Report: The Pentagon fears what Trump has in store. Should we fear it?

The Washington Post’s parade of Trump “horribles” — a staple of its election coverage — continues now that Trump is our president-elect. Yesterday, the Post speculated about what Trump will do to the Department of Defense. According to the Post, the Pentagon fears upheaval under a Trump administration.

But should upheaval at the Pentagon be feared? Upheaval just means sudden, major change. Such change can be desirable. In this case, it might well be.

Let’s start with a quote from current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. He says: “As it always has, the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command.”

Good. But who determines which orders from the civilian chain of command are “lawful”? A spokesperson for the Pentagon declined to clarify Austin’s statement.

In our constitutional system, the task of determining what’s lawful rests ultimately with the courts. With the anti-Trump resistance gearing up, we can be sure that the orders the Post fears are coming — an order that the military help deport illegal immigrants or crack down on protesters — would be challenged in court.

If such orders are upheld, they are lawful regardless of what some military officer, including any JAG, thinks. At that point, military personnel have only two honorable alternatives: obey the order or resign. Refusal to carry out the order would overturn one of the most basic tenets of American democracy — civilian rule.

What other “upheaval” does the Pentagon fear? The Post mentions Trump’s threat to carry out his promise to fire any military officer associated with the disastrous (the Post calls it “chaotic”) evacuation of Afghanistan. I’m more concerned that, in the end, no military officer will be fired — as was the case under Joe Biden — or that just one scapegoat will be let go, than I am that Trump will fire officers indiscriminately.

The Post also cites concern over the “rooting out of career civil servants suspected of undermining [Trump’s] agenda.” No one should be fired on mere suspicion.

However, any career civil servant who actually undermines the president’s program should be sacked. As a former civil servant myself (though not in the Defense Department), I have no doubt that many civil servants try actively to undermine the agenda of Republican presidents. I’ve seen it happen.

American democracy depends on the president being able to implement his agenda without resistance from government workers. Austin himself acknowledged this when he expressed pride in the military’s tradition of “stand[ing] ready to carry out the policy choices of [the] Commander in Chief.”

The Post also worries that Trump might remove current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. :

While incoming presidents always choose their own political appointees, the Pentagon’s senior military ranks have long been selected on a rotational basis that stretches across presidential terms. Gen. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the top officers in each service all stepped into assignments last year that typically stretch four years. Trump, as commander in chief, has the authority to remove any of them at will — a point Austin acknowledged in a discussion with reporters Thursday.

One senior U.S. official familiar with discussions in the Pentagon said there is palpable concern among senior staff that Brown “won’t make it through his full term.”

In 2020, Trump selected Brown to become the first African American to lead a branch of service but since then the general has faced Republican criticism for supporting the Defense Department’s diversity programs.

Gen. Brown’s commitment to the Department’s DEI programs is good cause for Trump to remove him. DEI in the military isn’t just about diversity and inclusion — areas as to which the military is doing well. It’s also about promoting aspects of the radical Black Lives Matter movement, including the view that whites are plagued by “implicit bias” — i.e., that white Americans are racist. Implicit bias training is a fraught endeavor. Its negative implications for morale and cohesion are obvious.

In addition, the large DEI bureaucracy within the military subtracts time, energy, and money from the military’s core mission defending America.

The DEI agenda also seeks to eliminate tests that blacks don’t perform well on and to implement quotas for leadership positions. And it runs contrary to military ideals by demonizing the virtues a well-functioning military cannot do without: hard work, action orientation, rational thinking, discipline, etc. In DEI-world, they are considered “aspects of whiteness.”

No wonder some prominent military figures warn that the DEI agenda is a threat to our national security.

Thus, not only is it Trump’s prerogative to appoint a Joint Chiefs chairman who will end or significantly revise the military’s DEI program; it’s also a desirable outcome.

Finally, the Post warns that Trump will “sideline or retaliate” against military and career civil servants who make recommendations that run contrary to White House desires. Retaliation and sidelining in response to nothing more than recommendations would not be desirable.

It would also be nothing new. How do you suppose senior officers who opposed (but did not resist) pet projects of the Obama and Biden administrations — especially in the realm of DEI — fared? I have no first-hand knowledge, but from what I’ve heard, such opposition was what we used to call a career-limiting gesture.

In sum, I believe a considerable amount of “upheaval” at the Pentagon is both Trump’s legitimate prerogative and overdue. Might Trump overreach? It’s certainly possible, in which case he’s sure to be challenged, and should be.

Might he “under-reach”? That’s possible, too. Follow -through on promises and intentions was not a hallmark of Trump’s first term.

For now, though, the list of “horribles” the Post serves up doesn’t frighten me much. Based on the Post’s report, I’m more worried about the Pentagon’s attitude towards, and possible resistance to, change mandated by the elected leader of the United States.