President Trump threatened to
deploy the military
against U.S. citizens last week. Previous posts here noted the wide-spread condemnation
President Trump’s threat received, and the argument
military members should engage in “disciplined
disobedience” to orders they believe harmful to the United States. These
developments show the modern erosion
of civil-military relations has accelerated under President Trump. We are in
unprecedented times, when serious voices call for disobeying lawful orders, and
multiple former high-ranking military members are calling the president a
threat to democracy.
That is not to say these voices don't have a point. President Trump has repeatedly signaled
he does not respect the traditional norms on civil-military relations. While
running to be commander-in-chief, he denigrated war heroes who did not show
sufficient fealty to him.
Once elected, he undermined the political neutrality of troops, signing
campaign hats
and attacking political opponents by name on a military
installation. His “request for a grand military parade in Washington was
widely viewed as a political
stunt.” In a mission he authorized, he blamed military leaders for the
death of a servicemember.
The White House also ordered a Navy destroyer
named after a political rival to have its named obscured in order to remain out
of President Trump’s sight, an action he refused to repudiate.
And then last week, the chief
federal law enforcement
officer ordered peaceful
protestors to be dispersed with tear
gas, while the top military member stood by in his combat uniform. The
dispersal of protestors appears to have been a political calculation orchestrated
by the president, who wanted to project strength after reports he earlier hid in a bunker. After that incident, General Milley faced wide-spread
criticism
for wearing his combat uniform to the White House, then patrolling the streets in
in those same OCPs.
Stars and Stripes reported
General Mattis finally condemned President Trump in his Atlantic article,
due to Defense Secretary Esper’s and General Milley’s roles in participating in
this display of power.
Serving a president who does not
respect the constitutional order, and sees all things from the selfish
perspective of his own profit and power, puts pressure on military and civilian
alike. That pressure can lead to lapses in judgement,
as one balances professional and personal ethics against rash but lawful
orders. But the lawfulness of the orders cannot be ignored. The president has
the authority under the Insurrection
Act to deploy U.S. active duty troops domestically,
using his own judgement to determine when that deployment is necessary. The
failure for him to exercise sound judgement is a political problem, and
expecting those in the chain-of-command to countermand his orders opens up too
many long-term problems.
It appears that active duty troops
did not deploy to American streets June 1 because of Secretary of Defense
Esper’s and General Milley’s resistance.
It is unclear how much of that was the give-and-take of a healthy
superior/subordinate relationship, or how much it was a refusal to carry out a
lawful order. But on June 3, Secretary
Esper publicly
broke with the president, announcing his opposition to invoking the Insurrection
Act. There were also reports that General Mattis, while the Secretary of
Defense, simply refused to carry out certain of the president’s orders.
Is this disciplined disobedience less problematic because it is civilians ignoring
the president? This defiance still sends mixed signals to the troops on the
sacrosanctity of lawful orders and the chain-of-command.
To put it another way, the
short-term success in avoiding the military’s use in domestic law enforcement
last week suggests serious problems for the future. The military will have extreme difficulty staying apolitical
if there is an expectation that individual members decide the U.S.’s best
interests before obeying facially lawful orders. As noted above, General Mattis
is not the only high
profile former military member to argue President Trump poses a threat to democracy.
One can only hope this unprecedented outcry from former military members wakes
up the members and elites of the president’s political party. But even if it won’t,
as almost nothing over the last four years has, we must look for political
solutions, and not expect the military to save our democracy. For such an
expectation from the military is a recipe to destroy our current democratic
order, with a military no longer subordinate to civilian control.
