What Does the Military Become If Trump Wins?

Mark Milley and the other flag officers were ready to deal with illegal orders. Next time, the Trump loyalists will be in charge.

JONATHAN V. LAST
22 DE SET. DE 2023

1. More Milley

I’m still digesting Jeff Goldberg’s piece about Mark Milley. Yesterday I was focused on how bad things were in 2020.

Today I’m wondering what will happen to the military if Trump wins in 2024.

Throughout the Goldberg piece it’s clear that the military men closest to Trump viewed him as a clear and present danger to the Constitution. They acted accordingly. For instance, Jim Mattis and John Kelly made a pact to never be out of the country at the same time, for fear that Trump would attempt something catastrophic. They believed that one of them needed to be in country at all times to thwart him if it came to that.

Please consider this for a moment. These are not the ravings of #Resistance Libs on Twitter. We’re talking about the considered judgment of career military men—conservatives—appointed by Trump, who saw him up close over a prolonged period of time.

And understand that this situation is completely novel in American history. Not only have we never been to a place like this, but before 2016, no one in America had even considered that such a place might exist.

I could give you two dozen anecdotes from the Milley piece illustrating Trump’s unfitness for command. Here is one:

In late 2018, Milley was called to meet the president. Before the meeting, he visited Kelly in his West Wing office, where he was told that Trump might ask him to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, if given a choice, Kelly said, he should avoid the role. “If he asks you to go to Europe, you should go. It’s crazy here,” Kelly said. . . . Each day, ex–administration officials told me, aides such as Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro—along with Trump himself—would float absurd, antidemocratic ideas. Dunford had become an expert at making himself scarce in the White House, seeking to avoid these aides and others.

Kelly escorted Milley to the Oval Office. Milley saluted Trump and sat across from the president, who was seated at the Resolute Desk.

“You’re here because I’m interviewing you for the job of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Trump said. “What do you think of that?”

Milley responded: “I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.” At which point, Trump turned to Kelly and said, “What’s that other job Mattis wants him to do? Something in Europe?”

Kelly answered, “That’s SACEUR, the supreme allied commander in Europe.”

Trump asked, “What does that guy do?”

“That’s the person who commands U.S. forces in Europe,” Kelly said.

“Which is the better job?” Trump asked.

Kelly answered that the chairmanship is the better job. Trump offered Milley the role.

It bears repeating: Just as in the January 6 Committee hearings, none of this testimony is coming from Democrats or Trump’s political opponents. It comes from the people he chose to work for him.

One of the recurring themes in the Goldberg piece is the question of Trump’s control of America’s nuclear arsenal.

Many of the people who worked for Trump were concerned about this and there was a good deal of organizing behind the scenes about it. The euphemism they adopted is that while only the president can decide to launch nuclear weapons, the execution of this decision requires many hands. The clear implication being that there were multiple actors in the chain of command who would refuse illegal orders coming from the commander-in-chief.

But there are two nuclear questions. There’s the literal one, concerning the use of nuclear weapons themselves. And there’s the figurative one: The domestic use of the military.

This is the one that concerns me most in a second Trump administration.

It is true that a president can only give illegal orders; he can’t execute them by himself. But Trump has learned a great deal from his first term and his most important lesson was that he needs to surround himself with people who are completely loyal—not to the Constitution, but to him, personally.

There won’t be any Mark Milley’s in a second Trump administration; instead there will be a pliant secretary of Defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Which means that the job of refusing illegal orders will fall to the next line of senior officers, whose positions will not have as much stature and attendant protections Milley did.

The warning lights are still flashing red.

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/what-does-the-military-become-if