The Generals
There is supposedly a tradition in the US that the military is subservient to civilian elected government. This is not anchored in the Constitution, but is generally assumed to be a necessary condition for liberal (in the sense of The Enlightenment, not in the sense of current American politics) democratic governance.
There is ample historic evidence that direct military involvement in governance virtually always leads no non-liberal, dictatorial governments.
In the US this separation between the military and civilian governments is not absolute. We have had a number of (former) military leaders elected President and we have had many former military officers serve effectively in civilian governments. Participation by active military in “partisan” political activity is prohibited by statutes (Ex. Title 10 U.S. Code § 113 and DoD Directives (DoD Directive 1344.10).
Of all recent Presidents, Donald Trump has aggressively gone against this tradition, and possibly against statutes, by the number of former and active-duty military officers (primarily Generals) in his administration. Aside from the somewhat worrisome personality traits which cause Donald Trump to turn to military advisors, at the very least this is worrisome in both domestic and international policy-making in that it gives excessive voice to the somewhat one-sided preferences for military-style solutions; a more bleak interpretation is that it sets the stage for a militarization of government in general.
There is another characteristic of the American psyche, that of excessive patriotic fervor whenever talking about military actions and military personnel, which could further encourage this militarization of formerly civilian governance. I hale from a country (Germany) where such almost blind trust in, and adulation of the military, first in the Prussian tradition and then the NAZI regime, led to complete collapse of liberal, democratic, civilian control of government.
Germany learned the hard way to be skeptical, if not downright distrustful, of the military in general, but especially its involvement in government. America need not go through quite such a radical shift in its attitudes towards military leaders, but I believe it would do well to be a little bit more skeptical before, almost by rote, accepting them as virtually infallible “heroes” by definition.
Our recent history shows a number of worrisome examples of high-level military officers committing near-treasonous acts - David Petraeus divulging classified information to his mistress, Michael Flynn having unauthorized contacts with Russian and Turkish officials, possibly working against stated US policies and interests.
We should also learn to be more skeptical and critical of the advice military leaders give to our civilian government when it comes to deciding between military and non-military (diplomatic, economic) policy solutions to international issues.
The war in Afghanistan, by now the longest war in American history, was felt to be an appropriate response to the 9/11 attack. Its stated objective at the outset was “to get Osama bin Laden”, and eliminate Afghanistan as a sanctuary for non-state-sponsored aggression against the US. Ultimately this was a decision by our civilian government, in the person of President Bush, but it certainly involved the faulty, if not disastrously wrong assessment by military leadership on their ability to be successful in Afghanistan.
Iraq is another example where the military leadership provided disastrously faulty assessments of its capabilities of fighting a “limited war”. One can argue that the decision was made by an unusually dumb President, influenced by an insane group of “neo-cons”, who resorted to fabricated “evidence” of WMDs to make their case, and that the military only did its constitutional duty to carry out the Presidents directives. However, as both the Afghan and Iraq wars ground on, the military repeatedly provided overly optimistic, and in many cases downright wrong assessments, and is continuing to do so.
The Vietnam War, too, provides ample evidence where the military leadership provided disastrously wrong assessments, and even purposely wrong assessments for political reasons. General H.R. McMaster, currently Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, is credited with writing a definitive PhD dissertation, and a book based on this (“Dereliction of Duty”), which, as the title implies, accuses the Generals of the Vietnam War era of dereliction of duty for not providing accurate and honest assessments and advice on the status and prospects of the Vietnam War.
Unfortunately, even an almost universally praised General like H.R. McMaster, once faced with the real-world need to follow his own professional, ethical and moral conscience, failed disastrously. In his public comments regarding the divulging of highly secret information to the Russians in the Oval Office (with only Russian media and no US media present), McMaster’s comments were, at the very least deceptive, if not outright lies.
Bottom line is that the “militarization” of our supposedly civilian government is dangerous to liberal, democratic government on its face. In the US this trend is especially worrisome because of the unquestioning, hyper-patriotic adulation of the military leaders, which gives them additional credibility within government, which is often deserved, but in many cases is definitely not warranted.
