Civil–Military Relations During the Trump Administration: Rejection of Military Professionalism and the Deterioration of Civil

Abstract

The period of Donald Trump’s term in office was one of the most contentious periods of American civil–military relations. Both active-duty and retired officers rebuffed and castigated the president’s actions, policies, and character. Such public criticism of a sitting president has no real parallel in American history. This breakdown in civil–military relations was caused by the president’s lack of respect and in fact disdain for the contours of military professionalism. Those contours are expressed by the attributes of expertise, corporateness, and responsibility. The military’s notion of commitment to the Constitution, an apolitical ethos, as well as its willingness to sacrifice for the national good were all part of the military’s own sense of professional values. In this case, the sitting president shared none of those values and tried to politicize the military, ignored their expertise, and disparaged their selfless sacrifice.

Keywords

civil–military relations professionalism expertise corporateness responsibility

Almost from the moment of his inauguration on January 20, 2017, as the Forty-fifth President of the United States, Donald Trump had a contentious relationship with the military. This is somewhat surprising given the fact that during the 2016 campaign, the military and military veterans comprised a faithful part of Trump’s winning coalition. In a Military Times poll, his support was two to one over Secretary Clinton. Yet by the end of his single term, Trump had lost a great deal of that support, with only 38% of the military continuing to support him (Altman & Shane, 2016; Benen, 2020; Milbank, 2020; Shane, 2020a). Moreover, he surrounded himself with either retired or active-duty officers at positions such as Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Advisor to burnish his credentials. But when they left the administration, they had little good to say (Bergen, 2019; Shinkman, 2019). At the same time, many senior retired officers were castigating the President’s lack of honesty, his racism and lack of character, viewing him as a danger to the country. Even active-duty officers criticized the President, albeit less personally. What caused such a precipitous decline in his support that led so many military officers, both retired and active duty, to attack the president so vehemently and personally? In the final analysis, these attacks represent a deterioration of civil–military relations. Consequently, the cause of this deterioration needs to be explored.

These types of public attacks are extraordinarily rare in American civil–military relations. While there are times that differences over policy matters have seeped into the public arena, concentrated public attack on the civilian leadership is almost nonexistent. The closest example to what happened during the Trump administration is what is referred to as the “Revolt of the Generals” in 2006. During this period, numerous retired military officers attacked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for what they viewed as his “mismanagement,” of the Iraq War. My own research into the 2006 Revolt clearly indicates that what differentiates the present situation from the 2006 situation is the scope of the military’s criticism. In 2006, for the most part, the focus of the criticism was on military matters related to the war effort. Even though these narrow attacks fell for the most part within the scope of traditional military expertise, they were considered to be such a violation of the traditional civil–military norms that many commentators, who generally fell into the category of what Peter Fever labels “civilian supremacists,” called it a “crisis in civil–military relations” (Binkley, 2020; Feaver, 2011). However, the 2006 “Revolt of the Generals” paled in comparison to the vociferous attacks leveled against then President Trump. Even such a civilian supremacist as Eliot Cohen believed that the military had an obligation to say no to President Trump, even if the order was not clearly illegal. From Cohen’s perspective, the military leadership had to be willing to be fired for such action (E. Cohen, 2020; compare to E. Cohen, 2002). Air Force General John E. Hyten has stated that he would push back against what he considered an illegal order. The real question is whether the president would recognize the distinction between a legal and an illegal order. While the possibility of such a scenario has always existed, the fact that it is now so openly discussed is a reflection of the breakdown in traditional norms (Z. Cohen, 2018; Rubin, 2017).

Moreover, the civil–military difficulties that occurred during the Trump administration typically were focused on nonmilitary or purely political/policy issues and in some cases the character, morality, and veracity of the President. As retired Admiral William McRaven noted, “it has been an unwritten rule that senior military officers don’t come out against the president, and I think that’s a good unwritten rule.” But then the Admiral went on to state “I’ve got to look myself in the mirror and make sure I’m doing what I think is the right thing (Page, 2019).” In the face of repeated attacks on institutional norms, many officers have looked themselves in the mirror and ignored the unwritten rule realizing that for the good of the country they needed to speak out. Furthermore, unlike the Bush administration, President Trump has responded directly to his military critics, in some cases attacking them quite personally and questioning their loyalty, military competency, and even their patriotism.

The purpose of this article is to explore the deterioration of civil–military relations during the Trump administration. American civil–military relations is a catch-all phrase for those legal and cultural interactions that exist between two sets of partners: the civilian leadership, starting with the president as commander-in-chief and the military professionals that advise that leadership and carry out its orders. Each administration must forge its own relationship with its military advisors. Sometimes it is a successful relationship, while in other cases it is a failure. In any event, successful partnerships are based on mutual trust. As historian Matthew Moten has described, when that relationship is successful mutual trust was “born of candor, respect, demonstrated competence, a shared world view and an expectation that each partner would take responsibility for the decisions made” (Moten, 2014, p. 5). When those factors are absent that mutual trust disappears and that relationship flounders. This is the problem with the relationship of the military to President Trump. As one commentator noted,

But it is the president, not the generals and admirals, who have made this unthinkable situation part of the new normal in the Age of Trump. No modern president has been so reckless in his criticism of both active and retired military professionals. When Trump said he knew more than the generals—a laughable claim from almost any civilian when it comes to military affairs—he apparently meant it. And that means he has no respect for military advice, from any direction. (Nichols, 2019)

What Moten left unsaid is that overlaying his description of a successful relationship between the commander-in-chief and his military advisors is an appreciation on the part of the commander-in-chief for the contours of military professionalism. In this regard, the president must respect the nature of military professionalism and not attempt to undermine the foundations of that professionalism. This is substantively different from the policy disagreements that typically arise between the president and his military advisors. While it is difficult to assume motivation, in the case of President Trump, we can extrapolate from his actions and words to reveal an absence of respect and such a shared world view, as well as a complete disregard, and some cases contempt for the underpinnings of military professionalism.

Sociologists have long determined that professionalism has three fundamental attributes: expertise, corporateness, and responsibility (Huntington, 1959, pp. 8–10). In addition to these three professional attributes, there needs to be a relationship between the professional and a client who seeks out the professional to solve a particular problem. While the most typical examples of this relationship are the patient–doctor or client–lawyer relationship, the client of the military is both the civilian leadership of the nation and the nation-at-large (Millett, 1977). One of the major underpinnings of the client is respect and candor between the parties (Dyck, 1980; Huntington, 1959, pp. 8–10; Moten, 2011). Absent that, the client–professional relationship falls apart.

It is this author’s contention that Trump, based on his language and actions, did not grasp the nature of the military’s professional expertise, corporateness, or responsibility. Failure to grasp the nature of military professionalism was only part of the problem. Even more problematic was the disdain he appeared to hold for the values manifested in those three attributes of professionalism. Consequently, the military fought back with the only constitutional method at their disposal, their public dialogue voice (Binkley, 2020, pp. 25–27).¹ In this particular case, as in 2006, the military have found that some aspect of the civilian leadership, in this case the president, was sorely wonting the values required by the position of the commander-in-chief. Moreover, because this president had a particularly thin skin to any form of criticism, he struck out and castigated many of his military critics, undermining respect and thereby creating a loop of disdain.

To substantiate this hypothesis, we must turn our attention to examining the nature of each of the attributes of professionalism: expertise, corporateness, and responsibility. We will then examine President Trump’s approach to those attributes, using his own words and actions to discern his attitude, which appeared to derogate those professional attributes. Finally, we will examine the military’s response to the president’s attitude as they defended their professionalism.

Expertise

Expertise relates to a specific set of knowledge acquired through specialized education, usually through an advanced educational system which gives the professional the skill set to solve the problems that are brought to them by their client (Huntington, 1959, pp. 8–9). In the case of the military, this expertise is developed through a combination of military education and on-the-job experience. Thus, by the time an officer reaches flag rank, they have gone through numerous educational experiences culminating at the war college level and 30-plus years of practical experience managing ever higher levels of military responsibility. The professional’s expertise leads to the willingness and capability to give advice and make decisions. As Moten noted, candor is an important part of the advisory process. The professional must be prepared to speak truth to power. Moreover, it implies the willingness to take responsibility for that advice and those decisions the professional makes within the bounds of their authority. The acceptance of responsibility for decisions is one of the factors that Moten described as a factor in a successful civil–military relationship. However, it is essential to understand this is a two-way street. The professional accepts responsibility for the use of his expertise, while the civilian leadership has to accept responsibility for the decisions they make.

The existence of this expertise raises questions as to whether there are limits as to what factors the professional should consider in giving his or her advice to the client. The underlying reason for this limitation relates to the scope of the professional’s expertise. Samuel Huntington amply described it “the authority of military groups is normally limited to military matters” (Huntington, 1959, p. 88). Thus, to the extent that the military professionals’ expertise is limited to military matters, according to Huntington, the professionals’ advice is similarly limited to military matters. Other scholars, most notably Morris Janowitz, have argued the opposite—that the military should incorporate nonmilitary factors into their advisory process because this makes the advice more viable (Janowitz, 1960, pp. 428–430).

What separates the Trump administration’s difficulty with the military from the 2006 “Revolt of the Generals” is that in the more recent situation, the criticism is leveled first against the commander-in-chief, himself, and second, and more importantly, many of the military’s comments are not related to traditional military matters, but instead are focused on the character and morality of the president, as well as his disregard for America’s Constitutional foundation and its societal values. As we will see, it is clear that there is a divergence between the values represented by the professional military and those of the president.

While it is not uncommon for there to be differences of opinion on policy between the military and the civilian leadership, President Trump appeared to fail to appreciate the value of expertise. Whether it was the views of public health specialists regarding the Pandemic, the intelligence community regarding Russia, or climate scientists regarding global warming, there was a general depreciation of expertise and facts. Trump’s view of the military was that he knew more “than the generals do” (Blake, 2016; Johnson, 2015; Madhani & Pace, 2020). For example, in reference to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who had also been a Marine four-star general and Commander of Central Command, Trump said that “I think I know more about [NATO] than he does” (Goldberg, 2019). In a July 20, 2017, meeting on Afghanistan with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump questioned their expertise and manhood. He called them “losers,” who “don’t know how to win anymore.” He went on to say of the officers in the Tank that they “were bunch of dopes and babies” and that “I wouldn’t go to war with you people” (Bergen, 2019, p. 148; Rucker & Leonnig, 2020, pp. 230–239).² The problem is that when the client denigrates the professional’s expertise, it logically follows that the professional’s advice is going to be ignored.

One of the extreme public examples of president ignoring his advisors occurred right at the end of Trump’s administration. On November 11, after the election, the military received a memo signed by the president that ordered a full withdrawal from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021. The problem was that no one within the military or national security chain of command had seen the memo or even understood whether it was real or possibly a forgery. While the president subsequently admitted that he did sign the memo, it was eventually nullified. Further reporting indicated that the authors were low-level staffers without the authority to prepare such a memorandum (Woodward & Costa, 2021, pp. 156–158). The problem with this situation is not that that the president rejected the military’s advice on such an important question as the withdrawal from a war, it was that he totally by-passed his military experts never seeking their advice.

While differences between the civilian leadership and its military advisors are not uncommon, it is relatively uncommon that those differences rise to the level that they become public. In the case of the Trump administration, those difference cut across a variety of subjects to include the President’s decisions regarding pulling out of Afghanistan and Syria; the relationship with North Korea; and the administration’s handling of our allies, in particular those in NATO. All of these policy issues are encapsulated in Secretary of Defense Mattis’s resignation letter. While ostensibly a civilian, one cannot ignore Mattis’s recent Marine Corps history as a four-star general. Thus, for the purposes of this article I will include Mattis’s concerns as part of the military’s views. It is clear that Secretary Mattis did not resign over a specific event; but instead left over fundamental philosophical different world view regarding the president’s treatment of allies, in particular NATO, and our adversaries. As Secretary Mattis stated in his letter, “we must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, property and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances” (Kempe, 2018). Immediately after Secretary Mattis’s resignation, the president attacked him, first by claiming that he was fired, which he did not, and then by attacking his competence. As Trump characterized it, “what has [General Mattis] done for me? How’s he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. I am not happy with what he’s done in Afghanistan, and I shouldn’t be happy” (Samuels, 2019). But Mattis was not alone in defending NATO. Retired Army Lt. General Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, blasted the administration for kicking our “allies in the Ass,” and giving a gift to China and Russia (Papenfuss, 2019a).

With regard to Afghanistan and Syria, President Trump has been talking about pulling out of those wars since the campaign in 2016. In December 2018, he threatened to withdraw all troops and close the embassy in Kabul. This issue was raised again in August 2019. In response to the President’s thinking, Army Chief of Staff, and nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley, in Senate testimony said that pulling troops out of Afghanistan too soon would be a “strategic mistake” (Gibbons-Neff, 2019; Kempe, 2018; Kube & Lee, 2019). General Milley’s response echoes Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki’s 2003 testimony about the troop levels needed in Iraq, which became intertwined into the 2006 “Revolt of the Generals” (Binkley, 2020, p. 28). When the President claimed that the Islamic State had been defeated and that the United States could pull out of Syria, General Joseph Votel, head of Central Command, publicly disagreed. He told the Senate that he had not been consulted on the President’s pullout decision and that the Islamic State was not defeated (Allen, 2019; “General Joseph Votel breaks rank with Trump over Syria,” 2019; Kempe, 2018). North Korea was another point of contention. Just prior to the President’s meeting with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Army General Robert Abrams distanced himself somewhat from the administration by stating to the Senate that “we have not observed activity that’s consistent with a full-court-press in denuclearization” (Riechmann, 2019). In each of these cases, the military perceived that its advice was not being reasonably considered and that the senior officers felt comfortable disclosing in a public forum those policy differences.

A second example of a presidential decision intruding into the arena of military expertise was his decision to ban transgender individuals from military service. The president’s position was articulated in a July 2017 tweet, “our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” (Lopez, 2019). This galled many in the military on a couple of levels. First, this decision had not been vetted through the proper military channels. This was another example of the military being by-passed in the decision process. Second, the administration seems to rely on the often-used excuse of unit cohesion to rationalize its decision. General Milley again rebuffed the administration by saying in his confirmation hearing that he was “not aware of significant impacts to unit readiness based on transgender persons serving in the Army.” At the same time, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dunford issued a letter to the Chiefs rebuffing the president’s order and stating that there would be:

No modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been reviewed by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance . . . In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. (“General Milley affirms that inclusive Policy for Transgender Troops did not harm Readiness,” 2019; Woodward, 2018, pp. 202–203)

In addition, to the active-duty leaders’ response to the President, 56 retired generals and admirals signed a statement against the administration’s position (Kheel, 2017).

The military’s expertise does not obviate Fever’s famous statement that democratic institutions give the civilians “the right to be wrong” (Feaver, 2003, p. 65). But expertise does give the military the right to be heard. This is particularly important if one considers the fact the military’s client is not only the civilian leadership but the nation-at-large.

“Respect” was the key word in Dunford’s abovementioned response. The idea of disrespecting a whole category of military personnel clearly violated the military’s professionalism on two levels. With respect to professional expertise, the president’s unilateral decision was an affront to the military’s own ability to determine whether or not transgender personnel hurt unit cohesion. This was clearly within the military professional bailiwick. On a deeper level, as will be seen in the next portion of this article, the disrespect shown to a category of American citizens was an affront to the corporate aspect of professionalism.

A final example deals with Moten’s notion of mutual responsibility. Expertise implies that both the military and the civilian leadership take responsibility for the decisions they make. President Trump’s own actions tended to show that he had difficulty taking responsibility for any decision he made, especially if the results less than optimum. For example, he stated “I don’t take responsibility at all” for any problems associated with the Covid testing debacle. With regard to the military, Trump ordered an operation into Yemen against al Qaeda. The operation went wrong in a number of ways, and Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens was killed. While our purpose is not to relitigate the failure of this operation, President Trump turned on the military, saying it was something his generals “were looking at for a long time doing,” and that the generals “lost Ryan” (Wilkie & Mangan, 2020; Woodward, 2018, pp. 72–74). Trump’s inability to take responsibility for his decisions as president, while the military had to take responsibility for their advice was a further disconnect between the military’s concept of professionalism and the values of the president.

Corporateness

Corporateness implies a unique set of cultural institutions and values which controls entrance into the profession as well as participation, thereafter. On the surface it manifests itself in the accoutrements of the professional, such as their title and rank and uniform. Loyalty to one’s branch of service and the military at large is reflective of corporateness. On a deeper level however, it implies a set of moral expectations which are officially incorporated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the actions of all members of the military. It is also unofficially incorporated in a set of values which unifies the professional officer corps. As Huntington argued, bureaucratic professionals, such as the military, “develop a more general sense of collective responsibility and the proper role of the military in society” (Huntington, 1959, p. 10). Phrases like, “Duty, Honor and Country” reflect those unofficial values. While students of military professionalism have disagreed over the extent to which the military ethos reflects the underlying values of the larger society, I submit that much of the military’s response to then President Trump’s actions clearly manifested a correlation between the professional’s values and the values of the larger society (Janowitz, 1960, p. 433). For many in the military the essential point is that they are part of that larger society and the values manifested by the former president were clearly in apposition to those values. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, characterized the values of the military as following the ideals of the “City on the Hill” (Dempsey, 2012). In describing the then president’s actions toward the protests after George Floyd’s murder, in which the president sought to use active-duty and National Guard troops against the protesters, retired Marine General James Mattis wrote the following:

Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington D.C., sets up a conflict-a false conflict-between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in unform and the society they are sworn to protect . . . Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. (Mattis, 2020)

Among those national values that appear to embrace both the military and the nation-at-large is the notion that every person is equal and that America is a diverse multicultural community. While there may be a minority that disagrees with the assumption that these values exist, the military’s response to the President’s remarks regarding Charlottesville reflected the fault lines between military’s vision of its professional values and those values of the commander-in-chief. Shortly after President Trump indicated that there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis, the individual members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all came out and uniformly condemned racism. Army Chief of Staff Milley tweeted, “The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our Values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775” (Bergen, 2019; Klimas & Tesfamichael, 2017, p. 156). While the Chiefs were concerned that some active-duty military had participated or helped organize the neo-Nazi march, more fundamentally, the Chiefs’ statements rejected racism and with it those values that either implicitly or explicitly supported racism. Anti-racism was proffered as a core value of the military profession, implicitly because it reflected American values. Collateral to Charlottesville was the debate between the military and the president over the continued display of Confederate symbols on military posts and whether to rename certain Army posts which were named after Confederate officers. President Trump was very vocal in the support of such symbols and opposed the renaming of the Army bases. As in the case of Charlottesville, the professional military saw these as signs of “divisiveness.” In direct opposition to the president’s position, both the Marine Corps and the Navy prohibited the display of such Confederate symbols, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley in a House hearing said that “there is no place in our armed forces for manifestations or symbols of racism, bias or discrimination” (Copper, 2020; Mangan & Macias, 2020; Shane, 2020b; Shane & Rempfer, 2020; Woodward & Costa, 2021, pp. 107–108). While the active-duty chiefs did not directly call the president a racist, retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez was more direct when he stated in a 2020 interview in the Atlantic Magazine that “I believe the president is a racist” (Freed, 2020). The incorporation of these types of national values was also one of the reasons the military responded as it did to the President’s ban on transgender personnel serving in the military which was discussed above, and why the term “respect” in General Dunford’s letter regarding Trump’s transgender tweet was so important.

A second example of the erosion of norms as it relates to moral expectations which are part of corporateness is the president’s consideration of pardons for a number of individual service men and a former Blackwater security contractor who had been found guilty of, or were to be tried for alleged war crimes. In May 2019, he issued a pardon for former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna who had been convicted of murdering an Iraqi prisoner. The president subsequently became involved in the case Major Matthew L Golsteyn who was accused of killing an unarmed Afghan; and Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who similarly was accused of shooting unarmed civilians and killing an enemy captive. While Golsteyn was given a pardon by the president, Gallagher was ultimately found not guilty of murder, but was convicted of a number of lesser crimes. Trump then intervened to ensure that Gallagher was not demoted and could keep his Seal Trident Pin. The question for many military officers is what impact these actions would have on the military’s ethical code and discipline. But more generally, it raised questions regarding the president’s moral leadership. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, retired Army General Martin Dempsey stated,

Absent evidence of innocence or injustice the wholesale pardon of US servicemembers accused of war crimes signals our troops and allies that we don’t take the Law of Armed Conflict seriously. Bad message. Bad precedent. Abdication of moral responsibility. (Bobic, 2019; Phillipps, 2019; Spinelli, 2019)

Other military officers echoed General Dempsey’s argument that such pardons would erode America’s moral position. Former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak stated that the president’s potential actions “relinquishes the United States moral high ground and undermines the good order and discipline critical to winning on the battlefield” (Papenfuss, 2019b; Phillipps, 2019; Spinelli, 2019; “Who is Edward Gallagher-the navy seal acquitted by Trump,” 2019). Other officers to make similar statements include retired Admiral William McRaven, retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, retired Army Lt. General Mark Hertling, and retired Marine Corps Lt. General Lawrence Nicholson (Hertling, 2019; McCaffrey, 2019; D. Morgan, 2019; Nicholson & Weston, 2019; Szoldra, 2019). In these criticisms of the president, the military are making two arguments. The first goes to organizational cohesion and discipline, which is quintessentially a military operational matter and goes to military’s expertise. By giving these pardons and intervening in the Gallagher case, the President was rejecting that military expertise. Second, the criticism of the president’s lack of moral leadership and erosion of America’s moral position reflect a breakdown of respect for the office of the president. The erosion of traditional norms by the Trump administration has caused some military officers to speak out directly regarding the character of the president. Following this line, retired Army General Stanley McChrystal has publicly stated that he does not think that the president “tells the truth” and that he is immoral (LeBlanc, 2018).

One of the essential corporate values which unifies the military is its apolitical nature. While many in the military may identify with a political party or ideology, they loyally are committed to the chain of command, the concept of civilian control, and the duty to follow lawful orders. These values are reflected in the military professional’s oath to defend the Constitution. This apolitical commitment subordinates whatever political attitude an individual officer has. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford characterized it, “for the U.S. military, being apolitical is a critical element of civilian control of the military—an absolute in a democracy.” When General Mattis’s mother asked him how he could work for Trump, the Secretary of Defense responded that he worked “for the Constitution,” and not the President. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley succinctly described this apolitical ethos in a Veterans Day speech when he said “We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, to a tyrant or to a dictator . . . we take an oath to the Constitution” (Gilsinan & Feiger, 2019; Woodward, 2020, p. 5; Woodward & Costa, 2021, p. 154).³

The problem during the Trump administration was that an apolitical military conflicted with the underlying demand for personal loyalty which was the hallmark of the president. As James Comey later recalled, the president told him “I need Loyalty. I expect Loyalty” (Comey, 2018, p. 217; LeBlanc, 2020). Personal loyalty and political loyalty were one in the same. During the Trump administration, this was not a unique problem for the military. The administration politicized other apolitical institutions such as the Justice Department and the intelligence community. It was out of concern for this erosion that then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, warned the military to stay out of politics. As the Chairman’s spokesman stated clearly, “our ethos of an apolitical nature is the foundation of the trust the civilian leadership has in the unfettered and unfiltered advice and counsel of the military” (Baron, 2018; Friend, 2017; Starr, 2016).⁴ What was being articulated was the interrelation of advice based on expertise and apolitical professionalism. When General McMasters took over the National Security Council, he described himself as an apolitical military professional, who did not even vote. This conflicted with the president’s demand for political loyalty from everyone in the administration. Consequently, McMaster had to walk a very narrow tightrope, publicly defending the president at times while attempting to maintain his apolitical posture (Bergen, 2019, pp. 138–139; Rucker & Leonnig, 2020, p. 164).⁵ Trump personalized the military referring to it as “his military” and “his generals.” As a consequence, the president constantly attempted to politicize the military in ways large and small. His first official act was the politicization of the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, to sign his Moslem travel ban. This greatly bothered the new Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, because in his view “if the military was seen as a political pawn of a particular administration, you chipped away at that crucial public trust” (Bergen, 2019, p. 95).

The problem of a politized military becomes acute, though, when the civilian leadership will not recognize the apolitical nature of the military and fosters politicization upon the military. The McCain incident highlights this problem. This occurred when the administration ordered the name of the Navy destroyer USS John S. McCain be covered up during the President’s trip to Japan. The McCain was named after Admirals John S. McCain Senior and Junior as well as their son and grandson Senator John McCain. It was generally viewed that the reason for hiding the name of the McCain was the president’s dislike for the deceased senator. As retired Army Lt. General David Baron stated, “It is a disturbing episode that brings up the issue of the degree to which the military is being used as a political prop and politics being injecting (sic) into military activities” (Lamothe et al., 2019; W. Morgan et al., 2019). In the face of public outcry by both politicians and retired military officers, the McCain incident forced Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to push back against the White House (Baldor, 2019; W. Morgan et al., 2019).

The president’s effort to have a parade with Abrams tanks and an Air Force flyover on the Fourth of July and his inauguration was another point of concern of politicization. According to former family friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Trump wanted to “make it look like North Korea.” Referring to the Fourth of July, retired four-star Marine General Anthony Zinni suggested that we “leave tanks for Red Square.” Retired Army Major General William Nash was quoted as follows, “the President is using the armed forces in a political ploy for his reelection campaign and I think it’s absolutely obscene.” Retired Army Lt. General David Barno went further:

This looks like it’s becoming much more of a Republican Party event-a political event about the president-than a national celebration of the Fourth of July, and it’s unfortunate to have the military smack dab in the middle of that. (Feldscher, 2020; W. Morgan, 2019; Shear & Gibbon-Neff, 2019)

In some cases, the attempted politization of the military was not even subtle. During the commissioning ceremony of the new aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the President asked the assembled military audience to lobby the Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare (Exum, 2017; Fay, 2017). That type of blatant politicization exhibited at the USS Ford commissioning was not an aberration. In a 2019 speech before American troops and their families in South Korea Trump raised the military budget and went on to say that “this is not a political speech, but the Democrats were not going to [give the military a decent budget] . . . They [the Democrats] want open borders and the hell with the military” (Choi, 2019). Retired Admiral James Stavridis attacked Trump for using his trips to the Dover Air Force Base to meet the fallen personnel as a “political prop” (Watsup America, 2019). The president’s ordering of troops to the Mexican border was viewed as a similar use of the military as a prop (Rucker & Leonnig, 2020, pp. 36–38; 308–312). A picture of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, in uniform, was used without his approval in a political ad during the 2020 campaign (Seligman, 2020). From the military’s perspective, these examples of politicization paled when compared to having General Milley participate in the infamous photo opportunity at Lafayette Square. Milley felt that his presence in uniform was an effort to give political cover to an action that many felt violated the military’s role vis-a-vis the constitution. I will address this issue in more detail later in this article as it relates to support for the Constitution, but at this point of our analysis, the incident relates to politicization of the military. Milley spoke to that issue in a speech at the National War College shortly afterwards: “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created the perception of the military involved in domestic politics.” Afterwards in a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Milley said “[the National War College speech] was about no politicization of the military. Chief, we should not politicize the military.” Milley reiterated his position in a subsequent conversation with the president. After Trump asked Milley what was wrong with walking with the president, Milley responded:

this has nothing to do with you. This has to do with me and the uniform and not politicizing the uniform . . . I don’t expect you to get that, But I’m a soldier, and I can never allow the politicization of this uniform, I can’t do it. It’s wrong.

The problem was whether or not the president or Meadows did understand Milley’s concern (Leonnig & Rucker, 2021, pp. 186–188; Woodward & Costa, 2021, pp. 93–98).

Respect is a key factor that makes for a positive civil–military relationship. There needs to be mutual respect between the commander-in-chief and his military advisors. This is part of the values inculcated into the notion of professional corporateness. Unfortunately, mutual respect was lost as the president showed disdain for the tenants of military professionalism and the military in response increasingly criticized the president, who in turn further attacked them. According to news reports, those senior military officers who had the temerity to express disapproval of the president’s Syria policy were labeled “failed generals.” President Trump has gone on to say America’s military leaders “don’t know much because they’re not winning” and that they are “embarrassing the country” (Benen, 2019). When he states that he “knows more about defeating ISIS then his generals” he is not only demeaning the military’s competency and expertise, but reflects a lack of respect. The president also targeted individual officers for his wrath. We have seen examples of how Trump demeaned Secretary Mattis and other senior offices after they criticized him. In January 2019, after retired General Stanley McChrystal called President Trump immoral and untrustworthy, the president tweeted that McChrystal “Got fired like a dog by Obama. Last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover” (Benen, 2019). Note that the president had to include a political aspect to his attack.

The president’s disrespect toward the military was not confined to individuals to whom he disliked. He made possibly the worst possible slur upon the military when he said that the military “want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stays happy.” The belief that the military would make military decisions based on whether the military-industrial complex was happy reflected the president’s transactional approach to all human activity. In fact, this has led some scholars to characterize the Trump administration as a “transactional administration” (Solomon & Zaring, 2017–2018). Army Chief of Staff James McConville responded, without specifically naming the president, that:

[M]any of [the senior military] leaders have sons and daughters who have gone to combat or may be in combat right now. So, I can assure the American people that senior leaders only recommend sending troops to combat when it’s required in national security, or as a last resort. (Feldscher, 2020)

Responsibility

The third important professional attribute is responsibility, which sociologists describe as a commitment on the part of the professional to some higher calling, a degree of selflessness to the point of sacrifice. Implicit in the attribute of responsibility is the notion of service. According to Huntington, there is “a social obligation [on the part of the military profession] to utilize [their] craft for the benefit of society” (Huntington, 1959, p 15). As in the case of corporateness, responsibility is exemplified by the oath the professional takes when entering the profession, to defend the Constitution. Thus, protection of the American constitutional system is integral to professional responsibility.

The first prong of responsibility, that is, the selfless call to service, was alien to the ethos of the president. This rejection of the notion of service and selflessness is manifest all through President Trump’s term of office and as such elicited numerous responses from the military. One of the earliest examples of the president’s contempt for the concept of service was his attack on Senator John McCain. McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down during the Vietnam War and spent 5 years as a POW. Because his father was commander of the Pacific Theater, he had the opportunity for early release, but declined such special treatment. In July 2015 during his campaign for the Republican nomination, Trump had this to say about McCain: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured” (Martin & Rappeport, 2015). While Trump subsequently backtracked a bit on his comments, he never could understand McCain’s selflessness while he was a POW, nor did he ever give up the personal animosity he had for McCain. (Granillo, 2015; Sckreckinger, 2015).⁶ When McCain died, the president supposedly told his senior staff that “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.” When he saw flags lowered to half-staff, he responded by saying “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser” (“John McCain death,” 2018; Goldberg, 2020).

But the president’s contempt for the idea of service was not limited to personal dislike for Senator John McCain. Former President George H.W. Bush was shot down in World War II which also made him a “loser” in the eyes of President Trump (Goldberg, 2020). According to Jeffery Goldberg’s article The Atlantic Magazine, “losers’ and “suckers” were the president’s characterization of solders who died in combat and were buried in American cemeteries (Goldberg, 2020). While Trump denied the statements, other news sources confirmed Goldberg’s reporting and actually painted the president in an even a worse light. Trump supposedly stated that the government should not spend the time finding MIAs because they “deserved what they got” (Chait, 2020).

Everything in Trump’s world was transactional—what was in it for him. As one retired four-star general stated,

He [Trump] can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself. He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in service to the nation. (Goldberg, 2020)

Similarly, President Trump said of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, “that guy is smart. Why did he join the military?” At another time, while walking through Arlington Cemetery with retired Marine General John Kelly, who at that time was Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, he asked: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them” (Saletan, 2020). From his transactional perspective, Trump looked upon the military almost as mercenaries, and poorly paid ones at that. He even went so far as to consider the military assigned abroad as a potential profit center (Rucker & Leonnig, 2020, p. 178). He attacked gold star families while running for President (Haberman & Oppel, 2016) and supposedly told the wife of a fallen soldier that “he knew what he signed up for” (McCausland, 2020). This failure to appreciate the sacrifices that have been made by the military had a direct relationship to President Trump’s decline in support among the military and veteran’s groups. Retired Army Colonel Jeff McCausland spoke for many military families when he wrote, “My family and millions of other veterans around the country are not ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ We know personally, what it really means to sacrifice for your country. Which makes Trump’s criticism of military service so painful” (McCausland, 2020).

The second prong of professional responsibility is the commitment to the American constitutional system and the protection of institutional norms associated with that system. As noted earlier, the obligation to protect that system and norms is manifested in the oath the military take to protect that constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. While that obligation is inculcated into the military professional and is part of his or her ethos, President Trump seemed to view that system and norms as obstacles toward accomplishing whatever goal he sought.

The foundational pillar of the American constitutional system is the rule of law and the peaceful transition of power governed by the sanctity of the election process. The president flouted the norms associated with the rule of law constantly during his term in office, but at no time was it worse than during the 2020 election when he tried to overturn the election result, promote the attack on the Congress on January 6, 2021, and encouraged a coup to allow him take over the United States. The extent to which the president’s effort to undertake a coup and change the result of the election is increasingly becoming clear (Leonnig & Rucker, 2021; Vaillencourt, 2022). For the military this was the ultimate untested trial. The closest situation occurred at the end of the Nixon presidency, when the military were concerned that Nixon might try to use the military to stay in power. At that time Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger ordered that all commands to the military from the White House needed to be approved by him (Woodward & Costa, 2021, pp. xxv–xxvi).

This attack upon the constitutional structure put Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, in particular, and all of the senior military leadership in a very difficult spot. According to Leonnig and Rucker, Milley had told his staff “that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.” Milley understood that for the president to pull off a coup, he had to have the support of the military. Thus, Milley’s goal was to guarantee that the military’s was “not going to used.” But that did not stop him from worrying that the president might try to create “a Reichstag moment,” referring to the use of the Reichstag fire to rationalize the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Ultimately, General Milley was forced to issue his own “Schlessinger” order to confront the possible action from a rogue president (Leonnig & Rucker, 2021, pp. 366, 437, 487; Woodward & Costa, 2021, pp. xxv–xxviii).

The real problem for the senior military was what to do if confronted by a legal order that brought them into the political fray. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, illegal orders could be ignored. But what about an ambiguous order, while technically legal, it still violated the military’s oath to defend the constitution. The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed this scenario and decided that they would use their advisory power sequentially, starting with Milley, to try to slow down the President, but then resign, if need be, in a reverse “Saturday Night Massacre” (E. Cohen, 2020; Leonnig & Rucker, 2021, p. 367).

A second essential aspect of that constitutional system is the integral nature of the military as part of American society. This is where Huntington and Janowitz fundamentally differ. Huntington believed that the military should be isolated from the society-at-large, while Janowitz believed that under his constabulary model, the military’s values were inextricably intertwined with those of the society (Huntington, 1959; Janowitz, 1960). As part of their oath to the constitution, the military have implicitly agreed to protect the right of free speech and the ability to peacefully protest over policy. That right was challenged by the Trump administration during the marches for freedom that occurred all over the nation following George Floyd’s murder. As mentioned earlier, the military believed that the administration sought to use the Insurrection Act to stop such protests and further they seemed to believe that it used the National Guard to move protesters out of Lafayette Park so the president could march over to a church for a photo op. Subsequent examination of the events pertaining to Lafayette Park did not reveal a direct relationship between the photo op and the actions against the protesters; nevertheless, the military viewed those actions as related and consequentially as a violation of the constitutional system and their professional oath. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, found that the president’s actions in Lafayette Park and the weeks that preceded it “made it impossible to remain silent”:

Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of protest in this country . . . I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform . . . But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander-in-chief . . .

Admiral Mullen went on to state that he did not believe that invoking the Insurrection Act was appropriate, that America’s citizen should never be considered the enemy, and that American cities should never be considered “battle spaces” to be controlled (Mullen, 2020). Retired Admiral William McRaven said the president’s actions were “not morally right,” retired Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell said in a Sunday morning interview that Trump had “drifted away” from the Constitution, and retired Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey characterized the president’s remarks as “dangerous” (Cole, 2020; “George Floyd protests”, 2020; Moreno, 2020). Admiral James Stavridis was fearful that the military would be dragged into the political and constitutional maelstrom and that “if they do not deliver on vital core value, I fear for the soul of our military.” Among the other senior retired officers that criticized President Trump were Marine Corps General John Allen, Marine Corps General John Kelly, and Air Force General Mike Hayden (Allen, 2020; Stracqualursi, 2020). However, the most forceful criticism came from retired Marine General James Mattis:

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. (Mattis, 2020)

Another primary aspect of that constitutional system is freedom of the press and with the nature of truth. The former president’s view of any reporting that he did not like was that it was “Fake News.” It is estimated that he made more than 16,000 false statements during his term of office. His attacks on the press were in his own words designed “to discredit you all and demean you all, so that, when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you” (Remnick, 2020). He tried to silence critics by taking away their security clearances and looking for legal ways to muzzle the press by publicly demanding that the libel laws be changed (Gold, 2016; Restuccia, 2018). In response to these attacks, Admiral William McRaven wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that he would consider it an “honor” if his security clearance was taken away as well. He also gave an address defending the free press, in which he argued that president “undermines our institutions.” He went further and said that the president had “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and worst of all, divided us as a nation.” In response, President Trump disparaged McRaven as a “Hillery fan,” “who should have caught Bin Laden faster” (Mehta, 2018; Page, 2019; Trotta, 2019).

Conclusion

American civil–military relations have clearly been at a low point during the Trump administration. Never in American history had the breadth and depth of the military officer corps’ criticism for the president been this prevalent. At the outset of this article, we used Matthew Moten’s description of a good working civil–military relationship. The factors that Moten laid out included things such as candor, respect, and shared world view. Implicit in this list was a shared understanding of the scope of military professionalism. The deterioration of the relationship between the Trump presidency and the military establishment was based not only on an inability of the president to understand the nature of military professionalism but also represented a disjuncture in the alignment of those values. The real problem was not that the president misunderstood those professional values, but that be constantly showed total disdain and contempt for those values. Mark Bowden in a 2019 article in The Atlantic noted the following:

Military officers are sworn to serve whomever voters send to the White House. Cognizant of the special authority they hold, high-level officers epitomize respect for the chain of command, and are extremely reticent to criticize their civilian overseers. That those I spoke with made an exception in Trump’s case is telling, and much of what they told me is deeply disturbing. In 20 years of writing about the military, I have never heard officers in high position express such alarm about a president. (Bowden, 2019)

The underlying fundamental basis of American civil–military relations is respect: by civilians and the military for the role each other plays in the system, to include understanding the apolitical ethos of the military; respect for the constitutional structure; and respect for civilian control. These concerns along with the entire relationship of the American Constitutional system to military professionalism was encapsulated by Chairman Milley in a memo to the JCS and the combatant commands immediately after the ill-fated photo op at Lafayette Park. Milley started his memo by stating:

Every member of the U.S. military swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the values embedded within it. This document is founded on the essential principle that all men and woman are born free and equal, and should be treated with respect and dignity. It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. We in uniform—all branches, all components, and all ranks—remain committed to national values and principles embedded in the Constitution.

General Milley went on to write that “as members of the Joint Force . . . you embody the ideals of our Constitution.” At the end, in a handwritten note General Milley wrote, “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America—we will stay true to that oath and the American people” (Woodward & Costa, 2021, p. 98).

During the Trump presidency, that respect has substantially eroded. This erosion has occurred on two levels. The first level reflects questions regarding national security, to include fundamental policy differences over Syria, Afghanistan, and the treatment of our friends in NATO and elsewhere, and the dealing with our adversaries. In this regard, it was generally similar to the military’s criticism of Secretary Rumsfeld in 2006. But the scope of the fundamental differences between the president and the military was broader than traditional national security matters. Issues related to unit cohesion and organizational discipline that were reflected in the transgender ban and the question of pardoning of war criminals eroded respect even further. While technically they could be considered part of traditional military concerns, they cut across into areas that are clearly outside of the military’s parameters. Both the pardon issue and transgender ban raised concerns regarding moral leadership and American values.

However, it is the second level of erosion that is much more dangerous and reflects the true crisis in civil–military relations. This is an erosion of moral respect for the civilian leadership and the disregard by the commander-in-chief for the professional contours of the military. What you have is a president who feels personally possessive of the military, and who is willing to politicize it whenever he feels it is to his advantage. When active-duty officers raise questions about whether the president is committed to defend the Constitution and support an equal and pluralistic society, and when retired officers accuse the commander-in-chief of dishonesty and immorality, respect has evaporated. The civil–military relationship has become broken. From the military’s perspective, the attack upon their professional values was triggered by a commander-in-chief who failed to respect the military and the contours of professionalism.

As the president’s and the military’s values diverged, respect between the two institutions also diverged. In the final analysis, the military’s criticism of the president was actually a defense of the institutional nature of professionalism, the Constitution, and the broader values of American society.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments as well as the members of the panel and audience at the IUS conference for their comments when an earlier version of this paper was presented.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

John C. Binkley

Notes

Author Biography

John C. Binkley is an adjunct in the Department of History at Loyola University of Chicago and previously on the faculty of the Department of Strategy, U.S. Army Command & General Staff College and was adjunct professor of history and political science at University of Maryland, University College. He is a recently retired attorney from the Federal Government. His previous works have been published in Armed Forces & Society, Parameters, and Military Review.

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Civil–Military Relations During the Trump Administration: Rejection of Military Professionalism and the Deterioration of Civil–Military Relations

Abstract

Keywords

Expertise

Corporateness

Responsibility

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biography

References