Worries rise over a Trump ‘warrior board’ to remove officers ‘unfit for leadership’

When military-officer-turned-Fox-News-commentator Pete Hegseth was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be America’s next secretary of defense, a video began circulating.

In a podcast hosted by former U.S. Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, Mr. Hegseth said he’d been deemed a white nationalist by his National Guard unit.

Pulling back his button-up shirt collar, Mr. Hegseth flashed a tattoo of what is sometimes known as the Jerusalem cross, adopted by some extremists and widely on display among Jan. 6 rioters. He said it was the reason his orders to stand guard during the 2021 Biden inauguration were revoked.

On the same podcast, Mr. Hegseth also called for the firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, currently Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black officer to serve in the job. “Any general that was involved – general, admiral, whatever – in any of the DEI woke [expletive] has got to go,” he said, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

These comments in particular were top of mind around the halls of the Pentagon when news came in quick succession of Mr. Hegseth’s nomination and of Mr. Trump’s reported draft plan to create a “warrior board” tasked with reviewing senior military officers and, according to The Wall Street Journal, removing any deemed “unfit for leadership.”

What, exactly, the criteria for this designation will be remains unclear but the ultimate aim, some analysts suspect, is to purge officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump – a litmus test, they warn, that’s incompatible with an apolitical military.

“If Trump has an issue with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the Department of Defense, he should point his finger at the Biden administration or the Obama administration, not at the officers,” says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus and now a professor of military history at Ohio State University.

“To all of a sudden turn around and say, ‘Well, you’ve been following your [legal] orders – and now you’re going to be eliminated from the service for doing that – sends a message that will politicize the officer corps in the future and perhaps make it more loyal to a serving president than to the Constitution.”

It is the Constitution, not the president, that service members pledge to protect – a point Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin appeared to emphasize in what was described as a rare election-timed memo.

“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,” Secretary Austin wrote to Defense Department personnel after Mr. Trump was declared the winner of the presidential race on Nov. 6.

“The U.S. military will also continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security,” Mr. Austin added.

This emphasis on modeling democratic norms and obeying military orders that are legal – as opposed to, say, illegal – is notable, because it seems to indicate that the Pentagon believes such reminders are likely to be relevant in the near future.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump often described immigration as an invasion best remedied by mass deportations, and spoke of using U.S. forces to, among other things, secure the border. Depending on how this plays out, it could run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.

One exception is under the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that allows the president to deploy U.S. troops on American soil to suppress unlawful rebellions or to enforce federal law. Mr. Trump considered invoking it in the summer of 2020, after widespread protests erupted following the killing of George Floyd by police.

He was talked out of this move at the time by his top military advisers including Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their entreaties were in keeping with the job of senior U.S. officers to offer their best military counsel even when it runs counter to the president’s inclinations.

Should the president decide nonetheless to proceed with a lawful order, it’s the job of America’s civilian-controlled military to carry it out. Failure to do so, as some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have noted, is a fireable offense.

Critics fear, however, that since Mr. Trump has won the presidency, some former White House officials will want to make good on reported wishes to call Gen. Milley out of retirement to face court-martial. As a civilian, Mr. Milley called Mr. Trump “a total fascist.”

“We’re going to hold him accountable,” Steve Bannon, White House strategist in Mr. Trump’s first term, is quoted as saying in investigative reporter Bob Woodward’s latest book.

This potential politicization of the military comes with opportunity costs to U.S. national security, says Joseph Nunn, counsel in the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent law and policy think tank.

“If the military is turning its focus towards domestic politics, it is not focusing on its core responsibilities of national defense.”

It could also have negative effects on recruitment, as most service members want to serve their nation, not to be drawn into partisan fights.

The temptation to weaponize American forces was anticipated by the Founding Fathers – and they didn’t like it.

“If you look at the Declaration of Independence, misuse of the military domestically was explicitly one of the reasons the founders presented as justification for revolution,” Mr. Nunn says. “They saw, based on their own experience at the hands of the British military, that an army turned inward could become a tool of tyranny and repression.”

“And the last people you want to be thinking about how they can influence domestic political disputes,” he adds, “are the people who have guns and tanks.”