Pentagon in turmoil

The Pentagon, one of the big spenders in the US government, is shell-shocked. It’s facing the most comprehensive overhaul in its history and under the leadership of a Fox News TV presenter. President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old military veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has given notice to the two and a half million military and civilian staff that radical changes are coming. Pentagon staff have been warned that their jobs are vulnerable., and insider sources reveal there is a growing atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Certain branches of the huge defence department complex are being targeted for cuts, and lists are being drawn up by the Trump transition team for the purging of three-star and four-star military officers who are considered inadequate for the command posts. Civilian staff are also being targeted. “A lot of career civil servants are getting telephone calls from the Trump team telling them their time in the job is going to be limited. But these are the people who keep everything going while the political appointees settle in,” an insider source said. “People are being identified for cuts and the whole atmosphere is intimidating. It’s causing a real morale slump, everyone is worrying about their jobs, their mortgages and their livelihoods,” the source said. “These are devoted civil servants who want to serve their nation but their jobs now seem to depend on their demonstrating loyalty to the incoming president and not to the constitution as it should be,” the insider said. Branches of the Pentagon being earmarked for cuts or closure, according to the source, include the section supporting the Ukraine contact group, the coalition of US-led nations which has been masterminding the flow of weapons to the Kyiv government. The announcement by Trump that he had chosen Hegseth as his defence secretary was greeted with astonishment. “Choosing someone who has never managed an organisation more complex than an infantry platoon[as a captain in the National Guard] is certainly a novel choice. But hey, he’s double Ivy Leagued [Princeton University and Harvard] and certainly meets Trump’s demand for men in his orbit to be from central casting,” one Pentagon source said. “But does any of that qualify him to manage the world’s largest, most complex bureaucracy? Absolutely not,” the source said. With a budget of $842 billion there will be rich pickings for Trump and his defence secretary. If Hegseth’s appointment is confirmed by the Senate, he is also expected to axe perceived “woke” policies. Included in the potential list of “woke” policies are: women in combat roles, travel payments for female military staff seeking reproductive treatment (abortions, terminations) who need to go across state lines to find clinics prepared to carry them out; and the presence of transgenders in the forces. One question being asked inside the Pentagon is whether Trump will try to remove General Charles Q Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who is an African-American, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, the first woman to hold this position. “General Brown raised concerns [when he was Pacific Air Forces commander]. about the killing by a white police officer of George Floyd (an African American] in 2020.Will this be considered woke and be held against him?” a defence source asked. `Key to the Trump doctrine will be loyalty to him as commander-in-chief. In his first term as president, he once reportedly questioned why he couldn’t have generals like Adolf Hitler, claiming they were obedient, according to Bob Woodward in his latest book, War. This followed his challenging experience dealing with General Jim Mattis, his first defence secretary, and General John Kelly, his chief of staff. Will Trump expect obedience from the military chiefs if he orders active troops to take part in deporting illegal immigrants? “I expect civil-military relations to be a major source of tension as the Trump administration comes into office,” Eric Edelman, a former top defence policy official at the Pentagon, said. “It may be as early as the first week when he tries to tap DoD [department of defence] assets to help with mass deportations which will bring into its wake a number of legal issues,” he said. “Moreover, there is a move afoot to pluck out general officers [as reported in the Wall Street Journal] which will raise enormous concerns about the politicisation of the military. All in all, a very alarming prospect,” Edelman said. As a signal of the likely conflict of interest between loyalty to the president and loyalty to the constitution, Lloyd Austin, the outgoing defence secretary, reminded everyone in the military in a letter of their obligation to defend the constitution. “As it always has, the US military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next commander-in-chief and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” Austin wrote. Underlining his message, Austin’s press secretary, Major-General Pat Ryder said:”The department will continue to stand apart from the political arena.” “A service member’s oath of allegiance is to the constitution and the constitution alone,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former US Army officer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “An officer who believes he or she cannot execute a legal policy order to the best of their ability should resign,” he said. ends