By Adam McConnel
ISTANBUL
During the past month, while all of us in Turkey waited with bated breath and a sense of foreboding for Donald Trump’s Secretary of State choice, the President-elect was busy filling out the rest of his Cabinet.
Most of the picks are causing wide concern and debate, for a variety of reasons, but one of the most prominent topics is Trump’s apparent preference for retired brass.
Thus far Trump has tabbed three former high-ranking officers for security posts: James Mattis as Secretary of Defense; John Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Defense; and Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor.
Contrary to assumptions held by some, American military figures have a long history of serving in political roles after their careers as soldiers. Despite this, the subject of military influence in politics always raises hackles in the U.S. because civilian politicians protect their turf aggressively.
Neither martial glory nor “stars and bars” will guarantee a smooth ride in Congress or in the press.
Former military figures entering politics go all the way back to the Republic’s foundation. George Washington, the most famous of the U.S.’s “founding fathers,” was a general during the American Revolutionary War and then eased into the role of the newly-founded state’s first leader for eight years.
Ulysses S. Grant, who ended the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) as commanding general of the Union forces, was elected to two terms as president less than five years after the conflict, the bloodiest in U.S. history.
Theodore Roosevelt’s exploits during the Spanish-American War helped establish his public reputation. After being elected William McKinley’s vice president in 1900, he became president when McKinley was assassinated in late 1901. Roosevelt then won the 1904 presidential election outright.
George C. Marshall, the prominent U.S. general and career officer who helped organize the Allied victory over the Nazis in WWII, later served as both Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense even though he professed strong personal aversion to politics.
Dwight D. Eisenhower served as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during WWII, and planned the D-Day invasion (Operation Overlord); he later rode his WWII successes to electoral victory and two terms as U.S. President in the 1950s.
Famously, when Eisenhower ended his presidency in January 1961, he warned of a “military-industrial complex” that exerted growing influence over U.S. political decisions.
George H. W. Bush fought as a soldier in WWII long before becoming Ronald Reagan’s vice president in 1980. In 1988, Bush was then elected president.
In sum, there are many precedents for former military figures to take even the highest political positions in the U.S. civilian political hierarchy.
Despite those examples, the admission of soldiers into the ranks of U.S. civilian politicians has always been a prickly subject. That’s why President-elect Donald Trump’s apparent fondness for retired military figures is causing controversy, so much so that Politico published a long piece last Friday on Trump’s ex-military picks and the reaction from America’s chattering classes.
The article explains that Trump may appoint as many as five former military officers to cabinet positions, which raises even Republican eyebrows.
The Politico article’s [1] most interesting aspect is the remarks from sources close to Trump that provided anonymous comments. All of them describe a President-elect who has been starry-eyed about the U.S. forces since his youthful experience with a military high school in New York.
The impression emerging from the article is that hidden under the blustering real-estate mogul exterior is a wannabe soldier who displays impetuous behavior and rash decisions. Trump apparently sees in military figures what he imagines himself to be.
Adding to the concern are Trump’s apparent fantasies about the nature of military power. Among Trump’s most-loved films, according to a number of different reports, is Patton. That 1970 film, starring George C. Scott, is the famous Hollywood adaptation of the life of one of WWII’s U.S. generals.
Patton is less well-known outside of the U.S., but domestically he was eventually idolized by some for his gruff, combative, no-nonsense approach to the business of killing other human beings.
The situation becomes even more unpleasant when the attitudes of other Trump Cabinet appointees are considered. If we include to the gung-ho, military flavor of Trump and his officer-secretaries plus the anti-Muslim comments from a number of other Trump appointees, a truly disturbing image emerges.
A number of Trump’s appointees have publicly professed anti-Muslim views [2] including National Security Advisor pick Michael Flynn [3], who authored a book on “radical Islam” with Michael Ledeen, a prominent American Enterprise Institute neoconservative.
Ben Carson, chosen by Trump to be his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has made a number of questionable statements concerning Islam [4]. Overall, callous militarism and reactionary anti-Islamic sentiments are foremost components of the Trump Cabinet profile that has emerged so far.
Now Rex Tillerson, named Trump’s Secretary of State choice on Tuesday, is joining this mix. Tillerson is the CEO of Exxon Mobil. His career at the giant petroleum company gained him extensive overseas experience, but in pursuit of the world’s most important commodity. What approach will he bring to Turkey’s region as the Secretary of State?
At the moment, there is no cause to believe that U.S. civil-military relations will change as a result of Trump’s ex-military appointments. After all, Eisenhower made his famous warning more than 50 years ago, and the nexus between the military and politics has only deepened since.
Trump’s ex-military picks do not appear to be a radical shift towards military influence over civilian political decisions, or at least nothing dramatically different than what the past 50 years already featured.
But the combination of a President with a superficial understanding of war, prominent hawkish military advisors, a Secretary of State with oil-based conflicts of interest, and rampant anti-Muslim sentiments among Cabinet members comprises a deeply unsettling scene.
The tendency for not only Trump, but also other figures close to him and his appointees to give conflicting statements to the press and to shift opinions according to political expediency makes predicting the eventual stance of Trump’s government towards Turkey, its region and the Muslim world extremely difficult. But what we’ve witnessed so far is not auspicious.
Starting Jan. 20 we’ll begin to find out what we’re in for.
* Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu Agency's editorial policy.
[1] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-generals-cabinet-232396
[2] http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-appointments-full-list-anti-muslim-cabinet-picks-2453259; http://www.vox.com/world/2016/11/16/13638606/trump-secretary-state-defense-giuliani-bolton-islam-terrorism
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-national-security-adviser-donald-trump.html
[4] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/27/politics/ben-carson-muslim-president-sharia-law; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-anti-muslim-trump-hud-secretary_us_5845a56be4b055b313986a43
