Preparations are feverish in the Pentagon for the next day at the department, when the administration of Donald Trump takes over. Executives’ main fear is that the new president will carry out his threats to deploy the military inside the US and against American citizens, but also that he will demand a demonstration of loyalty from the hierarchy in his attempt to turn a crucially partisan institution into a an institution completely loyal to him.
The concern at the Pentagon is not unfounded, since during his first term Trump broke all the rules and openly and frequently clashed with senior Pentagon officers and staff – including several he had appointed. Throughout his campaign, Trump reiterated his intention to use military force against the “enemy within”, to fire any servicemen associated with the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, and to reverse what he and his supporters have denounced as “ridiculous” decisions by the Biden administration, which include the renaming of several military bases that were named after figures and leaders of Southern forces during the US Civil War.
Trump spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt said that after Tuesday’s vote, the American public has given him a “mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will succeed.”
Several senior officials in Trump’s first administration have made public statements and statements about the president-elect’s authoritarian impulses. Among them are former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, retired General Mark A. Miley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, also a retired general. Jim Mattis, the retired general who was Trump’s first secretary of defense, said little publicly during the election, but in a June 2020 op-ed, he said Trump is “the first president in my lifetime who he’s not trying to unite the American people.”
During Trump’s first term, the aforementioned – regardless of their often also extreme positions on a number of issues – tried to contain Trump’s darker impulses. They had even warned that Trump was ready to violate the Constitution by giving illegal orders to the military.
As president, Trump has increased the Pentagon’s budget, pressured US allies to spend more on their own defense and loosened restrictions on rules of engagement imposed by President Barack Obama — moves that have been well received within the Defense Department.
As president, Trump has used his personal social media to announce major U.S. troop moves abroad, including a withdrawal from northern Syria that has thrown forces there into chaos, and a reduction in personnel in Afghanistan as U.S. officials negotiate at the same time leaving with the Taliban. This action was considered by the commanders to be unconventional at best.
Earlier this year, retired General Austin “Scott” Miller, who oversaw US forces in Afghanistan, recalled to a House withdrawal committee in 2018 how he woke up to a phone call telling him the military had been ordered to prepare. to leave “in the middle of the night”. The general replied that such a thing was “impossible”.
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