by Christopher Roach
When dealing with his enemies in the Deep State, President Trump can take one of two paths. One of them would be the path of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. This would certainly be easier in the low term and would gain approval from insiders and the media. Alternatively, he could try to spotless house and punish the worst and most disobedient criminals of his first term.
Which path Trump should take all depends on whether one believes that the last eight years have been mere partisan bickering or whether one believes that something monumental has happened: the obstruction of democratic self-government by the technocratic Deep State.
I believe this is my second reason explained before On length. In low, Trump was not allowed to govern or treated like other presidents during his first term. The problem began before Trump, when entrenched bureaucratic interests quietly helped control more cooperative and less independent presidents like Barack Obama and Joe Biden. However, the resistance to Trump reflected a mature, ideological and increasingly self-aware managerial class that believed it had the right to rule regardless of the election results.
Trump was a threat to business as usual. Therefore, a cabal of intelligence agencies cooperated to stop him from making changes foreign policy or exploring the immense military-industrial intricate. Contrary to the gloomy media statements, these insiders posed a real threat to democracy and self-government.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was one of the worst offenders. As documented in Bob Woodward’s book DangerMilley spent much of her time after the 2020 election mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and assuring her that the military would disobey certain orders from President Trump.
He met with a tiny group of officers who control our strategic nuclear forces and demanded that they commit to obtaining his approval before executing any launch orders, even though as head of the Joint Chiefs he is only an advisor and legally excluded from the chain of command.
Finally, and most controversially, he was him he tells his counterpart in China that it will notify them if an attack or other action comes from the United States. He defended it as normal “deconfliction” communications, but these secret conversations took place without authorization from either the Secretary of Defense or the president.
All of Milley’s actions came after him before him joined a group of retired officers to make it harder for Trump to apply the military to quell nationwide riots around June 2020. Milley sent implicit message soldiers, suggesting that they can ignore any deployment order, even though active-duty soldiers have been used in this capacity on numerous occasions, including during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
As he reminded the entire nation using the phrase “white rage“Milley is typical of a up-to-date class of liberal senior officers who engage in the culture wars, stick to the middle of partisan divides, and act as if they are beyond the control of the president they serve when they disagree with his policies.
Milley’s misbehavior was particularly egregious because of his role. The Joint Chiefs are to act as military advisers. They are statutorily excluded from the regular chain of command in order to maintain the institutional separation between advisory and command roles. This agreement is intended to escalate trust and honesty between the Joint Chiefs of Armed Forces and the president.
Secret conversations with the president’s partisan opponents, unauthorized behind-the-scenes communications with enemies, casual comparisons of the president to Adolf Hitler, and pseudo-idealistic suggestions that soldiers should disobey orders they find unpleasant obviously undermine that trust.
Some said all this might be acceptable in extremes and as part the right of service members to disobey illegal orders. But too much is being made of this law. This defense is intended to apply only to a very narrow set of clearly illegal orders, usually involving war crimes. The question is not whether the government properly approved the apply of troops to quell the riots. Typically, the military must obey orders without delay. This distinguishes it from slower and less vigorous civil institutions.
There are many controversial – but legal – orders. Probably the most controversial there would be an order to apply nuclear weapons. Protocols relating to the authority responsible for launching nuclear weapons give the president exclusive authority to order the launch – a necessary, though admittedly unsafe, power to allow for the rapid time frames associated with a possible first enemy attack.
Perhaps this power should be withdrawn – I believe it should, especially when these weapons are used without retaliation – but this has been established policy dating back to the Cold War. More importantly, it was firmly established when Milley took it upon himself to undermine Trump’s authority by secretly demanding an oath of loyalty from the officials in charge of our nuclear arsenal.
Milley did what he did because he was afraid of his shadow and told himself that Trump was losing it and would soon become a dictator. In his lofty and youthful formulations we were faced with: “The Reichstag Moment.”
The military is not part of the Constitution system of checks and balances. The military and the entire executive branch are subordinated to the president. He is their source of power and is the boss who came to power through an election in which the entire American people participated.
Once upon a time, liberals worried that a conservative, authoritarian military could thwart a liberal president and his policies. However, these fears turned out to be completely exaggerated. About ten years ago, the army was a consciously and non-partisan institution. Although the tendencies were more conservative under Clinton, there was no insubordination comparable to Milley’s performance.
It turns out that even though the country was searching for right-wing military extremists, the military had little to defend against leftist partisans. Whether it qualifies as high treason or basic insubordination, similarly destructive behavior could be repeated in Trump’s second term.
Immediately after the elections, the left seems to realize this it is unwise to openly and violently resistas was the case with most members of the Trump administration. However, I believe that at the moment they are just regrouping and working on a strategy that they think will work.
The military, which retains prestige because it continues to be seen as a nonpartisan repository of patriotic righteousness, will likely feature prominently in these plans, as it did during Trump’s first term. As we know, the military and Milley lost all qualms about using the military in the country when they did they flooded the zone with armed National Guardsmen create a green zone for Biden’s 2021 inauguration.
This unhealthy politics AND leftist partisans among senior army leadership must be stopped. The military should return to its role as a neutral instrument of national power. However, this means that it must be controlled primarily by the elected president in the manner he or she determines. To restore healthier civil-military relations, a dramatic and symbolic reset is necessary, reminding the military and the rest of the country that Trump has full executive powers as president.
To accomplish this, Mark Milley should be recalled, court-martialed, punished, and publicly disgraced to prevent a resurgence of the destructive principle of left-wing military guerrilla warfare during Trump’s second term.
– – –
Christopher Roach is an adjunct professor at the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, Washington Legal Foundation, Marine Corps Gazette and Orlando Sentinel.
