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OPINION |
WAR ROOM
The Guardrails Are Off the U.S. Military
It’s no longer guaranteed that the Pentagon will
resist unlawful orders from the president. And the rot is deeper than you think.
By JON
BATEMAN
06/06/2020
07:00 AM EDT
Jon Bateman
is a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously
was special assistant to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph
Dunford.
After President
Donald Trump’s alarming threat to send active-duty troops into U.S. cities,
many Americans were reassured by the public pushback from Secretary of Defense
Mark Esper and former military leaders. Their statements seemed to indicate
that strong checks still exist on the president’s use of the military.
The truth,
however, is more unsettling. The U.S. military’s constitutional guardrails and
apolitical tradition have been slowly eroding in recent years. It simply no
longer can be assumed that the Pentagon will resist illegal orders from the
president or requests from other agencies working under him. As a result, our
system of government itself might be imperiled—and perhaps sooner than we
think.
I witnessed
this erosion up close as a special assistant to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford from 2018-19. When Trump took office, he found the
Defense Department’s civilian leadership in a weakened state, having ceded
influence to uniformed personnel. Trump accelerated the trend. He seems to have
correctly deduced that generals and admirals are often more obedient to the
president and less politically savvy than civilian appointees. In fact, he
simply declined to fill up to a third of senior civilian roles at the Pentagon,
preferring disempowered “acting” officials. He also has gradually replaced more
independent-minded officials like former Secretary Jim Mattis.
By
weakening the defense leadership cadre, Trump has had a freer hand to erode
normative boundaries and push legal limits. He has used service members and
hallowed grounds as partisan props, diverted scarce military resources toward
political ends, corrupted military justice and flouted constraints imposed by
Congress. Each violation helped to pave the way for the next.
Many
uniformed and civilian leaders have done their best under impossible
circumstances. They have sought to obey a duly elected commander in chief,
while at the same time upholding the law and preserving institutional values.
But this balancing act was doomed to fail sooner or later as Trump’s demands
grew beyond what Mattis and others could bear. In turn, a rot grew within the
Pentagon’s E-Ring, as a new cohort of leaders succumbed to unrelenting
presidential pressure.
The extent
of the rot was exposed in April by Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly. In an
apparent effort to please the president, Modly rashly fired the commander of
the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a beloved officer whose vocal requests for help
during a Covid-19 outbreak on board had embarrassed the administration. Modly
was so zealous in doing what he believed Trump would want that he dispensed
with normal protocol and misled the public—creating his own scandals and
ultimately resigning in disgrace. Farcical as it was, the episode revealed a
serious problem: Some of the Pentagon’s most senior leaders had lost their way
inside Trump’s political whirlwind.
On Monday,
the farce was repeated as tragedy. The D.C. National Guard, acting under
federal authority, participated in an obviously unconstitutional suppression of
the First Amendment rights of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park, outside
the White House. After the units had cleared the park, Esper joined Trump for
the now infamous photo-op outside St. John’s Church. Two days later, the
Defense secretary partially distanced himself from Trump’s most egregious
attempt to militarize the protest response—his threat to invoke the
Insurrection Act and send in active-duty troops to restore order in America’s
cities.
Esper’s
remarks were a much-needed public service. But, as a former Pentagon
speechwriter, I paid close attention to his words. Esper has not actually
condemned the clearing of the park. Nor has he apologized for participating in
the photo-op. Instead, he disclaimed any responsibility for the events—first by
pleading ignorance, then by finger-pointing. He “was not aware of [civilian]
law enforcement’s plans for the park,” he said, “nor should I expect to be. But
they had taken what actions I assume they felt was necessary.” In other words:
Military leaders were simply fulfilling requests given to them by other
agencies.
The
argument was all too familiar. At the Pentagon, I helped craft analogous
talking points in 2018, when Trump ordered thousands of troops to help secure
the border. The unusual deployment of active-duty forces came weeks before a
midterm election in which Trump aggressively hyped the threat from migrant
caravans; it seemed like an expensive political stunt. The Pentagon downplayed
its responsibility for the mission, pointing instead to civilian agencies that
had requested the support and performed legal reviews of the mission.
The
clearing of Lafayette Park showed the moral and constitutional limits of this
argument. The military is far more powerful than civilian law enforcement, and
far less trained to operate inside the homeland. There can be no offloading of
responsibility when U.S. military might is used against American citizens,
given the inherent dangers. And Pentagon leaders must be able to assure
Americans that troops will not support any operation—civilian-led or
otherwise—that violates U.S. constitutional rights.
Today there is no such guarantee. It is not difficult
to imagine mass protests and civil unrest persisting into November. If federal
troops remain activated in the lead-up to the 2020 election, what assurances do
we have that Trump will not somehow maneuver them into influencing the outcome?
It is also conceivable that Trump narrowly loses the election but labels it as
“rigged.” If such claims lead to new bouts of unrest—or if the president
resists a peaceful transition of power—what will the military do?
These
questions, already whispered about, must now be openly asked. For those who
call them far-fetched, I would cite John Allen, a retired four-star general,
who wrote this week that the Lafayette Park fiasco “may well signal the
beginning of the end of the American experiment.” Trump’s current and former
associates have themselves raised questions about whether the 2020 election
will occur on schedule or result in a peaceful handover if Trump loses.
In 1974,
Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger became worried that President Richard
Nixon, on the eve of impeachment, could use the military to subvert constitutional
processes. Schlesinger did not dither or deflect; he made it known that no such
thing would happen on his watch. In 2020, Americans cannot simply assume the
Pentagon will serve the same role. To demand accountability and protect
democracy, they will need to raise their own voices.
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DEFENSE
Esper orders all remaining active-duty troops
home from D.C. area
The active-duty troops are heading out and will be
gone by Saturday, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said.
By LARA
SELIGMAN
06/05/2020
04:29 PM EDT
Defense
Secretary Mark Esper on Friday ordered home the remainder of the 1,600
active-duty troops brought to the national capital region to respond to
protests, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters at the Pentagon.
The news
comes after Esper on Thursday sent home a portion of those troops, several
hundred soldiers from the Army’s 82nd airborne division.
The
decision was made to draw down forces after days of peaceful protests and
because the District of Columbia now has a sufficient number of National
Guardsmen to aid local law enforcement in keeping violence in check, McCarthy
said. Another 3,900 National Guard members from other states are now arriving
in D.C., in addition to the 1,200 D.C. National Guardsmen already supporting
local forces.
McCarthy
also said he ordered D.C. Guardsmen to not carry weapons on Monday when it
became clear there were enough federal law enforcement defending the city.
McCarthy
detailed the chain of events that took place this week, noting that the
decision on Monday to put active-duty troops on alert in the D.C. area was made
after an “incredibly challenging night” for local law enforcement. Protesters
defaced the Lincoln Memorial and hit five soldiers in the head with a brick, he
said.
“Inside of
Lafayette Square we definitely lost control, to the point where they were right
up on the north fence,” he said. “It was a very challenging evening, and we
knew we had to put more security in there so we could help enable peaceful
demonstrations.”
McCarthy,
who as Army secretary commands the D.C. National Guard, has been in constant
communication with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser through her chief of police, exchanging
messages “five to six times a day,” he said.
By
Wednesday, additional Guardsmen from other states had arrived to support D.C.
Guardsmen and local law enforcement. At that point, the Pentagon decided that
there was enough additional support to send the active-duty troops home,
McCarthy explained.
“The
determination was ‘let’s get them back’ because it created a tremendous amount
of tension by having the 82nd outside the city,” he said.
But then
officials got intelligence from the metropolitan police that there would be
another large demonstration on Saturday, with an estimated 100,000 to 200,000
people showing up, McCarthy said, explaining Esper’s Wednesday decision on
Wednesday to reverse himself and tell the troops to stay put.
“We said
‘oh hold our horses,’ and took a hard look at that,” he said.
Now, the
active-duty troops are heading out and will be gone by Saturday, McCarthy said.
The D.C.
National Guard announced Wednesday it is conducting an investigation into the
June 1 incident in which a helicopter flew low over protesters, blowing dust
and knocking down tree branches. McCarthy said the crew of the helicopter in
question has been grounded, and he expects to get a report on the interim
results of the investigation on Friday.
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