In the days after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley reportedly became “involved” in the country’s nuclear chain of command, and also assured his Chinese military counterpart that an attack from the U.S. was not forthcoming.
That’s all according to write-ups of the book “Peril” by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. But the report raises key questions, given that Milley, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is not a part of the military’s chain of command.
Were these his actions to take? And what damage might his decisions have done to civilian control of the military?
These questions have already sparked quick reaction in Washington, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) demanding in a letter to the White House that President Biden fire Milley.
Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, no stranger to civilian-military relations, tweeted that Milley “must resign” for having “usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military.”
If this is true GEN Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that. #dotherightthingintherightway https://t.co/izsMMCFPrz
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) September 14, 2021
Milley has yet to address the reporting, as of this writing. But experts in civil-military relations that TPM spoke with described his actions, as reported, as taking a chunk out of civilian control of the military, while also posing a fundamental problem to the military’s chain of command.
Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the Naval War College, told TPM that Milley’s actions marked a step away from civilian control of the military.
Milley is reported to have ordered a group of commanders on Jan. 8 to involve him if Trump issued a nuclear launch order.
Separately, Milley held phone calls with his Chinese counterpart, which he kept secret from Trump, telling the PLA commander that the U.S. did not intend to strike China.
At the time, the U.S. government was reeling from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
It remains unclear whether Milley was acting on specific information when he convened the meeting to discuss the nuclear chain of command, if he was acting out of a generalized sense of concern, or if he was doing so in response to a phone call he had had with Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Jan. 7, during which he reportedly agreed that Trump was crazy and needed to be blocked from the nuclear arsenal.
On the nuclear question, it remains unclear what Milley meant when he reportedly said that he would be “involved” in any decisions about issuing a launch order.
“It certainly is him inserting himself into a process where he does not have an official or statutory role,” Cohn said.
It appears to be further than any previous Joint Chief of Staff chair has gone in the direction of eroding civilian control.
Michael Desch, a professor of international relations at Notre Dame who focuses on national security policy, recalled criticism that Colin Powell received in the 1990s for objecting to President Clinton’s proposal to lift a ban on gays in the military.
That’s a far cry from the reporting around Milley’s actions, which Desch said appeared to be “problematic.”
“If it’s the case that he says the order would have to go through him, he’s mistaken,” Desch said.
Cohn said that the conversations between Milley and his Chinese counterpart also suggested that the Joint Chiefs leader may have crossed a line, in part because Milley reportedly committed the U.S. to a policy course without being so ordered by the President.
“What is concerning is that Milley appeared to be informing his counterpart that he would prevent the president from doing anything threatening,” she said. “Number one, that’s not his role. And it’s kind of questionable whether he could have carried it out.”
Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at CNAS and a former adviser to National Security Advisor Susan Rice, contended that the problem had less to do with questions about the chain of command and more to do with the dire politics of January 2021.
“I am not excessively bothered by this as a moment in time if Milley was also actively engaging the president, the Cabinet, the Congress, and others on what he saw as his military advice and concerns about an emerging security situation,” she wrote in an email to TPM. “But the problem Milley sought to solve here isn’t really a civ-mil process question. It’s a political challenge (do we trust who is president–who the political electoral system chose).”
If he does resign, so be it. He is bigger than the Military Code. He may well have saved us. But what a thin veneer between us and the abyss.
Definitely not Miley’s role but we must be thankful he recognized the danger.
This sounds like one of those situations in which deciding to do the right thing had far more weight than following orders or the law. Milley understood what he was doing, the personal consequence and the fall out involved. There is zero doubt he knew this. Time keeps proving over and again that his president at the time was a threat to the common good and the operation of this country. So the real question, can we as the public, manage to balance a man who stepped well beyond his authority to save us from a far worse fate.
It probably is true that Milley’s actions took a chunk out of the principle of civilian control of the military. With that said, they were also probably necessary…the actions by Trump and members of his administration made it possible that they might decide to start a war or cause some kind of problem in order to retain the presidency. What it really shows is a weakness in our political system…there should be a limit on the presidency that doesn’t allow unilateral power to launch nuclear weapons without a direct threat (i.e. missiles on the way to the US). The presidency has a lot of power, and the fact that it no longer has any real limits to it (Trump demonstrated clearly he could do whatever he wanted as long as he had enough supporters in the Senate to protect him) means that Congress really needs to put limits on the power of the presidency in case another dictator in chief is elected.
It won’t happen though, so we’ll continue to have ad hoc measures taken by people trying to hold the one against the US falling into dictatorship. Milley may have to fall on his sword for this, but he also protected the nation from the worst impulses of Trump and his minions…without him and other leaders in the military refusing to play along we really could have seen an intervention that kept Trump in power. We should be thankful they cared so much about our democracy to risk their careers to protect it…and we should make sure that’s never necessary again.
Interesting thing to live in a mortally wounded republic but people keep thinking we can all slip back into the ante Scumbag quo.
But hey, new iPad mini!