In Defense of Milley

The Soldier and the Republic

Former President Trump walking to St. John's Church in June 2020, Patrick Semansky, AP

Among the newest quotes from Bob Woodward’s new book War is a revelation that former CJCS Mark Milley believes that Trump is “fascist to his core.” This comment was made in March 2023—and thus while Milley was still on active duty—which has caused some hand-wringing about norms in civil-military relations.

There is an idea in contemporary civil-military relations scholarship that the American military is a non-political entity and that norms around service (especially for General Officers) work to constrain any impulse that would undermine that. Since Samuel Huntington first wrote Soldier and the State some version of Huntington’s theory of objective civilian control has been the only real lens through which people view the military.

Without going into much detail, there’s a very real impulse that drives this perception of the military (fear of coups and rule through military force) that makes anyone want to ensure the military is subordinate to a strict culture of civilian control. None of us want to live through an American version of the Barracks Emperors wherein a disgruntled General deposes every President.

It however undersells the exceptional danger in which civilian control of the military falls outside what we would reasonably term the ideological confines of our political community.

Trump has repeatedly and continuously called for extrajudicial violence in America that would target everyone from legal immigrants to journalists, to Milley himself with execution. If Trump returned to the White House it would be a second term unchecked by any guardrails against personalist rule. There’s nobody around him that would curb his worst impulses. Nobody is left that would explain to Trump that he can’t just get the violence he so often pushes for.

His rhetoric—while always vengeful—has become even more inflammatory and dangerous going into the final days of the election as he promises nationwide paramilitary-style raids and denouncing what he calls “enemies from within.”

The last few weeks have been as close to an ideologically coherent message from Trump that has ever existed and it has one through-line, and it is openly inconsistent with a democratic America.

The military isn’t obligated to roll over and accept the destruction of democratic institutions because Samuel Huntington wrote a book. What Huntington got wrong is that in a Republic—the military by being citizens of that same Republic is obligated to uphold certain ideals in the abstract.

We shouldn’t expect our General Officers to be meek pushovers who accept any demagogue who comes along. Some moments require institutions in our country—none of which has more power than the DoD—to step up to protect the broader community from existential threats.

I feel like rational people would be hard-pressed to argue that the military would be required to put up with orders for unrestrained domestic violence coming from the commander-in-chief. I’d like to think we all believe that the military has an ideological commitment to not succumb to autocracy like the militaries of Italy, Germany, Chile, Argentina, or a thousand others.

Why then are they required to sit silently by and watch when a coin flip determines if the person calling for that could become President?

Which gets me to Milley.

While the CJCS doesn’t fall in the actual chain of command, the position is still one of the closest advisors to the President. Milley’s experience (and subsequent judgments) of Trump are informed by close interaction over the years.

By the time Milley rose to the position, he was a combat veteran with over 30 years of service—not generally the sort of person you would assess is fit to have rash and uncalculated judgments. He is well aware of the norms that surround military service and obviously felt that the crisis of a second Trump term would far outweigh breaking those norms.

Now to be clear, I don’t mean this in some trivial kind of way. You can’t frustrate the desires of civilian control because you don’t like something. Vietnam was a disastrous war, but military leadership had no right to refuse to send troops there. There’s also a very thin line between not liking something and that thing is an outright threat to the continuation of our political community.

I would probably greatly personally dislike if the military banned women from serving, for instance, or any other number of culture war topics being made into policy by the DoD. That is however not an existential threat to the continuation of democratic life.

What is a threat to democratic life is when the CJCS believes the President is becoming the Führer and in his words has to, “…put a ring of steel around this city… [so] the Nazis aren’t getting in.”

The choices made by the DoD in the aftermath of January 6th were an example of how the military is a political actor in our public life. The DoD ought to be non-partisan, but the role they played in facilitating the peaceful transfer of power in the aftermath of a well-documented attempt to circumvent the 2020 elections showcases that exceptional circumstances require the military to act against civilian leadership.

The abstract ideals that the military holds to be true do not stop applying in our domestic life. We’re living in a moment in which our domestic norms have been so extraordinarily eroded that the prospect of widespread paramilitary violence targeting millions of people barely makes headlines.

It’s very possible that Trump—based on his recent rhetoric—in the event of an electoral loss attempts to once again mobilize widespread paramilitary violence to advance his gambits to attain the Presidency. If the violence is severe enough, the military would once again be called upon to ensure the transfer of power.

Living through that once, what other choice does Milley have besides making vocal what he knows to be true? Clearly, the other norms aren’t working.