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What’s driving a wave of criticism against military gener= als from the American right? Katherine Kuzminski on accusations of a &ldquo= ;woke” takeover of the United States’ most trusted institution = and how they could reshape its national security.

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Irregulars

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What’s d= riving a wave of criticism against military generals from the American righ= t? Katherine Kuzminski on accusations of a “woke&rdq= uo; takeover of the United States’ most trusted institution and how t= hey could reshape its national security.

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Craig Tidball

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For de= cades, the U.S. Republican Party had an effective claim of ownersh= ip over its country’s military affairs. The Republican president Rona= ld Reagan faced down the Soviet Union and helped end the Cold War in the 19= 80s, while his Republican successor George H.W. Bush erased the political s= cars of Vietnam by prosecuting the Gulf War of the early ’90s in 43 d= ays. If a Democrat wanted to be president, they had more or less to emulate= their opposition when it came to national security. Bill Clinton, elected = in 1992 as the first Democratic president since 1980, even made the Republi= can William Cohen his Defense Secretary. By the mid-2000s, an American publ= ic disillusioned by seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had sour= ed on military adventurism, but public opinion on the military and its lead= ership appeared unaffected. That all began to change with the fractious pre= sidency of Donald Trump, and today, the sanctity of the U.S. military&mdash= ;much like that of much like the U.S. Supreme Court—is under politica= l attack: With recruitment numbers down, right-wing critics attribute the p= roblem to “woke” social-engineering policies that they see as h= aving weakened America’s most trusted institution. High-profile comme= ntators on the right, such as Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro—along wi= th some of the more conservative members of the U.S. House and Senate&mdash= ;are escalating their criticism of the military and threaten to fracture pu= blic perceptions of the Armed Forces for years to come. =E2=80=8B=E2=80=8BW= hat’s driving these attacks?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Katherine Kuzminski is a senior fellow a= t the Center for a New American Security, an independent, bipartisan policy= -research organization based in Washington, and the director of its Militar= y, Veterans, and Society Program. Before joining CNAS, Kuzminksi worked at = the RAND Corporation, researching military-personnel policy. In 2016, she w= as a signatory to a letter signed by 122 Republican national-security leade= rs arguing that Trump’s personal behavior and views on national secur= ity made him unfit for the presidency. Kuzminski says that Trump’s on= going denunciations of the U.S. military’s leadership have been influ= ential, but they’ve also tapped into an underlying current of populis= t resentment that will likely continue moving on the American right. To her= , these rebukes fundamentally misunderstand the power dynamics at play betw= een enlisted officers and civilian policymakers. Still, if the right’= s disenchantment with the U.S. military and its leadership grows, it could = find common ground with the elements of the left, in its own populist wing,= transforming a once-fringe political tendency into something that destabil= izes a long-standing bipartisan consensus on American military policy. =09=09=09=09=09=09

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——= —

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Eric Pfeiffer: How would you summarize t= he growing criticism of military leadership on the American right?

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Katherine Kuzminski: It fits with a patt= ern you’ll see across the U.S. political spectrum—an idea that,= though the general officer corps is supposed to be non-political, non-part= isan, and focus on its responsibilities as specified in the United States C= ode, the general officer corps nevertheless somehow embodies the beliefs of= whomever the critic is opposed to.

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Today, Donald = Trump’s variations on this theme have resonated especially with popul= ist elements of the American public—emphasizing the idea that the mil= itary has “gone woke” and lost its sense of purpose. Now, that = isn’t actually how things work in the military. Policy changes come f= rom the civilians in the chain of command, and the military leadership is c= harged with executing those changes. There can be certain conflation in the= minds of critics, I think, when they see the implementation of a policy an= d assume that the generals must therefore have wanted it. But fundamentally= , the generals don’t set policy; they implement policy that’s s= et down by the president as the commander in chief.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09Pfeiffer: While Republicans have previou= sly criticized Democratic administrations over issues of military readiness= , the new objections are primarily focussed on this idea of wokeness, as you put it—on the idea that the military is now engaging in pr= ogressive social engineering in its recruitment strategy. What policy trans= formations, if any, are actually coming down from the civilian leadership?<= /div> =09=09=09=09=09=09

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Kuzmin= ski: The civilian leadership has made new efforts focused on the i= deas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across the military services= . The uniform leadership has been charged with executing and implementing w= hat the civilian leadership has taken from those efforts and turned into po= licy. We saw quite a bit of panic over one particular recruitment ad last y= ear that represented a young Air Defense Artillery officer, a woman who was= raised in a household with two moms. When we look at the outcomes related = to military recruitment, and how those ads played to the younger generation= , they actually perform very well. So in a way, the military has become a m= icrocosm of some of the larger tensions we see between the ends of the Amer= ican political spectrum.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09The biggest change affecting the military and American at= titudes about it, though, is the lack of an existential threat today. Durin= g the Cold War, we had such a clear, existential threat from a clear enemy.= The last 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan were a lot less black-and= -white, and I think there’s now some question about what role the U.S= . military plays in the world. We certainly saw this with the drawdown in A= fghanistan.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09But there have also been more recent challenges related t= o perceptions of the Covid vaccine and the implementation of the vaccine re= quirements—and to the number of people serving in the military who ch= ose not to get the vaccine, and who therefore needed to be separated from s= ervice. We’ve seen similar challenges in the National Guard. Whether = or not you agree with the vaccine mandates, it was a lawful order that need= ed to be followed. And the military relies on obedience to orders, because = we frequently put military-service members in harm’s way, unlike we d= o people in any civilian role.

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Jeffrey F. Lin

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More from = Katherine Kuzminski at The Signal:

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“Throughout the United States, it&= rsquo;s been almost three years that recruiters haven’t been in high = schools or on college campuses, which is where a lot of American military r= ecruits come from. It’s also been a time when young people have been = putting off major decisions generally, not just in relation to the military= ; an estimated 1.4 million high-school seniors delayed going to college for= a year because of Covid. So the criticism from the right, saying the reaso= n why we’re facing this recruiting shortfall right now has to do with= the military being “too woke”—I think this is a misrepre= sentation of two things that are happening simultaneously as being one thin= g.”

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“There’s a longstanding ethical barri= er to general officers’ or any service members’ involv= ement in political campaigning. They’re not allowed to wear their uni= form, they’re not allowed to speak on behalf of the service, and typi= cally they wouldn’t invoke their rank in the political arena. Where i= t became very challenging during the Trump administration was in the number= of retired general officers speaking in support or on behalf of a presiden= tial candidate. We saw this continue through the inauguration of Joe Biden.= There were public letters with numbers of retired general officers signing= with their rank who were critical of Trump, which doesn’t just go ag= ainst policy; it goes against the traditional ethos of military service in = the officer corps. The way this norm broke in 2016, I think, indicated that= there was already a structural problem—and that regardless of who th= e next Republican nominee is, that break in norms and that structural reali= ty are still with us.”

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=09=09=09=09=09=09“It’s an enduring misconception that the U.S. military is full of conservatives. Jason Dempsey wrote a = book in 2009 called Our Army, which basically found that the milit= ary is more reflective of the outside population than you might think&mdash= ;on a number of metrics, including the diversity of political leanings it r= epresents. We saw this with the criticism of General Mark Milley being call= ed in front of Congress and asked to explain why cadets at West Point [the = United States Military Academy] are reading about critical race theory. The= justification was that military officers need to be prepared to lead a tre= mendously diverse set of students—and that to do so, military officer= s need to be knowledgeable on all the philosophies of the day. Those studen= ts are reading everything from the Federalist Papers to Karl Marx. Teaching= any of these, including critical race theory, doesn’t necessarily me= an that the military is advocating for a theory or belief. This didn’= t play well with the Republican Senators Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley, but it = has led to the formation of an officer corps that’s informed about id= eas, and it results in better leadership at the unit level.”

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The Signal explores urgent que= stions in current events around the world—to support it and for full = access:

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