The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Is a True Hero

Since the position was created in 1949, the United States has had twenty officers serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Some, such as the very first chairman, General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, were nationally known heroes with historic wartime service. Others, such as Army General Colin Powell were well known to the public for significant peacetime service. I served under a few, and a couple — Admiral William J. Crowe and General John Shalikashvili, would become good friends and mentors.

I don’t really know the current chairman, Army General Mark Milley, although we have chatted briefly a couple of times at a few public events. But I know his type. And it may be that Milley is the most significant Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) in the relatively brief history of the office. Milley is singularly significant not for what he did to protect the nation from foreign enemies, but for his firm stand against domestic enemies attempting to distort if not destroy the nation’s constitutional order.

As detailed in several sources, most significantly the forthcoming book Only I Can Fix It, by Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Milley on several occasions stood firm against efforts by then-President Donald Trump to use the American military either illegally or inappropriately. As detailed by Rucker and Leonnig, it was Milley as much as (and seemingly more than) anyone else who checked and blocked Trump’s most destructive impulses and unconstitutional efforts.

Much of this was all the more remarkable as it was Trump who selected Milley to be the CJCS over another officer, Air Force General David Goldfein, who had been recommended for the position by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis, himself a retired Marine general. For those who follow such things, Milley’s selection struck many as a bit odd for several reasons.

First, as mentioned, Secretary Mattis had not recommended him. Second, perhaps to emphasize his rejection of Mattis’ recommendation, whom he dismissed a short time later, Trump named Milly to the position even though the incumbent CJCS, highly regarded Marine General Joseph Dunford, had nearly a year left in office. And third, Milley had served a full four-year term as Army Chief of Staff when he became chairman. Normally, when a service chief becomes CJCS it is after a short time in the office or not yet fully through it. General Martin Dempsey, for example, had been the Army chief for a mere five months when he became chairman back in 2011.

But news reports of the day suggested that Trump had liked Milley during the interview process for the chairman’s job, evidently impressed with Milley’s toughness, a quality honed as an Army armor, infantry and then Special Forces officer, and earlier as a Princeton University hockey player. Trump evidently thought that Milley was his sort of guy. And as in so many other matters, Trump was characteristically wrong. Like any hockey player, Milley was tough and ready to “mix it up”, but as he firmly demonstrated after taking the CJCS job, he was definitely not Trump’s “sort of guy.”

The office of the CJCS is one that has several oddities — even discontinuities — about it. First, although the CJCS is by law the nation’s highest ranking military officer, and the principal advisor to the president and secretary of defense on military matters, he is not in the formal “chain of command.” That chain, the one that actually controls and directs the operational units of the armed forces, runs from the president, as commander-in-chief, to the secretary of defense, to the commanders of the combatant commands. The CJCS commands no service members, and no units.

Why is that? Since the beginning of the republic there has been a passion for ensuring civilian control of the military. In the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, a legislative effort that had as a major objective clarifying the chain of command and enhancing civilian control of the military, this advisory role of the chairman was comprehensively defined.

There has been a long-standing American fear of a Napoleon-like military “man on a white horse” using the armed forces to set aside the constitutional order and take control of the country. President Franklin Roosevelt was reported to have once had such reservations about Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur. And there have been other, most likely imaginary, reports over the years of certain military men who had strong objections to the national security directions taken by civilian leaders. During his term in office, President Dwight Eisenhower found himself at odds with his service chiefs on several occasions even though he himself was a retired general and had mentored and promoted some of them.

When such concerns bubble to the surface, one hears references to John Frankenheimer’s famous 1964 movie Seven Days in May, a political thriller where the military is plotting to take over the government because of a dispute with the president regarding nuclear weapons policy. Consequently, creating a command structure with no single, unified commander other than the president has been a constant American preference.

But second, the CJCS’s absence from the formal chain of command has practical limits. In a firmly hierarchical structure such as the US military, the senior officer will have great influence whether formally in command or not. Perhaps no recent CJCS demonstrated this more than General Colin Powell. Although General Norman Schwarzkpf was the theater commander during Operation Desert Storm, it was obvious to many that Schwarzkopf was taking his direction on matters both operational and strategic from Powell, who had a very close, personal relationship with President George H. W. Bush that was anchored in Powell’s tenure as President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor.

As described by Rucker and Leonnig, Trump was fully unaware of such nuance, as he was of so much else involving the structure and operation of the US government. When Trump told Milley he was “in charge” of deploying active duty military to the streets of American cities to forcibly end protests after the murder of George Floyd, Milley forcefully informed Trump that he was “not in charge,” and then demanded that one of the lawyers in the room explain this to the president, which Attorney General William Barr evidently did.

Despite Trump’s initial comfort with Milley, his new chairman quickly became uncomfortable with Trump. Three weeks after he became the CJCS, Milley along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper was summoned to a White House meeting to discuss Syria policy with the Democratic congressional leadership. Trump had decided to withdraw US forces from Syria, a decision opposed in a House resolution passed by a huge bipartisan majority.

In the famous picture of the meeting, one that shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointing at Trump and challenging his motivation for the decision, Milley can be seen sitting next to Trump, his head down and his hands tightly clasped together, body language suggesting he would strongly prefer to be any place else. But it would get worse.

After the death of George Floyd, and the gathering of a large demonstration across the street from the White House in Lafayette Square, Trump asked Esper and Milley to join him at what they believed was a brief visit to National Guard troops assisting with crowd control. However, what Trump was really doing was having the square cleared to stage a photo opportunity in front of the famous St. John’s Church. Milley, dressed in his camouflage battle dress uniform, recognized what was happening and slipped away, but he had already been shown on television walking beside Trump.

A couple of days later, in a remote appearance, Milley apologized during an address to the student body at the National Defense University for having been in the square. He firmly stated he should not have been there. He also sent a memo to all service members reminding them that their loyalty and oath were to support the constitution. Later he would object to the Trump campaign using his image in campaign ads. And after the November election, when Trump refused to concede defeat and launched a set of frivolous efforts to change the outcome, Milley became even more vocal that the US military had no role in presidential elections. He did this in response to illegal and unconstitutional suggestions by some, such as retired Lieutenant Generals Michael Flynn and Thomas McInerney, that the Insurrection Act be invoked and the election re-done under the supervision of the armed forces.

Milley was relatively quiet when Trump replaced Esper with a clearly unqualified acting secretary, leaving many concerned that Trump was planning some sort of coup, but behind the scenes he was likely using his authority as the senior officer in the armed forces to re-emphasize his earlier memos. And throughout this period, Milley continued to object to Trump’s suggestions about using the military or engaging the Insurrection Act, reminding the increasingly desperate president that Lincoln’s Civil War challenge was substantially different from current circumstances, at one point pointing to a picture of Lincoln and telling Trump, “That guy had an insurrection! We have a protest!”

General Milley’s efforts over the past year have, in essence, turned the old “man on the white horse” fears on their head. It was not the military plotting some sort of coup, but rather it was the military — led by General Mark Milley — that was determined to prevent one, or even something remotely resembling one. And for that firm leadership, General Milley deserves the nation’s thanks.

The first sentence in a military officer’s oath contains the words that the officer will, “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Military officers take this oath seriously, none more than General Mark Milley. He needs to be applauded for having such strength of conviction, for firmly articulating it, and for reminding others of their own sworn commitment. No doubt Milley never imagined that he would make his major contribution in uniform opposing domestic enemies, but his actions over the past year show that, in a sense, he was “the man on the white horse” that the nation needed.