured as he addressed a crowd of 6,000 participants in an anti-war demonstration in Reyburn Plaza, Philadelphia. (Getty Images/Bettmann)
A lesson past: Revolt of the Admirals. Since it occurred in 1949, the so-called Revolt of the Admirals has been not merely the policy and budgetary dispute it appeared to be at the time, but a classic case study in deep-seated inter-service rivalry and civilian control of the military. It was a convoluted affair that developed at the time along four converging tracks. The first, with o.rigins in the latter stages of World War II, concerned proposals for service unification, which the Navy opposed for fear of losing prerogatives and capabilities to central authority. This resolved itself in the 1947 National Security Act. The second track concerned general agreement, at least between the Navy and the Army Air Corps (and then the Air Force) in the future importance of strategic air power. This merged with a third track, which involved intense competition between the Navy and the Air Corps/Force over weapon systems, specifically over whether to invest in a new aircraft carrier or a strategic bomber. That in turn ran up against major spending cutbacks in favor of more domestic spending preferred by President Harry Truman and the secretary of defense. This all came to a head in congressional hearings when the Navy fought largely alone for its preferences in the face of opposition from the president, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Truman, who viewed this as an affront to civilian control, had the chief of naval operations relieved and other senior officers transferred to dead-end assignments. The start of the Korean War in 1950 put an end to the affair by demanding greatly increased defense spending on all fronts.
A question for the future: With his long-established penchant for dividing and conquering any and all squabbling subordinates who seek his favor, the incoming commander in chief will almost certainly accentuate the rivalries that have forever existed among the armed services, strengthening his hand at their expense. On the other hand, it's possible that he could so badly alienate and disenfranchise the military that previous inter-service rivalry might give way to collusive stonewalling, foot-dragging and outright opposition that, in more ordinary times, would be considered soft-focus rebellion. Whether selfless unity can overcome a history of selfish disunity — actualized in the face of a common “threat” from within — will be the question of the day.
A lesson past: The Army-McCarthy hearings. The televised 1954 series of hearings before the Senate Investigations Subcommittee took place at the height of “Red Scare” McCarthyism. Sen. Joseph McCarthy accused the Army of harboring communists in its ranks, including some 130 "subversives" in defense plants. The Army countered by accusing McCarthy of trying to force the service to grant a commission to a consultant for the subcommittee. There were numerous public and contentious charges and countercharges back and forth, some linked to allegations of homosexual conduct. McCarthy's odious behavior ultimately led to his censure by the Senate and the beginning of the end to his destructive clown-show histrionics.
Roy Cohn holds up a photograph during the Army-McCarthy hearings in Washington, May 1954. (FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
A question for the future: The central character linking this destructive clown show of the past to the prospective clown show just ahead is Roy Cohn, who was both Joe McCarthy’s unscrupulous hatchet man and Donald Trump's mentor and role model. Abetting the ghost of Cohn today are the contenders who seek to emulate his mission policing the public square for enemies within. The incoming commander in chief has surrounded himself with some of the nastiest witch-hunters alive, his personal posse of Roy Cohns, and there are plenty more where they came from. Barely latent McCarthyism remains alive and well today, and those who toil within the defense establishment — military and civilian alike — should consider themselves prospective targets, not for sympathizing with a subversive ideology but simply for speaking and acting in ways considered disloyal to the commander in chief. Will their superiors protect them or sacrifice them?
A lesson past: Walker, LeMay and "Seven Days in May" Army Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker and Air Force Gen. Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay were cut from the same right-wing ideological cloth. Walker, a supporter of the John Birch Society, espoused radical right-wing, anti-communist views he used to indoctrinate his troops, andopenly accused public figures such as Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dean Acheson of being communist sympathizers. He was sufficiently controversial that he was ultimately relieved of command by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and then chose to make a public statement by resigning rather than retiring. LeMay, the more accomplished and visible of the two, rose to become Air Force chief of staff after commanding Strategic Air Command and leading the strategic bombing campaign against Japan in World War II. He was constantly at odds with McNamara, President John F. Kennedy and Joint Chiefs Chairman Maxwell Taylor over the Cuban missile crisis and the war in Vietnam. From his mouth we have two quotes for the ages. The first, reflecting on the thousands of civilian deaths those under his command had imposed on Japan, was, "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been cited as a war criminal." The second was that either we could (according to him) or we should (according to others) "bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age." Walker and LeMay served as joint inspiration for the ideological Joint Chiefs chair depicted in the 1962 book and 1964 movie "Seven Days in May," who tries to engineer a coup against the president for negotiating a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union.
A question for the future: Whereas the Smedley Butler episode involved real-world forces who sought to recruit a distinguished military hero to further their interests by overthrowing the president, the "Seven Days in May" scenario is a fictional depiction of right-wing militarists seeking to defend institutional interests cloaked as the national interest by overthrowing (in their fevered minds) a treasonous president who has colluded with a sworn enemy. Something like reality TV before reality TV existed, this scenario conjures up the eerie possibility of a commander in chief whose ties to autocratic strong men, Vladimir Putin foremost among them, could turn alarmist fiction into alarming nonfiction. Would the military, faced with similar circumstances and personalities, choose to be gatekeepers or gate-crashers?
President John F. Kennedy meeting with Col. Ralph D. Steakly, Lt. Col. Joe M. O'Grady, Maj. Richard S. Heyser and Gen. Curtis LeMay during the Cuban missile crisis. (Getty Images/Bettmann)
A lesson past: Kent State. A May 4, 1970, antiwar protest on the campus of Kent State University resulted in the deaths of four and the wounding of nine unarmed college students by poorly trained, poorly disciplined, trigger-happy Ohio National Guard troops called out to "restore order." Eight soldiers were charged with depriving the students of their civil rights under cover of law, but were acquitted in a bench trial. The incident triggered massive protests around the country. Subsequent charges against selected members of the Guard unit produced no convictions. More than 70 popular protest songs have grown out of the incident over time, most notably Neil Young’s "Ohio," which includes the lines "Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'/ We're finally on our own/ This summer I hear the drummin'/ Four dead in Ohio."
A question for the future: In the post-Vietnam era of non-war wars, identifiable, cohesive, sustainable protest movements of any stripe have been rare but not altogether absent. The years immediately ahead offer ample opportunities for a new wave of protests and demonstrations by disaffected segments of the population smarting from the depredations of a rogue president committed to imposing his will on them. The mobilization of protest elements that threaten to overwhelm police is likely to precipitate the counter-mobilization of National Guard units, especially since 27 governors and 24 "trifectas" (states where the governor and both houses of the state legislature are of the same party) are Republican. How will these elements respond — as obedient oppressors or principled protectors of popular dissent?
National Guard opening fire on Kent State University demonstrators in 1970. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A lesson past: The Powell-Nunn collusion. Joint Chiefs Chair Colin Powell, who was far and away the most political general since Douglas MacArthur, colluded behind the scenes with Senate Armed Services Committee chair Sam Nunn to craft the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that, for a period of time, forestalled President Bill Clinton’s 1993 commitment to fully integrate LGBTQ people into the military. Earlier, Powell had also penned a 1992 New York Times op-ed opposing George H.W. Bush administration policy on Bosnia. Needless to say, Powell was too much a political force in his own right (not unlike MacArthur) to be touched; only the personality of the commander in chief at the time — former draft-dodger Bill Clinton, rather than World War I vet Truman — made a difference.
A question for the future: An administration sworn to destroy established norms and undermine institutions, to the point of openly circumventing or reinterpreting the Constitution, almost assuredly will disregard traditional standards about the separation of powers and checks and balances. Moreover, there are now numerous members of Congress who have openly relinquished their independence of mind and spirit to the incoming commander in chief, have token military experience they flaunt for political purposes and tout themselves as authorities on military affairs. They will be all too ready to recruit sympathetic partners in uniform willing and able to abet their self-serving political desires. For those in uniform, the question will be what wins out: careerism or institutional loyalty and integrity?
A lesson past: The revolting generals. The 2006 Revolt of the Generals, so-called, involved a group of retired generals — including Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold and Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, among others — who spoke out publicly in opposition to the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy and called for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. This only came after they had failed to speak out publicly or, from all appearances, even to speak up internally while on active duty, when it might have made a difference.
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A question for the future: If senior officers were intimidated into silence under the relatively unthreatening second Bush, there is no limit to the depths of cowardly quiescence that could be exacted by an administration where top-down bullying, browbeating, threats and intimidation are standard operating procedure. Who, otherwise committed to continuing public service in uniform, will have the courage to speak out when necessary, or even to speak up within channels under that kind of pressure?
A lesson past: The cashiering of Alexander Vindman. Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was the National Security Council staffer subpoenaed by the 2019 House impeachment inquiry to provide testimony concerning President Trump’s attempt to muscle Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into providing dirt on Joe Biden. Vindman, who as part of his duties had listened in on the call between Trump and Zelenskyy, dutifully and truthfully reported his serious concerns over the president’s politically motivated arm-twisting, as well as about “outside influencers who [at the behest of Rudy Giuliani] had been promoting a false narrative” about Ukraine that was inconsistent with official U.S. policy. He had already reported his concerns through prescribed internal channels. His comments drew Trump's ire, and Vindman was dismissed from his NSC job and saw his previously planned promotion derailed as retribution. He subsequently retired, citing intimidation from the White House.
A question for the future: There is ample evidence from the first Trump administration that crises and associated examples of incompetence will again occur with alarming frequency. That will inevitably prompt a spate of oversight hearings and inquiries by opposition politicians on Capitol Hill. Whether the issue at hand is backroom collusion with an adversary, strong-arming an ally for political favors, the compromise of national secrets or various forms of fraud, waste and abuse, uniformed personnel, senior and not-so-senior, will be called upon to testify. Since each of the armed services includes honor and courage among its core values, these individuals will be expected, when questioned, to be forthright and truthful. When promotions and careers, to say nothing of identities and self-respect, are at risk over even the slightest deviation from the Overlord’s whimsical, selfish preferences, the question will be whether the angel on one shoulder or the devil on the other wins out.
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A lesson past: The not-so-undirty half-dozen. Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, Trump secretaries of state and defense respectively, were West Point classmates inculcated with a cadet honor code that forbade lying, cheating and stealing and was intended to prepare them for a lifetime of honorable public service. Yet they repeatedly manipulated and dispensed with the truth while in office on behalf of themselves and their commander in chief. H.R. McMaster, who was Trump's national security adviser as a serving three-star general, and John Kelly and James Mattis, both retired Marine four-star generals who served, respectively, as White House chief of staff and secretary of defense under Trump, failed to speak out publicly about presidential abuses and, absent yet-to-surface revelations to the contrary, even to speak up internally to protect the integrity of their institutions. Mark Milley, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, allowed himself to be used by Trump for crass political purposes, only to seek public redemption after the fact to preserve his own self-respect.
A question for the future: It is a self-protective, self-perpetuating myth that the military nurtures and rewards leadership. In actuality, what it nurtures and rewards is dutiful followership. Those who make it to the top and achieve high rank are those who, advertently or inadvertently, acquire patronage from superiors who prize their obedience. That's how it has always been and always will be. The incoming commander in chief knows this all too well and will ineluctably use it to his advantage. Loyalty will be the coin of the realm; even if those in uniform escape having to swear a blood oath to a commander in chief who equates his fortunes with the fortunes of the nation, those who survive and advance will be the ones who give their obeisance to him. Will personal loyalty take precedence over the constitutional oath all senior military officers and public officials have sworn?
Lessons learned are future defenses earned
As numerous respected purveyors of thought have noted over time, we learn from history little more than that we learn nothing from history. Faced with an incoming commander in chief whose expected conduct promises to exceed even the excesses of his first administration, we may be left to conclude that history, even if it doesn’t exactly repeat itself, often rhymes. Where it rhymes, inevitability is close at hand, reminding us that, as Santayana observed, we are condemned to repeat the past we fail to remember. Anyone who hopes to preserve the sanctity of the civil-military ideal would do well to circle the wagons of law and constitutionalism and man the ramparts of institutional self-preservation.
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