Permanent Coup?
Biden follows Trump's lead and insists on abandoning democratic value of civilian control over our military
“The point of civilian control is to make security subordinate to the larger purposes of a nation, rather than the other way around. The purpose of the military is to defend society, not to define it. While a country may have civilian control of the military without democracy, it cannot have democracy without civilian control.” - Richard H. Kohn
Civilian control over our military is one of the pillars of what is supposed to make the United States uniquely democratic. It is, in fact, against federal law to appoint anyone who has recently actively served in the military to be the head of our war-making forces at the Pentagon.
This divide has been an essential piece of minimizing risk of military coups in the U.S., and from generally preventing our military forces from having direct and outright control of our nation. Presidents and their Pentagon chiefs, after all, sometimes disagree.
When they disagree, a Pentagon boss who had too cozy a relationship with the armed forces could potentially usurp the President’s role as commander in chief. It is also nice for a person in the important role of Pentagon boss to have perspective as a private citizen and not come to the role with fresh international vendettas.
More to the root, however, is the fact that military values, structures, and objectives are undemocratic. So, though militaries may be needed for nations to possess, any country that purports to be democratic must make sure that the authoritarian-structured military does not run the nation itself.
Professor Richard H. Kohn lays it out succinctly in his 1997 essay, “An essay on civilian control of the military,” on which we rely on heavily today.
For democracy, civilian control — that is, control of the military by civilian officials elected by the people — is fundamental. Civilian control allows a nation to base its values and purposes, its institutions and practices, on the popular will rather than on the choices of military leaders, whose outlook by definition focuses on the need for internal order and external security.
The military is among the least democratic institutions in human experience; martial customs and procedures clash by nature with individual freedom and civil liberty, the highest values in democratic societies
· The military is authoritarian, while democratic society is consensual or participatory.
· One is hierarchical, the other essentially egalitarian.
· One insists on discipline and obedience, subordinating personal needs and desires to the group and to a mission or goal. The other is individualistic, attempting to achieve the greatest good for the largest number by encouraging the pursuit of individual needs and desires in the marketplace and in personal lives, each person relying upon their own talents and ingenuity.
These principles, and indeed the law, was one of the things liberals most loudly criticized then President-Elect Donald Trump for when in 2016 he nominated General Mattis for the Pentagon post. Trump needed Congress to grant a waiver to violate the National Security Act of 1947 to confirm and appoint General Mattis.
Trump got the waiver, and now it looks like Democrats and new President-Elect Joe Biden are following his lead. Biden has nominated General Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense, only about three years after he was an active member of the military.
Right after Auston retired, the four-star general took a board of directors position at weapons maker Raytheon, where he’s still a sitting member, owning about half a million dollars in stock in the company as of October.
More on that type of outrageous conflict-of-interest in future columns this week…
To stay on the immediate point of the importance of having civilian control over the armed forces at the Pentagon, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson recently put it into further perspective during an interview with Aaron Mate.
“I don’t know the General,” Wilkerson began.
“He could be the most reputable person on the face of the earth, and I’d still say what I’m going to say which is, in a nation of 200 million adult souls, that pretends to be a liberal democracy it’s rather astonishing that for the second time in a row we can’t find a civilian to be the Secretary of Defense.”
Dr. Kohn’s essay helps us out further. How a nation decides to either elevate or subordinate the bodies that possess the most potential dangerous physical force, he explains, determines if they are something closer to a democracy or, tragically, merely a modern version of ancient and feudal bloody autocracies.
“Among the oldest problems of human governance has been the subordination of the military to political authority: how a society controls those who possess the ultimate power of coercion or physical force. Since the earliest development of organized military forces in ancient times, governments, particularly republican or democratic governments, have been vulnerable to either being destroyed, overturned, or subverted by their armies. All forms of government, from the purest democracies to the most savage autocracies, whether they maintain order and gain compliance by consent or by coercion, must find the means to assure the obedience of their military — both to the regime in power and to the overall system of government.
“For mature democracies, where civilian control has been strong and military establishments have focused on external defense, the test is whether civilians can exercise supremacy in military policy and decision-making. When the military enjoys great prestige, possesses advanced bureaucratic skills, believes that its ability to fulfill its mission may be at risk, or comes to doubt the civilian leadership, civilians can face great obstacles in exercising their authority.”
In anything resembling a democracy, as we in the U.S. insist we are, limiting military power always needs to be a value held sacrosanct. However, it is an especially dangerous time in our history to jettison it.
Trump violated this democratic value by nominating Mattis, and then announced straight away after he was sworn in that he’d given complete autonomy and control over military decisions to the military itself, and that they could order acts of war without his prior approval. We won’t even get into how Congress has seemingly permanently abdicated its responsibility and right under the U.S. Constitution to be the sole power in the nation that can declare war.
Ever since at least the congresses during George W. Bush, Congress has allowed Presidents to act with near dictatorial impunity and latitude when it comes to military actions. President Obama violated the Posse Comitatus Act– which forbids the deployment of military forces on U.S. soil – and then Trump followed Obama’s lead and did it again.
Right now we have federal agents kidnapping and killing Americans on the street. We have military parades on the street.
American protestors are being tear-gassed in violation of international law so that our President can walk, Bible in hand and Generals by his side, and pose for dramatic photos. And, of course, after losing the popular vote in November Trump attempted a disorganized, scatter-brained and unsuccessful attempt at holding onto power after losing.
In other words, Trump attempted to stage a coup and asked military advisors if he could count on their support. This is no time to be playing it loose and fast - Trump style – with the law and democratic norms.
The threats to our nation’s freedom that increased militarization of everything from our policymaking, policing, and schools, are not new but they certainly are fast accelerating. If what was considered a scandal by liberals four years ago when it was perpetrated by a Republican president is now repeated but this time without remark by an incoming Democrat Presidential administration, then this assault on one of the most important components of a democratic society – civilian control of the military – will become fully bipartisan, with no substantive opposition and on one left in power standing up for democracy.