Any Congress worthy of the name in a democracy would open an investigation of General Milley and push for his removal.
If we did not already have enough reasons to believe that General Mark Milley has no business serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, today’s blockbuster story in the Washington Post, excerpted from the Bob Woodward/Robert Costa book Peril, should confirm this. Any Congress worthy of the name in a democracy would open an investigation of General Milley and push for his removal; any president who took his oath seriously would fire him immediately.
Here is what Woodward and Costa report, apparently from General Milley’s own mouth as one of their principal sources for the book:
Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict. In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike. . . . One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election . . . and the other on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the Capitol siege . . .
Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” . . . In the second call, placed to address Chinese fears about the events of Jan. 6, Li wasn’t as easily assuaged, even after Milley promised him, “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.” Li remained rattled, and Milley, who did not relay the conversation to Trump, . . . understood why. The chairman . . . believed the president had suffered a mental decline after the election . . . a view he communicated to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi . . . on Jan. 8. He agreed with her evaluation that Trump was unstable. . . . Believing that China could lash out if it felt at risk from an unpredictable and vengeful American president, Milley took action.
The same day, he called the admiral overseeing the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the military unit responsible for Asia and the Pacific region, and recommended postponing the military exercises. . . . The admiral complied.
Milley also summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an “oath.”
Now, what General Milley did in this instance is not, in the proper sense of the word, treason, given that China is not an open enemy in war. [UPDATE: On further reflection, however, it could be construed as an offer to commit treason, given that the promise to give notice of a future attack presupposes action at odds with a direct, armed conflict ordered by the commander in chief.] It probably violates the terms of the Logan Act, but that statute is possibly unconstitutional and should be repealed. (I confess I do not know enough of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to say whether or not this violates any of its provisions.) It is not even quite a military coup. But it skates awfully close to that line.
There is no circumstance in which an American military officer should be conducting his own rogue foreign policy without informing the civilian leadership. That strikes directly at the heart of our democratic, constitutional system, in which the elected president and Congress — and the appointees who are chosen by the president and report to him — make the major foreign-policy decisions, and the military must carry them out. An officer who will not carry out an order has an honorable option: resign and go public, choosing his moral duty as a citizen over his duty as an officer — but as of that moment, he can no longer serve as an officer. A frontline commander might have some leeway around this principle at the level of detail — say, talking to an adversary about how to propose or conduct a prisoner exchange — but if the president decides to convey a particular message to a hostile nation as a matter of foreign policy, it is never the job of the military brass to override or thwart that.
The primacy of civilian leadership was the principle on which Abraham Lincoln countermanded orders by some of his generals that moved faster on freeing slaves than Lincoln could politically manage, a conflict that led to John C. Frémont being relieved of his command. It is the principle on which Harry Truman properly relieved Douglas MacArthur of his command in Korea; MacArthur wanted to widen the war into a direct conflict with China, and had begun telling foreign governments this without involving Truman. Those decisions were Truman’s to make.
Woodward and Costa make clear that General Milley knew perfectly well that he was undermining the president’s intended policies:
In discussions about Iran’s nuclear program, Trump declined to rule out striking the country, at times even displaying curiosity about the prospect. . . . [CIA director Gina] Haspel was so alarmed after a meeting in November that she called Milley to say, “This is a highly dangerous situation. We are going to lash out for his ego?”
Now, there is an entirely legitimate case to be made for the United States telling the Chinese government in private not to worry about our attacking them, or even for the U.S. to cancel some military exercises out of concern that we might be unduly threatening and trigger the Chinese to take rash action. But there is also a legitimate case for deterring China by strategic ambiguity about our intentions — indeed, that has been the centerpiece of American policy on Taiwan since the 1970s. Trump was much enamored of the Nixon-era “madman” theory that a president might want to appear a bit unstable and dangerous in order to convince hostile foreign nations to tread more carefully around us. General Milley clearly knew this. Choosing to tell the Chinese that we were bluffing and unilaterally canceling exercises — without involving the president and, so far as we can tell from this excerpt, without involving the State Department or the secretary of defense — is a military seizure of authority that belongs to the president alone. It demands his removal.
It also appears from the excerpt that General Milley never considered the possibility that Li was playing him for information. Which, again, is why these decisions about how to communicate with the Chinese regime should not be made unilaterally by one general.
Don’t worry, Woodward and Costa tell us, General Milley is fine abiding by the chain of command when Democrats are in charge:
Milley, for his part, took what the authors describe as a deferential approach to Biden on Afghanistan, in contrast to his earlier efforts to constrain Trump. The book reveals recent remarks the chairman delivered to the Joint Chiefs in which he said, “Here’s a couple of rules of the road here that we’re going to follow. One is you never, ever ever box in a president of the United States. You always give him decision space.” Referring to Biden, he said, “You’re dealing with a seasoned politician here who has been in Washington, D.C., 50 years, whatever it is.”
That just makes it worse, as does the fact that major media outlets celebrate a general for undermining civil authority. General Milley knew exactly what he was doing. And he is apparently proud enough of doing so that he told Woodward and Costa. He is a proven danger to democratic self-government, and must go.