Should We Want The Military To Corner the Politicians?

 One of the enduring questions of civil-military relations is what should the military do when the civilians do not give them the tools they need to meet the objectives the civilians set forth.  So, when I read this piece by Scott Taylor in the Hill Times, I wondered about this---how far should military people go to demand the stuff they think they need:

CAF leadership lacks courage: It's the responsibility of military brass to pound on the desks of their political masters to address shortcomings in the institution. Instead, they sugar coat the situation.

To be fair, it is not Taylor's job to write the title to the piece, but that is the basic gist of the op-ed.  And it reflects a piss poor understanding of civil-military relations.  One of the fun dynamics I have discovered over the past few years is how officers mis-read a classic text: Supreme Command by Eliot Cohen.  In that book, Cohen argues there needs to be a dialogue, an unequal dialogue between the civilian masters and the armed forces--that the latter should speak truth to power and that the former should listen ... and THEN DO WHAT THEY THINK IS BEST.  The case studies in the book include Abraham Lincoln replacing general after general until he gets one that will listen and do what he wants.  It is not a book about the virtues of military folks yelling at civilians until the civilians submit.

Taylor cites favorably a video that Admiral Angus Topshee, the commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, recorded where he raised serious questions about the readiness of the fleet.  He could have cited the many times in General Wayne Eyre's last year or so of being Chief of Defence Staff, where he publicly discussed the problematic state of the armed forces--that they were underfunded.  These are not examples to be emulated, as they put the military not just in politics (all militaries are inherently involved in politics) but in partisan politics.  By cornering the government, they gave ammunition to the opposition and limited the ability for the government to set policy as they saw fit.  These folks definitely should have honest conversations with government officials behind closed doors, but publicly lambasting the government of the day is wrong and bad for civilian control of the military.  Despite public opinion polls to the contrary, the civilians should not merely do what the generals and admirals want.

The funny thing is that Taylor uses as his example/inspiration a case where a senior officer is explaining the readiness challenges to the Parliament's Defence Committee (and, yes, we rank Canada's DC as one of the weakest of the 15 democracies we studied in our book that was officially published yesterday). Taylor wanted General Ritchie to be more hostile, more critical, when the facts that Ritchie discussed spoke for themselves.  He was in a situation where he was essentially compelled to give an honest portrayal of the current situation and did so but in ways that didn't outright condemn the government.  He did what he supposed to do.  

Pounding on desks, yelling at the civilian leadership is not the way militaries ought to behave in democracies as they are subservient.  It is their job to follow orders and get on the job after providing the government with their assessment of the situation.  Their job is not to demand or to determine but to advise and then execute.  That's it.  

The timing is also strange, as the military is getting a lot more money to improve readiness as part of the 2% bonanza.  Also, it is not exactly as if the government and the public were not aware that the military is short of kit.  The public, as surveys have shown, get it, and there is public support for this new defence spending. 

So, yeah, when someone writes something asking for the military to lambaste the government, it is easy for me to say, whoa, there, buddy.  And then post this meme:

 

Professing in the Age of American Autocracy

Before the semester started, I wrote about how the US is now an authoritarian regime, or autocracy for short.  Since then, well, oh my, I have lost track of the many ways that the Trump regime has proven this to be correct, with the latest being the firing of a comedian for daring to make fun of the Mad King.  And all of this has happened as I am teaching US Foreign Policy.  It has raised a few challenges along the way, such as having events happen mid-class (the aforementioned Kimmel suspension).  

The biggest challenge is how to approach the course as a whole.  In the days of yore, I used to teach the class quite conventionally: here are the institutions that shape US foreign policy, here are the interests of the various actors.  And before social media existed, I was able to say critical things of Republicans and Democrats, and students would wonder which side of the political spectrum I was on.  Indeed, in Montreal, more than a few that I was right wing because I studied the military and didn't mind hanging out with folks in uniform.  The advent of social media and the way I am pretty blunt ended that to some degree, but I still tried to be even-handed (although as I referred to the disbanding of the Iraqi army as the dumbest decision in US foreign policy history).

During Trump 1.0, I started to raise questions about whether the institutional approach made sense, and I tweaked the class and was more critical in the course discussions of Trump than the average American president.  At the time, I started getting frustrated with the false equivalence that was often used by the media to normalize Trump, so that affected my teaching.  Trump acting in ways that went beyond normal GOP/Dem differences, like his approach to North Korea swinging from war-mongering to, well, submission.  

Last fall, in anticipation of a possible Trump admin, I assigned most of the usual readings and supplemented with, yes, chapters of Project 2025, and this time, I was quite clear that Trump was a convicted felon and insurrectionist.  That these were not just my political opinions but facts.  

When preparing for this fall, my starting point changed quite a bit from how does US foreign policy work in a democratic society in ways that constrain and incentivize the President to how does US foreign policy work in an autocracy where the constraints are gone and it really is about the personality of the President.  So much so that I started the first class with: is an utterance on social media--a tweet or whatever--policy?  This might seem to be taking a partisan approach, that my personal stance is affecting what I teach and how I teach, but, again, I think we are in a very different situation than in the past based on the objective criteria of coding democracies and autocracies.

• Is the President constrained by the legislature? No, he killed USAID without a vote.  He has refused to spend money allocated by Congress in violation of the Constitution.
• Is the President constrained by the law?  The destruction of Venezuelan boats says no.
• Is the President constrained by public opinion?  Nope, as many of his policies are wildly unpopular.
• Is the President constrained by the media?  Nope, the media has been bullied into submission.
• Is the prospect of the next election serving as a constraint?  Does not seem so.

Which means we have focus on other stuff to explain US foreign policy. I have borrowed readings from the study of autocratic foreign policy, and I am relying a bit more on psychological approaches since the mind of the person at the top matters more when that person has fewer limits on what they can do.

This week, it came to a head for me.  The focus was on public opinion, Congress, and polarization. I warned that polarization can be seen as a false equivalence kind of thing, suggesting that both parties are spinning away from the center equally.  But we know that one party has moved farther from the middle, much farther from the middle on many issues, such as NATO, immigration, and others.  I even drew the myth of centrism--how exactly in between two parties is not the middle but just an average.  That if one party becomes more extreme, the average moves but the middle of the American public may not.  

As the conversation developed, I responded to some of the questions by indicating, yes, the GOP is supporting autocracy, and, yes, it is seeking to deny the rights of various people: trans people most obviously, but also women's rights. The latter refers not just to abortion but, thanks to some outspoken GOP folks, voting rights.  We got into the whole "why don't Dem women date Republican guys" thing, and, yeah, it went that far.  I realized I might be pushing things a bit much, moving from the analytical and the objective to the partisan.

As I was thinking about this after class, a student approached me having just checked her phone, and she told me about Kimmel. This reinforced my thinking about where we are today--the US as an autocracy and the GOP as the party facilitating the end of American democracy.  It sounds partisan, but if it is the objective truth, then so be it.  

I will continue to be uncomfortable.  This is natural when one is living through unprecedented times and having to adjust to an America where the President is unconstrained, where power is being abused on a daily basis, and where fear of the regime drives the behavior of major media conglomerates, Republican politicians, and so many previously relevant actors.  

To be clear, my discomfort pales in comparison to those professing in the US, as I know I won't get fired for writing this.  Too many (one is too many, of course) have already lost their jobs due to fear of Mad King and his mob.   I can only hope that Trump's unpopularity will be his undoing, that the US can start to recover, although it will take much time and concerted effort.  And, yes, rebellions are built on hope.

  

 

Sparse But Spectacular: APSA 2025

 The consensus in Vancouver was that every American Political Science Association annual meeting should be in Vancouver.  The weather was terrific, the views were amazing, the food was great, and it cost Americans about 25% less than they thought.  Usually, the APSA is somewhere on the east coast in a swamp with excessive heat and humidity.  Not this year.  

But the downside was that it was as smaller conference.  Why?  Some guesses:

•  Lots of American academics have lost funding due to their universities losing NIH funding and other federal $ streams.
• Those from American military academic institutions may not have been able to get permission to go since SecDef "Too Drunk to Function" Hegseth is opposed to all knowledge-related events.
• East coast bias--there are simply more schools on the east coast and Vancouver is far, far away.
• Border challenges--non-Americans working in the US may be concerned about what might happen when they try to return from the conference after APSA.
• Border challenges, part deux: Canada absolutely sucks in processing visas so many folks may not have gotten visas to come for the conference.
• And maybe a bit of an illusion given the spread of the event between two wings of the convention center and a handful of hotels.

Maybe it is a one-off, but I can't help but think of an academic conference career arc: that when I started, I barely knew anyone, and would walk around searching for a familiar face [again, folks don't buy it, but I am shy in large crowds of people I don't know].  Then, as time went on, I didn't have to search as much.  And then I could just stand still and have many interactions with so many people that I have met in previous jobs, workshops, conferences, and my dance card would be full even before I arrived.  And now with friends retiring or passing, and perhaps because of the aforementioned shrinking of APSA, I had more openings in schedule, far fewer familiar faces, and more time to exercise.

Still, it was a good and valuable experience.  I got good feedback on my paper, I talked to an editor about an edited volume project, I met with a co-author about our next survey, I met sharp emerging scholars and served as their discussant, participated in a panel memorializing Brandon Valeriano, and didn't do much tourism as I have been here before.

The big topic hanging over the event was the backsliding of the US into autocracy. The Charlie Kirk assassination happened immediately before the conference, so it was a focus, but the larger concerns focused on the decline of academic freedom (personified by Kirk), the odds of civil war in the near future, Trump's declining health, and how much comparative politics has to say at this moment to the Americanists who have not really been trained to think about autocracy.  The pace of events makes it easy to forget that just a week ago, we faced the real possibility of the Texas National Guard confronting Illinois authorities and the public.  

We have dodged a lot of bullets (sorry, Charlie), that reichstag fire type events are now like streetcars--coming along every few minutes, and our luck is running out.  The right wing is talking about using the Kirk killing to justify suppression/persecution of the left and that does not just mean the far left commies, but everyone pretty much but themselves.  I just read a great piece by Jeffrey Isaac that speaks to our moment and what he has to fear.  I did react to the Kirk killing by noting that political violence is bad and that Kirk incited political violence, noting my privilege to do so as a Canadian.  We have seen Americans lose their jobs because they spoke about Kirk's deplorable stances and activities including his systematic effort to crush academic freedom.  And now Isaac has me thinking a bit about fear and how none of us are immune from either violence or the cowardice of university administrations.

One of the topics of conversation at the conference was, of course, the events at Texas A&M where a lecture, their department chair, and their dean were all fired because they had the temerity to talk about gender in a way that might not be approved of by the Trump regime.  Given my six years in west Texas long ago, yeah, I sighed relief that I got out of there.  I am pretty sure I would have been fired by now.

Anyhow, it was great to see friends, learn about new research, and celebrate Brandon.  We shall see if there is much of an international crowd at the ISA in Columbus in March.  Time to go back home to teach and revise a grant application.

The Illegal Orders Frontier: One of Our Last Obstacles to Autocracy May Be Gone

 One of things that people told themselves, including me, is that one barrier between anocracy, a mixed political system, and full out autocracy would be that American troops would not follow illegal orders.  They are trained not to do so--that the lesson of Nuremberg and WWII is that one is not obligated to follow an illegal order.  Makes it hard but not impossible to deploy the US armed forces coercively against the American people.  

Well, we can kiss that bit of wishful thinking goodbye (to a degree, I hope, see below).  Why?  Well, in the past 24 hours or so, we have two bits of evidence that the line has been breached.  

1. The US armed forces attacked and destroyed a civilian vessel in international waters.  I am not a lawyer, but from all accounts, this is an illegal use of force.  The ship or boat was not a threat to American shipping, so self-defense was not in play. No attempt to stop the ship.  No state of hostilities.  Thanks to Jason Lyall for enumerating how much this was probably not legal. 
2.  A US court ruled that the use of Marines and National Guard in California was illegal.  It seemed pretty clear at the time there was no emergency (the Insurrection Act was not invoked), and that Marines and National Guard should not be part of immigration sweeps.  

Of course, one of the first things the Trump Administration did was fire the senior Judge Advocate Generals, so no one would throw a flag. So, this kind of stuff would be easier to do.

And that gets to the heart of things--who is to say an order is illegal. Ultimately, it is up to every single member of the armed forces, but they take their signals from their officers, and those officers take their signals from JAGs and from senior officers. As far as we can tell, the senior officers did not tell them that these were illegal orders.   Obedience is expected and given, and, again, that is quite normal in wartime and in regular operations.  But deploying troops against civilians should raise the hackles of those being asked to act in dubious ways.  

There may be a limit--Trump still does not know (nor do we) what the troops would do if asked to fire upon civilians. That might be a bridge too far.  I think if such an extreme order, or invading Canada for that matter, would come down, it would be divisive and lead to one of two outcomes: senior leaders push back as they fear the cohesion of the military would be at great risk with the possibility of soldiers firing upon soldiers OR the military actually does break apart as some follow illegal orders and shoot at unarmed civilians and others stand by or try to stop it.  

This all seems extreme, almost fantastical, but Trump is calling out southern National Guard units to operate in cities governed by Democrats (mostly Black Democrats).  The moment of greatest uncertainty--who shoots and who does not--may nearly be upon us.  And we just don't know what happens.  Maybe that uncertainty deters the Trump administration, but that would require some thought, a lack of arrogance, some self-awareness, and some caution.  Are these attributes that are common in Trump's administration?

Yes, Ron, we can panic now.  

Seriously, how to respond?  With overwhelming displays of public opposition.  Protests can induce a military into not following illegal orders.  I need to read more of that literature, but that really is our best hope.  Because we can't expect restraint from the Trump Administration, we can't expect the better angels to have an influence, because there are none among those in power.  Hegseth?  Please.  The senior officers who have survived the purges?  Not looking good.  The media?  They don't seem to appreciate the seriousness of this moment.  The Democratic politicians? Well, the Governor of Illinois, Pritzker, seems to have the right idea. But he needs the public beside him.

Is this wishful thinking?  

Of course, all those in the picture died to facilitate rebellion so.... there's that.

Sorry for the less than cheery thoughts on the first day of classes.