By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Dangerous New Civil-Military Bargain

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spearheaded a dizzying array of controversial changes at the Pentagon. In late February, he fired General Charles Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the navy chief, as well as top lawyers for the army, navy, and air force. While prioritizing domestic missions at the U.S. border with Mexico—and testing the precedents for military involvement there—Hegseth has ordered the “disestablishment” of the Office of Net Assessment, which supported planning for future wars, including against China. Meanwhile, Hegseth’s campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the Pentagon has led the Defense Department to remove from its websites thousands of images of Black, Latino, and female service members from Arlington National Cemetery’s online memorials as well as references to the Black baseball player Jackie Robinson’s military service and to the Navajo code talkers’ secret operations during World War II. Although some of these images have been restored after a public backlash, vast swaths of less-known military history have been wiped from Defense Department sites. (President Donald Trump is also reportedly planning a four-mile military parade, at an estimated cost of $92 million, to be held on June 14—the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army, which also happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday.)

Each of these measures is shocking on its own. Together, they reveal a much larger transformation unfolding in U.S. civil-military relations. The Pentagon’s civilian leaders are pushing a new bargain with the U.S. military. The uniformed military, resolutely nonpartisan by tradition, tradition, and law, will now be expected to align itself with the administration’s partisan priorities and echo its ideological worldview. Officers will be required to prioritize domestic security operations, including at the border, against cartels and even against U.S. citizens—a significant departure from the military’s core mandate to protect the country from external threats. In exchange, commanders will be given more operational autonomy in overseas conflicts, including permission to disregard civilian casualties when executing their missions.

This new orientation is dangerous for the U.S. military and for the country it serves. A military that is absorbed in controversial internal security missions will lose public trust and be less prepared to protect the United States in wars against foreign adversaries. Military leaders fearful of losing their jobs or of being marginalized will have few incentives to advise their superiors on the risks or costs of military operations that are at odds with the Trump administration’s priorities. And overseas, a permissive attitude toward civilian harm will degrade U.S. influence with allies and partners and could invite significant blowback that damages U.S. national security.

 

Falling Standards

Nonpartisanship is a crucial element of the U.S. military’s professional ethic. Officers are appointed and promoted based on merit, not because they hold particular ideological views or align with a certain party. Past presidents and civilian officials have, for the most part, respected this tradition.

The Pentagon’s current leadership has signaled that it has little time and patience for this tradition, indicating instead that it expects military leaders to fall in line with its ideological worldview. Hegseth has given no clear reasoning for why top officers such as Brown and Franchetti were fired, claiming simply that Brown is “not the right man for the moment.” But there are no reported complaints about either military chief’s performance, and Hegseth’s anti-DEI views loom large. In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth speculated that Brown was made chairman because he is Black and accused him of supporting efforts to increase diversity in the military. The secretary similarly lambasted Franchetti in the book, questioning her qualifications and suggesting that she was given the navy’s top job only because she is a woman.

The Trump administration and some defenders of these moves point to dismissals of military leaders by past presidents, including Barack Obama, whose defense secretary, Robert Gates, replaced General David McKiernan before the United States began its expansive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan in 2009. Yet most of the examples cited, including McKiernan’s ouster, stemmed from differing opinions on military strategy or questions of competence—not differing ideologies.

That distinction became all the more evident when Brown’s replacement was revealed. Trump’s nominee, the retired Air Force lieutenant general Dan Caine, is not an active service member and lacks the experience normally required for the job by law. Although the president can waive the requirement, the chairman is supposed to have previously served as vice chairman, as chief of one of the branches of the armed forces, or as a combatant commander, which Caine has not. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2024, Trump praised Caine, claiming that the lieutenant general had told him: “I love you, sir. I think you're great, sir. I'll kill for you, sir,” and had then donned a “Make America Great Again” hat. It is not clear that this interaction actually took place or that Caine has ever behaved unprofessionally. But in keeping with many of the new administration’s hiring decisions, Caine’s appointment seems primarily motivated by his perceived loyalty to Trump.

Under Hegseth, the Defense Department’s new civilian leadership is sending a message that an ideological worldview is now grounds for being fired and hired in the U.S. military. Talented officers might be disqualified from promotions simply because they have acknowledged that service members have varied backgrounds or that racial or gender bias exists in the military.

 

“The Enemy from Within”

The Pentagon’s civilian leadership is driving another, less publicized change. It is laying the groundwork for the military to take on a much larger role in domestic security. Although the regular military has occasionally participated in civil disturbance missions and natural disaster relief at home, it has mostly focused on external threats.

Foremost among these internal security roles is the Defense Department’s growing involvement in immigration enforcement, following Trump’s declaration on January 20 of a national emergency at the southern border. Since Hegseth’s confirmation four days later, the defense secretary has repeatedly emphasized immigration in his public remarks about the department’s priorities under his leadership. As he put it in early February, “Border security is national security, and that . . . needs to be and will be a focus of this department.”

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, and even before Hegseth had been confirmed, the Pentagon sent new troops, helicopters, and aircraft to the border with Mexico under the authority of the U.S. Northern Command, which typically oversees military operations within the continental United States. The administration has used costly military aircraft, including C-17s and C-130s, to deport migrants in order to send a message about the seriousness of its approach to immigration. Migrants have also been detained in facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which was used to hold suspected terrorists after 9/11, and the Pentagon has been building facilities on military bases in the United States to house migrants apprehended in raids until they can be deported.

According to the Pentagon, more than 6,600 active-duty troops are currently involved in border security. In early March, the administration sent a Stryker Brigade (a mechanized infantry force of approximately 4,400 soldiers) to the southern border and dispatched two naval guided-missile destroyers to assist in the mission; one of the destroyers, the Spruance, was recently used to defend international shipping lanes from Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Although such warships occasionally help interdict drugs in international waters, the use of naval assets for domestic border control is very unusual. To coordinate the Defense Department’s efforts at the border, the U.S. Northern Command has also established a new joint task force at Fort Huachuca, an army installation in southeastern Arizona.

So far, the military’s border mission has been limited to supporting the efforts of federal and state authorities, which it has the legal authority to do. But the legal boundaries are being tested. Although the military can help build and manage facilities for migrants, the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law passed in 1878, prohibits the use of regular military forces in most domestic law enforcement functions, including the apprehension of undocumented migrants. At the end of March, the Pentagon also authorized active-duty service members to carry out patrols on foot or with military vehicles and to transport civilian border control agents.

According to The Washington Post, Pentagon officials are discussing the possibility of creating a temporary military installation on an existing 60-foot buffer zone that was established in 1907 on federal land for border security in the Southwestern desert. This would enable service members to detain migrants who enter that buffer zone.

Trump’s January 20 executive order declaring a national emergency at the southern border included a mandate for officials at the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to report by April 20 on whether the 1807 Insurrection Act will need to be invoked to control immigration. That law was last invoked in 1992, during the Los Angeles riots. If Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, the military would be exempted from the Posse Comitatus restrictions, enabling it to apprehend migrants and perform other civilian law enforcement functions.

The military is also increasingly involved in domestic security operations against the Mexican cartels that direct much of the drug and human trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump has long expressed interest in taking military action against Latin American cartels and has designated eight of them, including six from Mexico, as terrorist organizations. In his joint address to Congress in early March, the president stated that it was time for the United States to “wage war on the cartels.”

As part of that effort, the U.S. Northern Command is now flying sophisticated surveillance aircraft normally used against foreign adversaries over parts of the southern United States and in international waters to gather information on cartel activity. Green Berets are training alongside Mexico’s elite marine infantry units in conventional and nonconventional combat techniques. Members of the Tenth Mountain Division, a light infantry force trained for war, are using ground-based radar systems to spot and track cartel-owned drones at the border. Some Trump administration officials are advocating an even more aggressive role for the U.S. military, including unilaterally attacking cartels without seeking the Mexican government’s approval, according to The New York Times. In a preview of what may come, Mike Waltz, then a member of Congress and now Trump’s national security adviser, introduced legislation in 2023 to enable the U.S. military to mount operations against the cartels.

There may soon be an even darker side to the civilian leadership’s push for the U.S. military to become involved in domestic security missions—one that targets the administration’s political opponents. In October, Trump called some who oppose him “the enemy from within” and raised the specter of using the military against them. “We have some sick people, radical left lunatics,” he told Fox News. “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” He has also spoken of sending the military into Democrat-run cities and states to combat crime. Troops might also be used to confront and forcibly disperse citizens protesting in the streets. During Hegseth’s confirmation hearings, the Democratic senators Elissa Slotkin and Mazie Hirono asked about the nominee’s views on using the military to suppress peaceful protests. Hegseth repeatedly skirted the questions but refused to rule out using the military for such purposes. In 2021, Trump himself expressed regret, in an interview with the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, for not “immediately” sending the military into the streets during the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, and he has warned that the next time he faces large protests, he will not exercise such restraint.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tours a military base, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, March 2025

 

Broken Guardrails

The Pentagon is meanwhile offering major “concessions” to military commanders, releasing them from what some civilian officials portray as needless oversight of and concern with protecting civilian lives in carrying out military missions. Hegseth has long expressed skepticism about the need to protect civilians in war. In 2019, he lobbied Trump to pardon Clint Lorance, an army lieutenant who was convicted of having committed war crimes in 2012 in Afghanistan, and Mathew Golsteyn, an army major who was charged with the 2010 killing of an Afghan man, as well as to restore the rank of the Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of committing war crimes while serving in Iraq in 2017. Since becoming secretary, Hegseth has de-prioritized the military’s adherence to the laws of war that are designed to limit civilian harm in armed conflict but, in his view, unnecessarily constrain soldiers on the battlefield. In early March, Hegseth gutted the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program, which assists commanders in accomplishing their missions while minimizing civilian deaths and responding to those that occur.

When he fired Brown and Franchetti in February, he also called for nominations to replace the top lawyers in the army, air force, and navy who are in charge of advising the service chiefs about legal issues affecting their forces, including the laws of war and civilian protection. Hegseth explained that the dismissals were part of an effort to remove “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” In March, Hegseth commissioned his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a reserve officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he will oversee the retraining of military judges. Parlatore first became widely known for his successful defense of Gallagher against war crimes accusations. Parlatore is may encourage a more lenient attitude within the JAG Corps in advice provided to commanders about the laws of war.

While signaling that he may be willing to countenance greater risk to civilians, Hegseth has also expanded the operational autonomy of military commanders. In February, he delegated greater authority over the conduct of counterterrorism missions from the Pentagon to combatant commanders, including the conduct of air strikes and special operations raids, while simultaneously increasing the list of targets eligible for attack. These powers cut through the layers of approval that such missions required from the Pentagon and White House under President Joe Biden and give commanders more latitude to decide when and how to carry out their missions, including when to risk that civilians will be killed.

Loosening adherence to the laws of war may help some commanders achieve tactical objectives such as expeditiously attacking a target or taking out terrorist leaders. But killing civilians in the course of military missions comes with serious strategic risks. It can turn local populations against the United States and alienate allies and partners. It undermines the U.S. military’s considerable soft power around the world. Indeed, in addition to the moral basis for maintaining restraint and limiting civilian harm in war, there is an equally powerful strategic rationale.

To be sure, this delegation of authority does not amount to a blank check to kill civilians, nor does it mean that military commanders will disregard the laws of war. But it does create new risks. Commanders seeking to achieve their tactical objectives quickly and effectively might be more willing to accept greater costs to civilians in choosing targets and carrying out missions.

 

Bad Bargain

The bargain that the Pentagon’s new civilian leadership is pushing on the U.S. military is a bad deal for the country—and for the military itself. Subject to partisan litmus tests, military leaders might be wary of offering advice that contradicts the administration’s priorities. They may skew their views toward what the president wants to hear rather than what objective assessments say about the costs, risks, and benefits of military operations, from the war in Ukraine to air strikes on the Houthis. That reticence could conceivably involve suppressing concerns about how the U.S. military’s increasing involvement in domestic missions is placing strains on resources and readiness.

The civilian Pentagon leadership’s prioritization of internal security missions will take time and attention away from external challenges that are more in the military’s traditional wheelhouse, including in the Asia-Pacific. That distraction will be even greater if the military’s growing domestic role, or its permissive new approach to weighing civilian harm in overseas operations, embroils it in public controversy. To avoid these potentially destabilizing effects, military leaders will need to explain what the country stands to lose if the military devotes excess time, resources, and attention to domestic operations and fails to adhere carefully to the laws of war.

Defense experts must raise the alarm about the Trump administration’s emerging vision for the U.S. military. The military has a nonpartisan tradition for a reason. It enables officers to offer candid advice to the administration, ensuring an unbiased vetting of decisions on the use of force. Nonpartisanship also helps the military maintain the public’s trust. If Trump and Hegseth succeed in imposing their new bargain, the U.S. military will no longer excel at its main purpose: defending American citizens against serious threats from abroad.

 

 

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