Under Trump, America's military will face a crisis: History has lessons

Under Trump, America's military will face a crisis: History has lessons
This won't be the first time politics has endangered our professional military. What can we learn from the past?

By Gregory D. Foster
Contributing Writer
Published January 12, 2025 9:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Come Jan 20, civil-military relations in this country will be thrust into turbulent and uncharted waters, driven by a mercurial, domineering commander in chief unlike any other in American history. His oft-voiced disdain for the military and those in uniform, at the same time that he treats the military as his personal property, portends a prolonged period of ethical upheaval for a military institution whose prevailing ethos has, with few exceptions, always been one of disciplined restraint in its dealings with civilian authorities.

The price of a military sworn to political neutrality, public silence and dutiful obedience is the military’s reciprocal expectation that its civilian overseers will honor the sanctity of the relationship by conducting themselves professionally and tempering their own demands for politicization. Looking ahead to the next four years, all bets are off in the face of a newly empowered commander in chief who uniformly ignores, circumvents and undermines established norms of protocol and accountability for his own benefit.

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A lesson past: The Billy Mitchell court-martial. Billy Mitchell, father of the U.S. Air Force, commanded all U.S. Army Air Corps forces in France toward the end of World War I. An argumentative, outspoken advocate for air power and the formation of a separate air service, he alienated nearly everyone who didn’t agree with his vision. Moreover, he openly criticized both Army and Navy leadership for incompetence. So contentious was he that President Calvin Coolidge ordered the War Department to court-martial Mitchell, which it did in 1925 under the catchall 96th Article of War, for statements considered prejudicial to good order and discipline, insubordinate, "contemptuous and disrespectful," and intended to discredit the War and Navy Departments. The court found him guilty on all counts and suspended him from rank, command and duty, with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances for five years. He subsequently resigned from the service.

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A lesson past: Coup plotters and Smedley Butler. A perennial icon of the U.S. Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, including being the recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor. Over more than three decades, he fought all over the world in battles and campaigns that fed his own growing cynicism: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism." In retirement, Butler produced a small book titled "War Is a Racket" expressing his distaste over having been a tool for big-business interests. Ironically, he was approached in retirement in 1933 by a group of wealthy right-wing businessmen who wanted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Butler as president. He refused and took his story to Congress, which then produced a lame report that found no one culpable and held no one accountable for what came to be known as the Business Plot or the Wall Street Putsch. ...................................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/12/under-trump-americas-military-will-face-a-crisis-history-has-lessons/