In the summer of 2017, just six months after taking the White House, Donald Trump flew to Paris for a Bastille Day celebration hosted by France's new president, Emmanuel Macron. Macron staged a spectacular military show to commemorate the centenary of America's entry into World War I. As fighter jets roared overhead, old-fashioned tanks rolled down the Champs Elysées. The campaign seems to be meant to appeal to Trump — his ostentatiousness and pompousness — and he's clearly happy. The French general in charge of the parade turned to one of his American counterparts and said, "You're going to do it next year." ”
Sure enough, Trump returned to Washington, determined to have his generals hold the largest and grandest military parade ever held on July 4. To his bewilderment, the generals reacted with disgust. "I'd rather swallow acid," his defense secretary, James Mattis, said. Officials have worked hard to dissuade Trump, noting that the march will cost millions of dollars and tear up streets in the capital.
But the gulf between Trump and the generals is not really money or practicality, just as their endless policy struggle is not just a clash of views on whether to withdraw troops from Afghanistan or how to deal with the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran. Disagreements are also a matter of values, namely how they view America itself. That couldn't have been clearer when Trump told his new chief of staff, John Kelly — like retired Marine Corps General Mattis — about his vision for Independence Day. "Listen, I don't want anyone injured in the march," Trump said. "It doesn't look good for me." He explained with disgust that at the Bastille Day parade, there were several groups of wounded veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who lost limbs in combat.
Kelly couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Those are heroes," he told Trump. "There is only one group of people in our society who are more heroic than they are – they are buried in Arlington." Kelly did not mention his own son, Robert, a lieutenant killed in Afghanistan, as one of those buried there.
"I don't want them," Trump repeated. "It doesn't look good for me."
The topic resurfaced at an Oval Office briefing attended by Trump, Kelly and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kelly was expressionless and joking about the parade. "Well, you know, General Selva will be in charge of organizing the march on July 4," he told the president. Trump didn't understand that Kelly was being sarcastic. "So, what do you think of the parade?" Trump asked Selva. Selva did not tell Trump what he wanted to hear, but was blunt.
"I didn't grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal," Selva said. "Portugal is a dictatorship – the parade is meant to be shown to people with guns. And in this country, we're not going to do that. He added, "It's not who we are. ”
Even after this impassioned speech, Trump still didn't get it. "So, you don't like the idea?" He said in disbelief.
"No," Selva said. "This is what dictators do."
The four years of Trump's presidency have been characterized by extreme instability: outrages, late-night Twitter storms, sudden dismissals. At first, Trump avoided the draft by claiming to have bone spurs, and he seemed obsessed with serving as commander-in-chief and the national security officials he appointed or inherited. But Trump's love affair with "my generals" was short-lived, and in the post's statement, the former president confirmed how much he disliked them over time. "These are very untalented people, and once I realized that, I stopped relying on them and on the real generals in the system," he said.
It turns out that generals have rules, standards, and expertise, not blind loyalty. The president's one-day loud complaint to John Kelly was typical: "You damn generals, why can't you be like German generals?" ”
"Which general?" Kelly asked.
"A German general in World War II," Trump responded.
"Do you know that they killed Hitler three times and almost succeeded?" Kelly said.
But, of course, Trump doesn't know that. "No, no, no, they are totally loyal to him," the president replied. In his historical version, the generals of the Third Reich were completely subservient to Hitler. It was the model of the army he wanted. Kelly told Trump that there was no such American general, but the president was determined to test the offer.
By the end of 2018, Trump wanted his own hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's tired of Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, who was appointed chairman by Barack Obama, and he's worked closely with Mattis as they resisted some of Trump's more outlandish ideas. Never mind that Dunford had most of the year left in his tenure. For months, David Urban, a lobbyist who won the 2016 Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, has been urging the president and his inner circle to replace Dunford with a more like-minded chairman who is less at odds with Mattis, who once commanded Dunford and Kelly in the Marine Corps.
Matisse's candidate to succeed Dunford was David Goldfain, an Air Force general and a former F-16 fighter pilot who was shot down in the Balkans and managed to escape capture. No one remembers that the president chose the chairman against the defense secretary, but the Pentagon has again sent word that Trump cannot accept just one proposal. However, two visible contenders from the Army refused to be considered: General Curtis Scarparrotti, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, told colleagues that "I have no oil in my tank" in response to becoming Trump's chairman. The commander of Central Command, Gen. Joseph Waterer, also asked to leave, telling a colleague that he was not fit to work so closely with Matisse.
Urban has attended West Point with Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and has always been a soldier at heart, supporting Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley. Milley, then 60 years old, was the son of a naval soldier who had served in the 4th Marine Division on Iwo Jima. He grew up outside Boston and played hockey in Princeton. As an Army officer, Milley commanded troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, led the 10th Mountain Division, and oversaw army force command. As a history student who often carries a bunch of the latest books on World War II, Milley is clearly not closely linked to Trump's first two years of dominating national security policy
Member of the Marine Corps Brotherhood. Urban told the president that he would better connect with Millie, who was talkative and blunt to the point of rudeness.
As Army Chief of Staff, Milley has demonstrated these qualities in his meeting with Trump. Millikin would rightly explain why it's important for the president to understand the Army and why the Army is the one that wins all nations wars. He had all those elevator speeches," recalled one senior defense official. "He'd make a loud roar and face him with all the one-line words, and then he'd take a deep breath and he'd say, 'Sir. President, our military is here for you. Because you are the commander-in-chief. It's a very different approach, and Trump likes it. And, like Trump, Millie is not a subscriber to the Mad Dog Mattis legend, who he sees as a "total control freak."
For his part, Mattis seemed to think it was inappropriate for Millie to run for the job, and Millie recalled to others that Matisse confronted him at a reception that fall that year, saying, "Hey, you shouldn't be running for office." You should not run for president. Millie later told people that he was sharp in his response to Matisse, "I'm not lobbying for anything fucking." I don't do that. Millie eventually raised the issue with Dunford. "Hey, Matisse has thought of this," Millie told him. "I'll tell you, it's not me." Milley even claimed he had pleaded with Urban to stop publicizing his candidacy.
In November 2018, the day before Milley was scheduled to give an interview with Trump, he and Mattis had another heated confrontation at the Pentagon. When Milley later told others about the incident, Mattis urged him to tell Trump that he wanted to be Europe's next allied supreme commander, not chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley said he wouldn't do that and would wait to hear what the president wanted him to do. This would end any relationship between the two generals.
The next day, when Millie arrived at the White House, Kelly received him, and to him, Kelly seemed unusually distraught. Before they headed to the Oval Office to meet Trump, Millie asked Kelly what he thought.
"You should go to Europe and get out of Washington," Kelly said. The White House is a sinkhole: "Stay as far away as possible." ”
In the Oval Office, Trump said from the outset that he was considering having Milley chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Trump offered him the job, Millie replied, "Sir." President, whatever you ask me to do, I will do. ”
For the next hour, they talked about the state of the world. Immediately, deep points of disagreement emerged. On Afghanistan, Milley said he believes the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, as Trump had hoped, would raise a series of serious new problems. Milley has publicly opposed the ban on Trump's insistence on transgender troops.
---- pay attention to the daily update of the editor