“Can’t we just shoot them?” » Summer has barely begun on this first day of June 2020. The cherry trees have long since faded on the National Mall in Washington. But the social temperature in the United States rose sharply after the death of George Floyd six days earlier. The demonstrations are increasing. Including in the capital.
To President Donald Trump’s question, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responds sharply: “No, we can’t shoot [sur les manifestants], even in the legs. »And no, we can’t go “smash skulls”.
This is not the first time that the generals have had trouble with the chief executive. And despite the invectives (“You’re just a bunch of imbeciles and babies!”) and the taunts (“McMaster looks like a beer salesman!”), the government’s military and former military Americans persevere. Even after the president interfered in the military’s internal processes by seeking the absolution of Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL court-martialed for war crimes, and despite the dismissal of respected Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, escorted by a marine outside the White House.
Often portrayed as the “adult axis” aboard a morally devoid Trump government, the military is the final buttress of the constitutional structure facing the deleterious impulses of an ignorant president. It’s not that the military ethos and professionalism makes them immune…but it makes them more resilient.
However, there is a trap here.
Firstly because the soldiers themselves can get caught in it. This is the case in June 2020. Milley is in combat gear. He follows the president after protesters are violently expelled from Lafayette Square. He turns back as soon as he understands that it is a public relations operation. The image will leave traces: those of a military endorsement of the use of force and the perception of a politicization of military leadership – the Achilles heel of the army, which the Ronald Reagan Foundation links to the (relative) erosion of American confidence in the forces.
When a democracy drifts, the two keys are justice (who maintains the rule of law?) and defense (who does the army answer to?). However, the mechanisms that held firm from 2016 to 2020 are corroded. The Republican transition team knows this and has these two pillars in its sights. The “Agenda 47” released by the Republican candidate plans to “dismantle the globalist establishment” (sic) of the Departments of Justice and Defense. He plans to put the armed forces under his control by suppressing the military who would like to resist him or those who do not correspond to his standards, by cannibalizing the Pentagon, by appointing loyal officers – already designated within the framework of “Project 2025” – in leadership positions.
However, the resistance capacity of the armed forces, like that of other institutions, is considerably blunted. This is the observation made by Risa Brooks in Foreign Affairs. She describes how Republicans blocked the advancement and appointments of officers, including that of Charles Q. Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the grounds that the general supported “equality of chances” in the army. The American Accountability Foundation has also disclosed the names of several generals and admirals by questioning their competence on the basis of the fact that they have a woke program.
A “woke” army. Yes, you read correctly.
The right wing of the “Grand Old Party” attacks with increasing virulence the policies which, in the armed forces, reflect societal developments (inclusion, equity, environmental approach). It does so with arguments similar to those that prevailed to prevent the desegregation of the forces in the last century, and this while research shows that policies of openness and equity are a determining, if not crucial, asset in terms of recruitment, efficiency and national security.
What makes the forces specific in society is not conservatism, but civic engagement: the history of the forces is there to attest to this and the role of officer training institutions is decisive to the point of constituting a strategic advantage. substantial. This is all the more important as the development of “Project 2025” led to discussions on the possible use of the Insurrection Act to repress the (inevitable) post-election demonstrations. This law, which allows the president to deploy the army on American soil, has been used several times in history, notably to force desegregation in the South in 1957, during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, or in the aftermath of the hurricane disaster Katrina in 2004. Its usefulness is obvious here.
But it takes on another dimension when a candidate says – and repeats – that he will be “dictator for one day”. A joke, according to his supporters. A plan, according to its detractors, who insist that autocrats never hide their intentions before gaining power. But, Tom Nichols explains, the American democratic system is not designed “to deal with intentional criminal behavior on the part of the President of the United States.”
However, whatever virtues we attribute to it, the army is not a constitutional counter-power. It is subordinate to politics, as evidenced by the dismissal of General McArthur in the middle of the Korean War by an unpopular president (Truman). Even under Nixon, the safeguards were civilian: it was Kissinger who asked the general staff to postpone the execution of an order to plan a nuclear attack in April 1969, until Nixon sobered up. Even if General Milley suggested that he was protecting the Constitution and not the president, the presidency and not the individual, the military’s interference in the maintenance of democracy does not bode well. Because the force of inertia is one thing; refusal to obey an executive order is another.
Resting the balance of power on the shoulders of the armed forces would not only be dangerous for a democracy, but extraordinarily unfair to those who defend it. On the other hand, diversity and inclusion form solid bulwarks against fascistic excesses. And this is what Trumpist activism seeks to break.
With the short-term risk, as Nichols describes, of creating a schism within the forces. To disconnect the army from society by losing it in polarization. To lose talent. To fuel internal wars which will end up affecting entire sections of defense and exposing national security.