An army is a dangerous instrument to play

Yo1783, George Washington faced a possible army mutiny. Two years after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Congress still had not paid the American military and repudiated promised pensions. Alexander Hamilton, then in Congress, encouraged soldiers to rebel because he thought the pressure would lead Congress to approve the tax authority he sought. Washington reproached Hamilton in a letter: An army is “a dangerous instrument to play,” he wrote. In this, as in many other things, President-elect Donald Trump does not share Washington’s sensitivity.

Trump has repeatedly talked about his plans to use the US military internally: to monitor the edge, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, repressing protests. He would not be the first president to use the military for some internal purpose. Others have done so to break strikes, quell electoral or racial unrest, and enforce court orders or tax collection. But overreach in this area can do real damage to the relationship between the U.S. military and the public. In his first term, Trump showed that he was willing to cross that line.

The Constitution prohibits domestic use of the U.S. military unless the country is invaded or the president declares an insurrection is underway. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 further restricts the U.S. military’s involvement in law enforcement unless Congress legislates it or the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

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The Insurrection Act gives the president broad latitude to call up National Guard troops and deploy active-duty military members, including to enforce national law. Like the scholars Lindsay Cohn and Steve Vladeck He emphasized in 2020: “The authorities governing the internal uses of military force are notoriously unlimited.” And yet, presidents rarely invoke this law. It was last used more than 30 years ago, in 1992, when the governor of California requested federal reinforcements to restore order during the Los Angeles riots.

During his first term as president, Trump stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act, but he did set out to corrode the professionalism of the military by making its use acceptable as a partisan political force and attempting to create a military loyalty that was personal to him. As commander in chief, he used meetings with service members as campaign stops, encouraging them to agree with him that “we had a wonderful election, didn’t we?” And I saw those numbers, and you like me and I like you.” He he asked military audiences to pressure his members of Congress to support his policies, and he pardoned a military officer who had been convicted of serious crimes (including war crimes) in a court-martial and later included him in campaign events.

Trump also tried go further the senior leaders who discipline the bases by ridiculing “the generals” and accusing them of stupidity, cowardice and betrayal of the fighting forces. He has since said that, once back in office, he will fire all They “woke up” the generals and that he is considering creating an external board of preferred veterans to determine which active-duty military leaders to remove. He hinted that retired general Mark Milley in particular should be executed for treason. Academic Risa Brooks has written that these are efforts to create a military coalition committed to keeping him in office.

Is Trump disciplined enough to devise and enact a plan to use the military against constitutional authority? Believing that is not tempting. Unfortunately, he also underestimates the protean instincts that have made him successful and the authoritarian ambitions that animate him and many around him.

In the final months of Trump’s first term, the “adults in the room” left the building and the president appointed such reckless supporters as Christopher Miller, Kash Patel and Douglas MacGregor to senior defense positions. Some of Trump’s current Cabinet picks, such as Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, resemble these appointees in their attitudes and positions. If confirmed, they will likely inject partisan politics into the military, creating dissension within the ranks, ousting experienced commanders and alienating a large segment of the public.

Americans have not had to worry about military threats to democracy in the past. The armed forces have never aspired or organized to overthrow the government, and their professional ethos of subordination to civilian control is deeply rooted. But a determined president and his civil officials could change this relationship, even radically, through entirely legal means, such as through the use of the Insurrection Act.

The US military has an obligation to refuse illegal orders, but it cannot simply refuse to obey those it considers immoral or unethical if the law allows them. This is how it should be. An army that put its judgment before that of the civilian government, which was elected to make political decisions, would be operationally ineffective and a danger to democracy.

But making the army a political tool of civilian leaders is also a threat, not only to democracy, but also to the integrity of the army itself. A politicized military, drawn into confrontations in the name of a party or president rather than a country, will have difficulty recruiting and retaining personnel, and its legitimacy will be affected both at home and abroad.

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There is still an important line of defense against this possibility, and it is Congress. In reality, much of American defense policy is controlled by Congress under the law, and the Armed Services Committees of both houses can and should rein in excesses. The Senate also has the authority to confirm or deny Trump’s Cabinet picks, and should establish clear qualifications for running the Department of Defense, which is, after all, an $841 billion business with nearly 3 million employees. . Senators should confirm only appointees who are committed to respecting the legislature’s prerogative to set military policy (Congress should be the body that decides whether service women They may be assigned to combat duty, for example), and should not accept appointments that allow a politically selected group of veterans to decide which military leaders to fire.

Lawmakers and governors can also pressure the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. Objectively, there is no insurrection happening in our country, and manipulating executive privilege to declare one would be an abuse of power. It would also cause the public to view the army as a tool of internal repression. In an all-volunteer military, that perception will affect not only recruiting but also the types of people who choose to serve, and this will further erode public trust in the military, which has already been declining since Trump and Republican opinion leaders began to work. aggressor senior military officers.

Both the professional ethos that keeps the US military out of politics and the restrictions on its internal use exist for a reason. Americans probably won’t like the military or the democracy that will result from its destruction. Donald Trump may not understand what is at stake as George Washington did, but Congress has reason and freedom to act.