Is Pentagon struggling to stay out of politics?

Watching General Mark A Milley, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, on stage at the White House, he looks uncomfortable. And that’s as it should be.
Milley’s job is to provide sound military advice to the president. But at a deeper level, his responsibility is to safeguard the independence and integrity of the armed forces. The last thing the country needs is a military leadership that’s trying to curry favour with any commander in chief, particularly one who’s hungry for affirmation.
Milley is a big, burly man who looks like a general from an earlier generation, when four-stars didn’t spend so much time in the gym. On stage with the politicians, his eyes often dart back and forth with a wary look that suggests he’s thinking: Get me out of here! That’s reassuring, for people who want the military to stay as far from politics as possible.
Our democracy cherishes civilian control of the military, but the balance has slipped badly in this administration. Civilians, starting with Trump, have inserted themselves into matters that should have been resolved by the uniformed chain of command.
The Navy has been a special target for civilian torpedoes over the past year. Trump rocked the service last year by intervening in a disciplinary case involving Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher. Secretary Richard Spencer resisted — and was fired.
The Navy was just beginning to find its balance when Acting Secretary Thomas Modly sacked Capt. Brett Crozier, the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, after Crozier pleaded for help protecting his crew from Covid-19 in an email that went public. Modly ignored Navy commanders’ request for a preliminary inquiry, fired Crozier, and then flew to Guam to suggest to the Roosevelt’s crew that their captain had either let the memo go public on purpose or had been “naïve” or “stupid.” In the ensuing uproar, Modly resigned.
Now the Pentagon is debating whether Crozier, the martyred captain, should return to command the Roosevelt. Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, is said to favour his reinstatement after conducting an informal inquiry, and normally, that should be the end of it. But this
decision, too, has gotten snarled in second-guessing, with Milley urging Defense Secretary Mark Esper to conduct a broad enough investigation to clarify what went so badly wrong on the Roosevelt.
The Pentagon’s problem is partly that people are looking over their shoulders wondering what the president wants. Modly told me he feared that Spencer, his predecessor, “lost his job because the Navy Department got crossways with the president” in the Gallagher case. “I didn’t want that to happen again.” Wrong instinct.
To restore the right civilian-military alignment, the Pentagon needs to go back to basics. A good model is former Defense Secretary Bob Gates. With Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, he had a “no surprises” rule. But with their aides, Gates could be ruthless. He severed a communications link between special operations forces in Kabul and a White House aide. He told General Jim Mattis, then Centcom commander, that if that a White House aide questioned his judgment, Mattis should “tell him to go to hell.”
When Mattis became secretary of defense under Trump, he tried to escape the White House vortex by conducting business directly with the president. He avoided press conferences where he might either contradict Trump and seem disloyal, or support policies he disagreed with. Mattis likes to invoke George F Kennan’s warning against “the treacherous curtain of deference” that can surround a president. Ultimately, Mattis’ refusal to appease the boss cost him his job.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, Milley’s predecessor as CJCS, similarly avoided microphones whenever possible and did his business privately with the president. Dunford offered careful, sensible advice on Syria, Afghanistan and Iran — and sometimes the president listened.
How is Milley filling these shoes? Jack Keane, a retired Army general who’s close to Trump, says Milley has been blunt and effective in private, and “knows how to deal with this president” — counselling him against overreacting to Iranian taunts, for example, or against pulling troops from Afghanistan because of the Covid-19 risk.
Aware of criticism that the Pentagon has become politicised under Trump, officials compiled a list
of White House media appearances by past chairmen. The number of Milley’s presidential photo ops was similar to his predecessors. Milley set the right standard when asked at his Senate confirmation if he would be intimidated
by political pressure: “Absolutely not by no one ever.”

—The Washington Post

David Ignatius is an American journalist and novelist. He is an
associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He has written eleven novels, including Body of Lies, which director Ridley Scott adapted into a film