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In a sense, human history could be seen as an endless tale of the rise and fall of empires. In the last century alone, from the Hapsburgs and Imperial Japan to Great Britain and the Soviet Union, the stage was crowded with such entities heading for the nearest exit. By 1991, with the implosion of the USSR, it seemed as if Earth's imperial history was more or less over. After all, only one great imperial power was left. The Russians were, by then, a shadow of their former Soviet self (despite their nuclear arsenal) and, though on the rise, the Chinese were, in military terms at least, no more than a growing regional power. Left essentially unchallenged was the United States, the last empire standing. Even though its people rejected the word "imperial" as a descriptive term for their "exceptional" country -- just as, until oh-so-recently, they rejected the word "nationalist" for themselves -- the world's "sole superpower" was visibly the only game in town.
Its military, which already garrisoned much of the planet, was funded at levels no other country or even groups of them combined could touch and had destructive capabilities beyond compare. And yet, with the mightiest military on the planet, the United States would never again win a significant war or conflict. Though its forces would be quite capable of taking the island of Grenada or briefly invading Panama, in the conflicts that mattered -- Korea and Vietnam -- victory would never come into sight. And it only got worse in the twenty-first century as that military fought an endless series of conflicts (under the rubric of "the war on terror") across the Greater Middle East and Africa. In those years, it left in its wake a series of brutal sectarian struggles, ascendant terror movements, and failed or failing states and yet, despite its stunning destructive power and its modestly armed enemies, it was nowhere victorious. Never perhaps had an empire at its seeming height attempted to control more while winning less. (The power of its economy was, of course, another matter.)
Now, its losing generals -- under the circumstances, there could be no other kind -- are, as TomDispatchregular retired Lieutenant Colonel William Astore points out today, being elevated to positions of power. The man doing so only recently derided their skills, claiming that American generalship had been "reduced to rubble" and was "embarrassing for our country." At the moment, his chosen generals are preparing themselves to take over key civilian positions in the country's ever more powerful national security state, now essentially its fourth branch of government.
And let's add to this one more curious aspect of the coming age of Trump: a phenomenon until now restricted to the military and its distant wars seems about to spread to what's left of the civilian part of our government. By the look of things, Trump's cabinet is being assembled along eerily familiar lines. Its members are unlikely to have the power to "win" (despite the president-elect's deification of that concept), but they will indeed have an unprecedented power to destroy.
They seem, in fact, to have been chosen largely for their desire to dismantle whatever agency or department will be in their care or to undermine the major tasks it is to carry out. Former Texas governor Rick Perry, recently picked to head the Energy Department, an agency he previously wanted to eliminate (and whose name he infamously forgot in a televised presidential debate), is typical. See also Scott Pruitt, prospective head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education; and Tom Price, Health and Human Services. The question, of course, is: Will the civilian part of our future government, in the end, add another country to the count of failed states the U.S. military has already chalked up?
As our first declinist candidate, Donald Trump seems determined to ensure that the once sole superpower will join that endless human tale of felled empires. He's already working hard to make certain that its government will be hollowed out or simply dynamited in the coming years, while his covey of retired generals will undoubtedly do their damnedest to create further havoc on planet Earth, as they give new meaning to the latest American "principle" being put in place (see Astore): military control over the military (and much else). Tom
Too Many Generals Spoil the Democracy
Trump's Push to "Win" with Warriors is a Loss for America
By William J. AstoreAmerica has always had a love affair with its generals. It started at the founding of the republic with George Washington and continued with (among others) Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These military men shared something in common: they were winning generals. Washington in the Revolution; Jackson in the War of 1812; Taylor in the Mexican-American War; Grant in the Civil War; and Ike, of course, in World War II. Americans have always loved a hero in uniform -- when he wins.
Yet twenty-first-century America is witnessing a new and revolutionary moment: the elevation of losing generals to the highest offices in the land. Retired Marine Corps General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, known as a tough-talking "warrior-monk," will soon be the nation's secretary of defense. He'll be joined by a real mad dog, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser. Leading the Department of Homeland Security will be recently retired General John Kelly, another no-nonsense Marine. And even though he wasn't selected, retired Army General David Petraeus was seriously considered for secretary of state, further proof of Trump's starry-eyed fascination with the brass of our losing wars. Generals who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan to anything but victory -- pyrrhic ones don't count -- are again being empowered. This time, it's as "civilian" advisers to Trump, a business tycoon whose military knowledge begins and ends with his invocation of two World War II generals, George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, as his all-time favorite military leaders.
Let's pause for a moment to consider those choices. Patton was a skilled commander of armored forces at the divisional and corps level, but lacked the political acumen and temperament to succeed at higher levels of command during World War II. MacArthur, notoriously vainglorious and -- does this ring a bell? -- completely narcissistic, was fired by President Harry Truman for insubordination during the Korean War. And yet these are the generals Trump professes to admire most. Not Omar Bradley, known as the GI's general; not Dwight Eisenhower, the man who led the D-Day invasion in 1944; and not, most of all, George C. Marshall, a giant of a man and the architect of military victory in World War II, who did indeed make a remarkably smooth transition to civilian service both as secretary of state and defense after the war.
If Truman appointed Marshall, what's wrong, one might ask, with Trump surrounding himself with retired generals? Consider two obvious problems. First, the president already has a team of uniformed generals to advise him: the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By selecting career military men like Mattis and Flynn as his senior civilian advisers on military matters, Trump is in essence creating a rival Joint Chiefs, his own tight circle of generals trained and acculturated to think about the world as primarily a realm of conflict and to favor military solutions to geopolitical problems. Second, though it's getting ever harder to remember in increasingly militarized America, this nation was founded on the fundamental principle of civilian control over the military, a principle that will be seriously eroded if the president's senior civilian advisers on defense-related matters are men who self-identify as warriors and warfighters.
Having taken off the uniform only a short time ago, career military men like Mattis, Flynn, and Kelly are not truly civilians. In fact, when they served, they weren't even citizen-soldiers; quite the opposite, those in America's post-Vietnam military self-identify as professional warriors. For Mattis and Kelly, it's once a Marine, always a Marine (especially since each served 40-plus years in the Corps). Flynn occupies a spot all his own, since he specifically fancies himself as a warrior-crusader against Islam. These are the men who will soon occupy the highest civilian offices in America's colossal national security state.
The bottom line is this: a republic -- or should I say, former republic? -- founded on civilian control of the military needs true civilians as a counterweight to militarism as well as military adventurism. Recently retired generals are anything but that; they're not even speed bumps on the road to the next set of misbegotten military "adventures." They are likely to be only one thing: enablers of and accelerants to military action. Their presence in the highest civilian positions represents nothing short of a de facto military coup in Washington, a coup that required no violence since the president-elect simply anointed and exalted them as America's security saviors.
But here's a question for you: If these men and their three- and four-star colleagues couldn't win decisive military victories while in uniform, what makes Trump and the Washington establishment think they'll do any better while wearing mufti?
Of Highly Groomed (and Flawed) Generals
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