One of my life’s greatest regrets is that I didn’t join the Army sooner. I was commissioned at age 37, late for the military, and I didn’t exactly impress my officer basic course instructors with my physical prowess. But I made it through, and I spent eight years in the reserves, with active-duty deployments to Iraq and South Korea.
I love this country, I believed in our missions, and I felt great purpose playing my very small part as an Army judge advocate. But what makes me miss my service — and what makes me regret that I didn’t join when I was younger — is the people.
No one will call the Army perfect. Part of my role was military justice, and I saw many soldiers at their worst. Until you encounter an Army unit up close and under fire, though, you don’t truly appreciate the default character, courage and discipline of the average American soldier.
Under threat
But the military I love is under threat — from its own commander in chief.
Much of the commentary surrounding President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and now Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?
Yet I’m just as concerned about the effect of Trump’s deployments on the military itself. He isn’t just deploying America’s military into the streets; he’s deploying it into the American culture war. And he’s threatening to expand his campaign into blue cities in blue states where homicide rates are actually far lower than in many cities in red states — such as my beloved Memphis, Tennessee, where I spent countless hours as a kid. In fact, a large number of the most dangerous cities in the nation are in red states.
The military is America’s most-trusted government institution, and its tradition of nonpartisan service is indispensable to maintaining that trust. If the president uses the military against his domestic foes, he risks fracturing its bond with the American public and diminishing its ability to recruit young Americans from all of our political factions.
That’s reason enough for presidential restraint, but the problem with Trump’s deployments runs far deeper — to the point where they raise grave risks for one of America’s most indispensable institutions.
Let us count the ways.
MAGA’s troops?
First, he risks military cohesion and moral. The U.S. military is not MAGA. Sure, there are MAGA members of the military, and the best available data indicates that it’s right-leaning, but it’s still a remarkably politically diverse institution. You simply cannot assume the political beliefs of a man or woman in uniform.
Turning parts of the military into Trump’s domestic security force would dragoon Democrats, independents and Republicans into a MAGA campaign that many would find grotesque.
Part of the obligation of military service is that you agree to deploy where your commanders lawfully tell you to deploy — even if their orders are misguided, dangerous or foolish.
But that obligation creates a moral imperative for our nation’s leadership. If soldiers are willing to leave their homes and families, then it’s the obligation of the commander in chief to make sure that the deployment is in service of our national interests, not his own campaign of repression and revenge.
Second, Trump is pushing the military beyond its training. National Guard units (much less active-duty troops) are not trained to police American streets. Even members of the military police are ill-suited for the task. They’re certainly trained in basic policing tactics, but they’re trained to enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a unique military environment, not to police civilian streets to enforce state and local laws.
The military can be indispensable in restoring order in the face of large-scale riots, the kinds that completely overwhelm local authorities. But in the absence of a total breakdown in public order, they’re simply not trained to be effective civilian police officers.
At present, the National Guard troops deployed to Washington appear to be destined to perform relatively small tasks, providing logistical and administrative support and simply standing around as a show of force to deter crime.
As a result, I’m less concerned that a terrible violent incident will ensue (in my experience, soldiers are remarkably disciplined with their weapons, even in locations far more dangerous than the worst neighborhoods in our most violent cities) than I am with the anger and exasperation that comes with fruitless and frustrating service.
Third, Trump could endanger national security. If he expands these operations and thousands (or tens of thousands) of soldiers are diverted to New York, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, he’ll start to degrade readiness for the military’s true mission: deterring our nation’s formidable foreign enemies and defeating them in combat if deterrence fails.
Internal security operations are poor preparation for combat with advanced militaries. And when a military is pulled into politics, it can create paths to promotion that put a premium on personal loyalty, not combat effectiveness.
That’s a lesson that authoritarian nations have learned on the battlefield time and again. The Russian military faced a rude surprise on Ukrainian battlefields in part because in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, professionalism is secondary to politics.
It’s alarming to see hints of Putinism in America. At the beginning of Trump’s second term, he fired a number of top generals (including the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) for transparently ideological reasons. And now he is reportedly personally interviewing candidates for top military positions — a departure from past practice.
In 2017, Gen. Jim Mattis, Trump’s first secretary of defense, delivered an impromptu speech to a collection of American service members in Afghanistan. It has gone down in military history as the “hold the line” speech.
“You’re a great example for our country right now,” Mattis said. “It’s got some problems. You know it, and I know it. It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military. You just hold the line, my fine young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other, being friendly to one another — what Americans owe to one another.”
I used to think that this speech was solely focused on holding the line against our foreign enemies, protecting our nation from external threats while we struggle through mounting polarization and division at home.
But now I think it meant more than that. Our all-volunteer military is a reflection of our country, and I think Mattis was asking U.S. service members to demonstrate that there are Americans who can live and sometimes even die for one another across immense differences. He was asking the military to lead by example. “Hold the line” also meant “Show the way.”
Consumed with rage
I don’t doubt that members of the military deployed in Washington will still try to show the way. A vast majority have far too much integrity, far too much discipline and far too much affection for their fellow Americans to become the kind of jackbooted oppressors you see in the worst militaries abroad. They’ll perform a misguided mission with honor.
When that mission is a vengeful, partisan deployment to American streets, however, it risks straining the social compact that binds a democracy to its military. The Army may want to hold the line, but Donald Trump does not, and few people can do more damage to our nation’s armed forces than a commander in chief who is consumed with rage and drunk with power.
David French is a New York Times columnist.