The US military is caught up in the turbulence of Trump’s re-election campaign – whether it likes it or not

America is facing its most crucial election in the country’s recent history and that is why this is so important

For any other US president to mock members of the armed forces who had fallen in the service of their country as “losers” and “suckers” would be astonishingly shocking. But then no other American president has been like Donald Trump.

Thus reports – denied by the White House – of Trump’s insulting remarks while refusing to go and pay his respects at an American military cemetery during a visit to France was met with resignation more than anything else. The condemnations which came were tinged with tiredness. As Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America asked “who is really surprised by this?”

The antipathy between Trump and the military is particularly remarkable because of the sheer degree of infatuation he had with them at the start of his presidency. Trump was fulsome in praise towards them and appointed former commanders to senior positions in his administration. But relations soured, with these men soon despairing of Trump’s policies, behaviour and morals.

By October 2017 there were accounts of three of the generals – James Mattis, John Kelly and HR McMaster – having a pact not to be abroad at the same time. At least one will stay behind, they had decided, as a check against the wilder actions of the president.

But then, one by one, the commanders gave up and left. Trump, who avoided the Vietnam draft by claiming he had bone-spurs, began disparaging men and women who had faced danger and served the nation in wars through his tweets. His “army” increasingly began to be fringe right-wing civilian militias. Armed groups who like dressing up as soldiers and some of whose members are Walter Mittys – with fanciful accounts of serving in special forces.

But there is now more than just a broken relationship at stake. With the US facing its most crucial election in the country’s recent history, the role the armed forces may play has become of immense importance. The president, lagging behind in the polls, is seemingly preparing the ground for rejecting defeat by claiming the polls will be crooked. The White House’s spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, has refused to confirm that Trump will even accept the result.

There is great apprehension about the chances of vote suppression with Trump’s constant attacks on mail voting, the role of the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor,  as well as the very real prospect of the vigilantes the President encourages carrying out intimidation at polling stations. These armed groups have been increasingly in the news as they have begun to confront Black Lives Matters protests.

The extraordinary times have led to the prospect of extraordinary scenarios with Joe Biden saying that he is confident that  the military will intervene  if there are attempts to “steal the election” by Trump.  “I promise you, I am absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch” the Democrat candidate told The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah.

Two retired officers, Lieutenant Colonels John Nagi and Paul Yingling, well known for their scholarship on the US armed forces, have written an open letter to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, stating: “if Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of the constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.”

General Milley, writing in response to questions on the issue from two members of the House Armed Services Committee, maintained: “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law US courts and US Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the US military… I do not see the US military as part of the process”.

Milley said he was upholding “the principle of an apolitical US military”. But the general has already been caught up in politics. He appeared in combat fatigues when federal security forces using tear gas and baton rounds outside the White House on peaceful protestors, so that Trump could be pictured holding up a Bible outside a church. Milley apologised after widespread criticism, saying his presence was a “mistake” and “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

Admiral Mike Mullen, a predecessor of General Milley as chairman of the joint chiefs, has spoken of his dismay at the use of security forces against demonstrators. “We must, as citizens, address head-on the issue of police brutality and sustained injustices against the African-American community. We must, as citizens, support and defend the right – indeed, the solemn obligation – to peacefully assemble and to be heard. These are not mutually exclusive pursuits," he said. "And neither of these pursuits will be made easier or safer by an overtly aggressive use of our military, active duty or National Guard”.

Other highly senior officers have accused Trump of deliberately creating instability, sowing division and discord.

General John Allen, who was the commander in Afghanistan, wrote in in Foreign Affairs magazine: "the slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020. Remember the date. It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment. It wasn’t enough that peaceful protestors had just been deprived of their first-amendment rights – this photo-op sough to legitimise that abuse with a layer of religion.”

The ethos Trump espoused, claimed  General Mattis, were those of a totalitarian state, not a democracy. With the nation in peril, Mattis recalled the message sent to US forces as they prepared to storm the beaches of Normandy in 1944 . “The Nazi slogan for destroying us… was ‘divide and conquer’. Our American answer is ‘in Union there is strength’. We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis – confident that we are better than our politics” He wrote in The Atlantic magazine.

“We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make mockery of our constitution… Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,” he added.

 Admiral William McRaven of the Navy Seals, in charge of the operation which killed Osama Bin Laden, applauded his fellow commanders for speaking out ."We all raise our right hands and swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States. It is not to the president of the United States. It is to the Constitution” he said, while waiting to stress that “there was nothing moral” in using security forces" to clear peaceful American citizens for the president of the United States to do a photo op".

General John Kelly, the then White House chief of staff, was with Trump on the France trip when the president allegedly spoke of troops killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers”.  Kelly also accompanied Trump on a visit to Arlington National Cemetery three years ago when he stopped to pay his respect to his son, Lieutenant Robert Kelly, a marine who was killed in Afghanistan.  “I don’t get it, what was in it for them?”  A puzzled Trump was said to have remarked to the general about his son.

Kelly, too, condemned the use of force during the protests. His friends and former army colleagues have been urging him to also speak out, on the record, about Trump’s remarks about soldiers who had sacrificed their lives.

The call for former commanders to do their utmost to expose and oppose Trump continues. But what happens next? “Dear General Mattis and General Kelly. Trump or country. It’s time. You have to choose”, tweeted Don Winslow, the acclaimed award winning novelist this week.  

Officials say they expect thousands of armed Trump supporting militia to arrive in Washington to “defend their president” at the time of the election with the obvious possibility of violent clashes.

Trump may call on the armed forces to be deployed again, as he had done before during the protests. In June Defence Secretary Mark Esper, a former army officer, reflecting the views of serving senior officers, announced that the armed forces should not be used in civil protests and ordered soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division back to their bases from Washington.

But Esper was made to reverse his decision after being hauled into the White House, a retreat that may have saved his job for a while. The president will demand that his orders are followed if he wants to send in the troops in the future. 

The American military, whether it likes it or not, is likely to be caught up in the turbulence expected to unfold in this most momentous of elections.