Analysis: Trump transition moves raise fears of politicized military

Donald Trump walks outside in front of three men, including one in uniform.

By Laura KingStaff Writer

Nov. 14, 2024 9:19 AM PT

WASHINGTON — Critics of President-elect Donald Trump have long contended that he aspires to use the U.S. military — a nonpartisan force, by rule and tradition — as an instrument of the MAGA agenda that propelled his latest election victory.

Now, in the eyes of some, those concerns are being supercharged.

The relationship of the executive branch and the military has always been a balancing act. The American president is, after all, the commander in chief of the world’s most formidable fighting machine, and the figure ultimately responsible for the nation’s safety and security.

But every senior military officer also takes an oath to defend the Constitution, and pledges to refuse illegal, unconstitutional or criminal directives. During his campaign, Trump flirted with those boundaries, repeatedly musing about using the military to go after domestic political opponents, or to aid in mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

Despite a pledge to be a president who presides over peace rather than war, Trump takes office against a backdrop of global upheaval: wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the increasing closeness of Russia and North Korea, an ascendant China.

Trump rattled wide swaths of the U.S. defense establishment this week with a draft executive order, whose existence was reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, to create a special panel — dubbed a “warrior board” — that would have the power to force out high-ranking generals and admirals.

“I think people should be concerned, in the military and out of it, about the politicization of the military, and the attempt to use it to do the president’s personal will,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director of the Washington-based think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for restraint in U.S. foreign policy.

He called the proposed commission a “bad idea.”

The creation of such a panel, if it came to fruition, would facilitate the purging of military leaders who were unwilling to carry out presidential orders — or those relayed by a loyal subordinate. For some, that brand of fealty is in line with Trump’s choice for his secretary of Defense: conservative Fox News personality and military combat veteran Pete Hegseth.

The pick, unveiled Tuesday, drew immediate criticism from some influential veterans groups and current and former lawmakers, who suggested that Hegseth’s ideological leanings, rather than any demonstrated expertise, lay behind him being tapped to run the vast U.S. defense complex. Hegseth, in books and on TV and podcasts, has railed against what he calls the “woke” military.

“Pete Hegseth is wholly unqualified to head the Department of Defense and hold the lives of our troops in his hands — period,” Paul Eaton, a former Army officer and chairman of VoteVets, a nonprofit group that supports veterans and progressive causes, said in a statement.

“I don’t think Hegseth is a serious person or a serious pick,” Rep. Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat and an Army veteran, told MSNBC.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has committed to enacting Trump’s agenda, called Hegseth “a tireless advocate for America’s soldiers and veterans,” saying the weekend “Fox & Friends” co-host would bring “a fresh perspective” to the Pentagon.

“Pete is dedicated to ensuring that our military is focused on lethality and readiness, not woke ideology,” Johnson said in a statement. “He served our country faithfully in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq and is a believer in peace through strength and the America First agenda.”

Hegseth’s loyalty is significant, because Trump has previously demonstrated willingness to extend his decision-making reach into matters traditionally left to Pentagon leaders. In his first White House tenure, he went through five Defense secretaries in four years.

At least two of those relationships with civilian Pentagon chiefs — retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis and Army combat veteran Mark Esper — resulted in open acrimony, despite a long-standing reluctance on the part of current and retired military officers to publicly criticize the commander in chief.

Such reticence might be exacerbated by the existence of the so-called warrior board. According to the Journal, the panel would consist of ranking retired officers who were empowered to recommend removal of former peers deemed to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities.”

What exactly those leadership qualities might entail was left vague. But the report quickly raised fears in the context of harsh criticism by Trump and those in his inner circle of “woke generals” — a catchall phrase for those who are derided for allegedly promoting diversity and inclusion at the expense of military readiness.

The “warrior board” proposal takes on broader significance in light of growing fears that Trump will move swiftly to reshape institutions such as the armed forces.

One reason the subject is so sensitive is that accounts of some of Trump’s unorthodox first-term dealings with serving and retired military officials are fresh in the minds of many, aired in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

The former president’s longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, made waves with a series of interviews in which he disclosed that Trump spoke wistfully of the loyalty of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals, and said he believed that Trump’s views aligned with “the general definition of fascist.”

Elements of that assessment were echoed by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now-retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who told Washington Post journalist and author Bob Woodward that he considered Trump “fascist to the core.”

In a retirement speech in September 2023, Milley — who worries about being recalled to active duty and court-martialed under a new Trump administration, according to Woodward’s latest book, “War” — offered an indirect commentary widely presumed to refer to the former president: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator, or wannabe dictator.”

Trump has fired back at such comments, calling Kelly a “total degenerate” in a post last month on his Truth Social platform.

“John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General, whose advice in the White House I no longer sought, and told him to MOVE ON!”

During Trump’s first run for the White House, some of his commentary on military-related matters would have stopped other political careers in their tracks: his derisive reference to war hero John McCain (“I like people who didn’t get captured”) and his public spat with a Gold Star family.

In the just-ended campaign, Trump also hammered the outgoing administration — first President Biden, and then Vice President Kamala Harris when she took up the fight after Biden dropped out — over the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban takeover, insisting that those who oversaw the pullout should have been fired.

It was Trump, however, who had set the U.S. departure from Afghanistan in motion, setting a timetable that left his successor in office with a narrow range of options.

To scholars of authoritarianism, asserting a high degree of personal control over the military is typical of strongmen in the mold of Syria’s Bashar Assad or Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prominent experts such as historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat say that under classic authoritarianism, the military is viewed as a tool for pursuing the leader’s own aims, rather than upholding the state’s interests and safeguarding its people.

In a 2021 essay, she cited Trump’s “intensive efforts to chip away at the apolitical nature of the American military” as a means of using the armed forces to help him try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

But Trump’s transition moves on defense are seen by many observers as likely to be constrained by factors including the ethics adhered to by the military’s officer class, combined with the sheer weight of Pentagon bureaucracy.

“The kind of outcome where you have a military that is used as the tool of a despot — I don’t think we’re particularly close to that,” said Friedman, of Defense Priorities. “The military will remain professional and apolitical.”

Nonetheless, Trump made clear his determination to leave his mark on the U.S. armed forces, consisting of about 1.3 million active-duty troops and an additional 1.4 million serving in the National Guard.

In announcing his choice of the “courageous and patriotic” Hegseth for the top Defense job, Trump again touted his self-described policy of “peace through strength” — deterrence underpinned by a willingness to use military force when necessary.

“America’s enemies are on notice,” he declared.