Will the Military Become Just Another Politicized Institution?
Walter Haynes
December 10, 2020
“What do your colleagues think of the president?†It’s a question I hear a lot, not only from civilian friends in the United States, but on a regular basis over the last two years from allied officers at the German General Staff College. The truthful answer is that I don’t really know — politics has never been a watercooler topic in the U.S. military, to the point where I couldn’t tell which candidate any of my commanders voted for. The people I’ve worked with throughout my career focus on the profession of arms. When we do discuss politics, it is usually about the competing interests in Baghdad, or the dynamics of the Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan. Although every Army company has a voting assistance officer who keeps soldiers informed of upcoming elections and registration deadlines, our business is not domestic politics. As others have commented, this dynamic continues to hold true, even if imperfectly. Senior leaders made it clear that they foresee no role for the military in resolving any electoral dispute, reinforcing the apolitical nature of the U.S. military.
Jim Mattis and Kori Schake edited a 2016 book that obliquely addresses the characteristic removal of the military from partisan political issues, focused as it was on the relationship of Americans to the military instead of internal military dynamics. Their contributors used survey data from YouGov to demonstrate that the American bond to its military is in many ways paradoxical: Although most Americans have a low familiarity with their uniformed compatriots, they hold them in high esteem. Only the 4.8 percent of survey respondents who identified themselves as “very liberal†evinced much skepticism of the military as an institution, while all other political persuasions expressed a relatively high regard for it. Eighty-one percent of the general public is confident in the wartime performance of the American military. This position seems especially enviable given the low confidence Americans report in every other large national institution.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/will-the-military-become-just-another-politicized-institution/?singlepage=1
