The American Agamemnon

The Trouble With Civil-Military Relations in Our Times

Pictured: Our new Secretary of Defense hawking grenade-shaped soap

This is hardly the first time I’ve written about the problem of civil-military relations in the Trump era—and God knows plenty of others have too—but I think it’s worth mentioning the shift that’s occurred in terms of where the fault lies for the tension between civilian leaders and the military.

The military is having a problem with partisanship and it isn’t on the DoD anymore.

While civilian leadership and military leadership are often aligned, their worldviews and experiences shape them into having different priorities. It’s the reason why there has been (and always will be) tension between the interests of civilian leadership and the parochial bureaucratic interests of the military.

It’s not exactly a new thing that we’ve had civilian leadership force the military to accept reforms and changes that the military doesn’t like. Desegregation, ending the draft, allowing LGBT members to serve openly, and allowing women to serve in combat roles were all very much partisan initiatives that the military had to swallow to the military’s dislike.

I mean partisan here in the sense that these things were largely only acceptable to one political party and not the other. The military implementing these policies was thus very much partisan in the sense that the military was doing things due to the interests of one party—not that I disagree with any of these policies. Similarly, eliminating DEI policies (regardless of my personal feelings) is entirely within the realm of normal civilian control of the military, and policymaking.

The difference, as far as I can see, is that the contemporary GOP’s stance towards the military isn’t so much in the realm of changing policies they dislike so much as an attempt to remake the institution itself in a partisan image. It is to see the DoD as entirely a partisan instrument, rather than an institution of the State that takes directives from civilian leadership.

I would liken the relationship between the current administration and the DoD to the relationship between Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad. For those of you who haven’t read the Iliad¹, the tension and conflict between the two men is a central driver of much of the misfortune that befalls the Greeks (or Achaeans if you’re a nerd) on the beaches of Troy.

Agamemnon being a wholly unqualified leader of the Greek host continually asserts his own personal interests ahead of the interests of those he leads—and when the two come into conflict he resorts to force to ensure those beneath him comply.

In fact, the whole of the Iliad is a product of the first such conflict when Agamemnon attempts to assert his personal interests at the expense of Achilles—causing Achilles to quit the fight against the Trojans in a fit of rage. The social norms and rules as to which Achilles exists concerning violence (the right to spoils, in this case, Briseis) are overridden by Agamemnon who sees the Greek army as a vehicle for his own personal aggrandizement.

Which is what gets me to the DoD and the contemporary GOP. If you’ve been paying even marginal attention to the intentions of people like Hegseth, Vance, Kash Patel, or the future head of the OPM Russell Vought, you’d be familiar with their plainly stated views that institutions ought to be made into partisan vehicles for the GOP.

It’s a view where there’s no role for a military that’s an institution of the State that merely serves civilian leadership. This puts the DoD in an almost impossible position wherein anything they do is taking partisan sides.

If the DoD implements every Presidential order (regardless of legality) to the fullest extent possible, that’s taking a partisan position. If the DoD slow-rolls implementing orders while they wait for legal clarification—that’s going to be seen as partisanship in favor of the Democrats.

There’s no ground the military can stand on anymore that means they’re going to be doing anything for non-partisan institutional reasons. Hegseth (for instance) has signaled that he is deeply ambivalent to the Laws of Armed Conflict—but we are legally bound by treaty to adhere to those laws. In our current times, if the military refuses to operate outside the bounds of those laws—that will be a partisan act wether the DoD likes it or not.

The trouble with Achilles sitting out the fighting outside of Troy—regardless of the legitimacy of his reasons for doing so—was that his intransigence to Agamemnon was seen as a direct affront to Agamemnon. When the other Greeks on the beach see Achilles sitting out the fighting, they see that as an attack on the legitimacy of Agamemnon.²

It’s the perception from the outside that shapes what behavior is regarded as “partisan,” regardless of the intentions of the actual actors themselves. You only have to look at a chart of partisan perceptions of the economy to understand what effect this would have on the DoD.

But there was no choice he could have made that would have been viable, simply rolling over to Agamemnon would mean violating a separate set of norms surrounding the institution that he represented.³ If Achilles were to go along with handing over Brises it would have sent a separate message legitimizing his actions—everything you have belongs to Agamemnon, and the Trojan War is merely to fill his coffers.

It’s a catch-22 for the institution when civilian leadership is using you in such a manner. You can’t win.

Hegseth, like Agamemnon, may be comically unqualified for the position he’s in, but he’s also just as likely to drive the military into a trap of escalating partisanship through his own interests.

1. What the fuck is wrong with you? You find the time to read the slop I write but you can’t find the time to read one of the greatest works ever produced?

2. Agamemnon also saw it that way for very obvious reasons. You tend to not want the most respected hero in your army to publically call you a gold-seeking coward. Needless to say, using the DoD in such a nakedly partisan way risks having senior officers publically do this, which would be very bad for your legitimacy—among other obvious problems

3. Diomedes is the obvious stand-in for the “model” Greek soldier rather than Achilles, and I know that, but he also directly confronts Agamemnon so I don’t think the central conflict over Agamemnon’s ambitions and the welfare of those he leads fails because Achilles isn’t an ideal of soldiering. Achilles is just the most forceful representation of that conflict, so I’m using him.