The Creeping Politicization of the U.S. Military

When Senator Tommy Tuberville finally lifted his blanket hold on promotions for 440 senior military officers last December, many in the Pentagon breathed a sigh of relief. The Alabama Republican had blocked the promotions to protest a Biden administration policy granting paid leave and travel reimbursement for abortion services to military personnel based in states where the procedure is illegal. For nearly ten months, officers awaiting promotion were prevented from taking on new assignments, creating bottlenecks in the chain of command and disrupting the lives of service members and their families. With the hold lifted, many may have hoped that things could finally get back to normal.

In fact, politicization of the military may soon get even worse, especially if some in the right wing of the Republican Party have their way. In the past, politicians often used service members as political props and military policies as wedge issues to appeal to voters, with the military as bystander in its own politicization. In the next phase, politicians may seek to impose ideological litmus tests in promotions and appointments of senior officers. If successful, such tactics would transform the military from the nonpartisan force it is today to an ally of one faction of the GOP.

The result would be profound damage to national security. Today, military leaders strive to be impartial in offering advice to the president, lawmakers, and other civilian officials about the use of force. In the future, they may instead tailor their recommendations to the interests of their preferred political party. Apart from undermining the rigor of the advisory process, such internal politicization would erode the overall unity of the military as partisan tensions spread through the ranks. And the American people’s trust in the military would decline as they came to see it as just another politicized institution, as many already see the Supreme Court.

None of this is inevitable, however, if enough politicians in both parties work to stop the military’s politicization. Republicans especially must push back on their colleagues’ efforts to drag the military into policy disputes; they should warn their party of the dangers of turning the military into a partisan force. Military officers, meanwhile, should bolster their profession’s ethic of nonpartisanship while resisting being drawn into the partisan fray themselves.

THE NEXT PHASE OF POLITICIZATION

Since the 1990s, politicians have sought to capitalize on the military’s popularity—for example, by using soldiers as a backdrop for their foreign policy speeches. Politicians have occasionally wielded statements by military leaders as a cudgel against the opposing party or relied on popular military leaders to sell their wartime policies to the public.

In recent years, this brand of politicization has taken an ugly turn. While officer promotions have occasionally been delayed, Tuberville’s sweeping effort to hold the military hostage in protest of the Biden administration’s policies is unprecedented. In the past, politicians praised the military for partisan advantage. Now, many Republicans criticize it for the same reason; one way they do so is by disparaging Pentagon policies that help bring the demographics of the military closer to those of society. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Representative Chip Roy of Texas have even claimed that the military is weak because its senior leaders are “woke.”

The next variant of politicization could be even worse. Rather than using the military merely to curry favor with voters, politicians may manipulate appointments and promotions to install a military leadership willing to harness its resources and personnel to advance the agenda of the right wing of the Republican party, regardless of what that means for the well-being of the organization, let alone the country’s security.

Such an outcome would be a dramatic departure from current conventions. Today, military leaders strive to be nonpartisan in their interactions with political appointees and elected officials, as well as with the public. Norms and rules, including Defense Department regulations, limit service members’ partisan activity—barring them from campaigning for politicians or publicly endorsing them during elections, for example. Officers subject to partisan litmus tests might be inclined to bend those rules. Even if they do not explicitly campaign on behalf of their party, they might make public statements supporting its views on, say, Pentagon personnel policy, the use of the military for immigration enforcement, or the country’s relations with allies—or advocate that party’s preferred approach when giving Congressional testimony.

Republicans must push back on their colleagues’ efforts to drag the military into policy disputes.

Fortunately, this kind of transformation would be hard to accomplish, given senior officers’ current commitment to nonpartisanship. But the politicization of appointments and promotions is a powerful tool for breaking down that tradition. Making advancement in the institution contingent on one’s ideological leanings would send a strong signal to officers that they should act like partisan allies of the president, or at least keep quiet when others do.

The right wing is already scrutinizing the views of military officers, regardless of the skill and experience they bring to their jobs. The American Accountability Foundation, a far-right nonprofit organization, has circulated the names of several generals and admirals singled out for their allegedly “woke” agendas and questioned their qualifications on those grounds alone. Last August, Tuberville reposted a message from the American Accountability Foundation describing one army nominee for promotion to brigadier general as an “Ivy League Social Justice Warrior.” Even after Tuberville allowed an up-or-down vote on military promotions in December, another Republican senator, Eric Schmitt, stalled the promotion of an air force colonel who had written an op-ed about the pernicious effects of racism in the ranks.

Perhaps the most sobering example of the effort to inject partisan politics into military appointments is the right’s treatment of Charles Q. Brown, Jr., an air force general who now serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Prior to becoming chairman, Brown was confirmed as air force chief of staff in 2020 in a Senate vote of 98-0. Then, last July, leaders of 30 political groups on the right signed an open letter opposing Brown’s appointment as chairman. Despite his accomplished career as fighter pilot, 11 Republican senators voted against him when he was confirmed as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year. The number of “no” votes for the chairmanship was unprecedented, as were the stated reasons for them. Tuberville attributed his “no” vote to the general’s support for “equal opportunity” in the military. Senator Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, asserted that the general, who is Black, had favored “woke policy initiatives” over effectiveness in the air force.

Should Donald Trump win the presidency in November, these dynamics are sure to intensify. The former president has said that he will make Pentagon leaders—both civilian and military—fully deferential to him. Trump’s actions in his final months in office foreshadow how that process could unfold. After he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Trump appointed close political allies with limited experience and qualifications to top Pentagon jobs. He also fired Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, in part because Esper had pushed back on some of Trump’s controversial proposals, including using active-duty troops to quell protests over the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis in the spring of 2020.

In his final days in office, Esper was so worried that Trump would veto appointments of two women to senior leadership roles in the military solely because of their gender that he delayed putting their names forward until Biden took office. Esper later warned that if his replacement was “a real yes man … then God help us.” If elected, Trump will likely install close political allies on the Pentagon’s civilian side, especially in the offices of the secretary of defense and the secretaries of the army, navy, and air force.

Making advancement in the military contingent on one’s ideological leanings would erode the institution’s ethic of nonpartisanship.

To be sure, political appointees are supposed to translate administration priorities into Pentagon policies. But they are also tasked by the American people to protect the country’s national security, not just the parochial interests of the president. The appointment of civilian leaders who do the latter would be another departure from convention, paving the way for the politicization of the uniformed side as well.

If elected, Trump may seek to appoint a pliable general to replace Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is customary for secretaries of defense to compile a list of potential candidates from which a president chooses a chairman. A healthy rapport between the president and a candidate for chairman is usually an important criterion for selection. The candidate’s party affiliation is not. That norm might be one of the first to go.

The secretary of defense or other Pentagon officials might then move to ensure the political fealty of other senior officers. While a mass firing of officers is unlikely, there are other ways in which a new administration could signal that partisan alignment is a priority. A handful of military leaders viewed as ideologically suspect or insufficiently compliant could be moved to dead-end jobs, pressured to retire early, or asked to resign on the grounds that the president has lost confidence in them. If any senior officers failed to leave, the president could seek to fire them, paving the way for more ideologically aligned officers to assume key positions. Others might preemptively retire early—a dynamic that could spread throughout the officer corps and eventually even to the rank and file.

The Senate could push back on efforts to engineer promotions on the basis of political loyalty. But if a partisan tug of war over officer promotions were to ensue, restraint on both sides could erode even further, since it would become risky to respect the military’s nonpartisan ethic when the other party did not. In the future, both political parties might work to ensure that the military—especially its senior leadership—shares their partisan views.

PUSHING BACK

The United States has much to lose if the military abandons its nonpartisanship. Its national security would suffer because of how politicization would warp military advice. Senior military leaders, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, regularly advise civilian officials about the use of force, Pentagon policy, and other national security concerns. The president depends on their impartial views to make tough informed decisions. But if a president chose political allies for top roles in the military’s senior leadership, he would no longer receive neutral military advice. The consequences would be grave, be the president a Republican or Democrat. If aligned with the GOP, senior officers might feel pressured to conform their advice to a Republican president’s preferred options—or might fail to offer counterarguments or to outline risks. Alternatively, a Democratic president might place his or her own partisan officers in top positions, with similarly devastating effects on the quality of advice offered. This could be especially dangerous in any future debate about major policy shifts, such as pulling out of NATO or committing forces to a new war.

Politicization of the military could also have downstream effects on its unity. If service members felt free to express partisan views on the job, tensions over political differences could become endemic in the ranks. This could undermine trust among service members, which is the linchpin of the U.S. military’s effectiveness. Citizens will also lose confidence in the military if they believe that its officers prioritize the interests of a political party over those of the country. Indeed, the military’s reputation has already suffered in recent years, partly because of its creeping politicization.

Congress should consider adopting new legislation to insulate the military from efforts to turn it into a partisan force.

Reversing this trend will be difficult, but the stakes are too high not to try. Members of both political parties must resist the right’s efforts to politicize appointments and promotions. It is heartening that some Republicans, alarmed by the damage wrought by Tuberville’s hold on promotions, pressured the senator to end it. Still, the right’s misplaced criticism of the military has often gone unanswered by the rest of the Republican Party. If members of Congress have concerns about personnel policy in the Pentagon, there are ways to address it other than publicly lambasting senior military leaders—such as by exercising their regular oversight responsibilities through committees tasked with monitoring the armed forces. Meanwhile, Democrats should temper their rhetoric when responding to the right’s tactics to avoid drawing the military deeper into partisan fights and worsening its politicization in the process.

Beyond pushing the Pentagon to better enforce existing regulations, members of Congress from both sides should consider adopting new legislation to insulate the military from efforts to turn it into a partisan force. This kind of restraint and bipartisanship may seem idealistic, given today’s fractious politics, but while there are officials in Congress willing to violate norms for their own advantage, there are also many in both parties who want to do the right thing.

The military, too, needs to ensure its house is in order. Senior officers should remind one another of the necessity of keeping the military out of domestic politics. They should educate their subordinates about the nonpartisan ethic, and the Pentagon’s civilian leaders should support those efforts. Surveys of military personnel have long shown that many do not fully grasp the reasons for the norm, even as they comply with it. If military leaders instead neglect the nonpartisan ethic or, worse still, violate it themselves, such as by publicly praising politicians or their policies, adherence throughout the force could rapidly decline.

Military leaders must take seriously the challenges posed by civilian efforts to politicize the armed forces. Paradoxically, because of their commitment to the nonpartisan ethic, not to mention the responsibilities of their jobs, many are unaccustomed to thinking about their role in protecting the institution from being pulled into partisan politics. As understandable as that may be, it is a luxury that the country can no longer afford.