Politico | Amid US protests, Pentagon officials on edge over military leaders’ dealings with Trump
- For years, the top US military leadership has tried to minimise the perception that the armed forces are being used by the president for political purposes
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lara Seligman and Bryan Bender on politico.com on June 2, 2020
The optics this week are putting people inside the halls of the Pentagon on edge as images of US troops on the streets of the nation’s capital dominate airwaves across the globe, and as the top brass is increasingly viewed as mixing politics and the military.
Defence Department officials say they are increasingly uncomfortable with the more prominent role the US military is playing in tamping down violent protests breaking out all over the US, and the growing tendency of the president to call on the troops for domestic missions ranging from border security to law enforcement.
“The decision to use active military forces in crowd control in the United States should only be made as a last resort,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defence under President Donald Trump. “Active Army and Marine Corps units are trained to fight our nation’s enemies, not their fellow Americans. American cities are not battlefields.”
The anxiety hit a high point on Monday, when word leaked out that Defence Secretary Mark Esper referred to cities undergoing protests as a “battlespace,” and as Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley walked with Trump across the street from the White House after protesters were cleared from Lafayette Square in advance of a staged photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church.
For years, top military leadership has tried to minimise the perception that the armed forces are being used by the president for political purposes. Today, the nation is confronting the prospect of civil strife that rivals the racial unrest of the late 1960s in scale, even as civil-military tensions reach levels not seen since the use of National Guard units to respond to anti-Vietnam protests at Kent State university.
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