US’s polarization affecting military ability to remain apolitical, says former joint chiefs chair

The US’s sharpening ideological polarization is affecting a wider and much more junior cross-section of the country’s armed forces and challenging the military’s ability to remain above the political fray, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has said.

Retired Adm Mike Mullen, who was the US’s top military commander under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, called the political environment facing currently serving officers “challenging” and “the most dangerous time” in his memory.

Speaking at a security forum organized by the Aspen Institute thinktank on Wednesday, he warned that it had become much harder to maintain the armed forces’ traditional apolitical stance than when he served as joint chiefs chair between 2007 and 2011.

“I didn’t really understand how hard [the civilian-military relationship] was until I was in the middle of it,” he said. “I talked about the military being apolitical a lot in those four year and it’s only gotten harder. We have gotten so much more divided.”

Mullen’s comments follow accusations that the Trump administration has consciously sought to politicize the military by purging senior commanders and by deploying national guard units on unaccustomed law and order missions in American cities, including Washington DC, to counteract supposed “crime waves”.

“In recent history, the political world has been the purview of the chairman [and] the vice-chairman … very few individuals [in the military], honestly, including myself, are ready for that, because we haven’t grown up in it,” Mullen said.

“The challenge now is that pool has gotten a lot deeper and a lot wider, and it involves a much larger number of the military leadership than it used to – down to, in some cases, one or two stars. It’s a much more difficult world politically than it was back then.”

He questioned the basis for sacking several leading officers, including Gen CQ Brown, his successor as chairman of the joint chiefs, as well as Adm Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of the navy, saying that terminated officers would have loyally served under Donald Trump.

“There’s a view from the administration that these are individuals that they did not want serving for them,” he said. “There is some mystery behind why some of this happened, and there are surmised reasons but the [suggested] opposition to the president just that just is not true.

“On the 20th of January … we pivot to whoever the new president is and the new administration, and that’s who we follow. Those are the policies that we execute, whether we personally like them or not.”

He said the sudden changes in senior personal had unsettled junior ranks and left “the troops hanging”.

“I teach at the Naval Academy [in Annapolis] and I’ve seen it there. I know it’s happened at the Air Force Academy as well,” he said, adding that broad cadres of politically inexperienced officers now faced having to navigate a politicized environment in which they fear making mistakes could be costly.

Mullen also criticized a recent video made by six congressional Democrats who previously served in the military that appealed to currently serving personnel to resist “illegal orders.” The six have since said they are being investigated by the FBI

“There isn’t anybody serving at the high level [or] way beyond that doesn’t know you don’t have to follow an unlawful order,” Mullen said. “We just don’t need that from either side, quite frankly, because we need to be an apolitical outfit.”

Mullen, who had a reputation as being outspoken when he chaired the joint chiefs, criticized Trump during his first presidency for using the military to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Square, near the White House, to accommodate a visit to St John’s Church.

“It sickened me,” he wrote in the Atlantic in an article headlined “I cannot remain silent” and warned of the dangers of the military “being co-opted for political purposes”.

“I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform,” he wrote. “They will serve with skill and with compassion. They will obey lawful orders. But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief.”