Things are getting back to normal at the Pentagon, the new normal that is — a world in which no military plan or policy survives its first contact with the president.
During the first two years of Trump’s presidency, the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, progressively stepped back from the time-honored tradition of conducting regular public briefings by an official representative to inform the press, and by extension the American public, how and why U.S. forces were engaged in dangerous, deadly missions around the world.
The reason offered for this pullback was that in this hyperconnected age of social media, it was necessary to keep more routine information secret, lest it provides some advantage to the enemy.
But the real reason became more evident as weeks turned into months, and months into more than a year with no briefings.
The U.S. military, which under another bedrock American tradition is apolitical and subservient to its civilian masters, could not afford to be always out of step, or worse, contradicting its mercurial commander in chief.
From his first months in office and through the present day, President Trump regularly blindsides the Pentagon, neither seeking nor following the advice of its civilian or uniformed leaders. Instead, he relies on what he has called his “great and unmatched wisdom” to guide his decisions.
Unable to defend, or sometimes even explain, the president’s surprise policy pronouncements, the Pentagon’s press operations went dormant, adopting the unofficial mantra “the less said, the better.”
Trump clearly believes he is his own best spokesman, and in the same way, he eventually killed the daily White House press briefings and the routine Pentagon briefings. He continually upstaged the administration’s civilian and military leaders while often keeping them in the dark.
Whether it was because of Trump’s demand for a Bastille Day-style military parade, his sudden reversal by tweet of transgender troop policies, his cancellation of vital military exercises with South Korea, or the unexpected announcement of his Space Force, the Pentagon was in constant damage control mode forced by hits no one saw coming.
Mattis was in an impossible spot, writes his former chief speechwriter Guy Snodgrass in his just-published book, Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis.
“It would be political suicide to admit Trump was catching us off guard, but anything less than complete honesty with the press would imperil Mattis’ reputation as an ethically spotless leader,” Snodgrass writes.
Mattis was often insisting he wasn’t at odds with Trump, dismissing the suggestion with some form of “If I say six and the president says half a dozen, they are going to say we disagree.”
“I always liked his response,” Snodgrass said on CNN. “He just knew to stay circumspect to the maximum extent possible.”
Enter Mark Esper, not yet four months on the job as defense secretary, who, when confronted about his starkly different description of the mission of U.S. forces in eastern Syria, resorted to the same phraseology.
“It’s, you know, half-dozen, six,” he said.
Esper insists U.S. troops are protecting Syrian oil for the benefit of the Kurds while Trump says the United States will be keeping revenue from the oil to pay for the deployment and maybe giving some to the Kurds.
Esper took office in July with a promise to bring back regular briefings, not just with a representative, but also with the Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and top commanders such as U.S. Central Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie, who oversaw the raid to get Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
And he’s kept his promise so far, but it wasn’t long before the same inconvenient disconnect between Trump and the Pentagon became apparent.
Public on-camera briefings immediately put senior Pentagon leaders in the awkward position of contradicting their boss while at the same time trying not to give offense.
While Trump described his decision to abandon the Kurds as a masterstroke that lead to a “great outcome,” Esper called Turkey’s assault on the Kurds an “unwarranted incursion, which has brought further instability to the region.”
Then, there was Trump’s colorful but unsupported account that ISIS leader Baghdadi died “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” which Esper, Milley, and McKenzie all had to admit they knew nothing about.
The inevitable shift in policy from one day to the next between Trump and the Pentagon goes a long way in explaining why anyone who works for the president is better off just letting him run the show.
But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, says retired Marine Col. David Lapan, who was a Pentagon spokesman under Obama and a Homeland Security spokesman under Trump.
At a conference for military reporters and editors last month, Lapan said it’s a message he tries to impress on both new and veteran public affairs officers at the U.S. military’s Defense Information School at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
“What they’re seeing now is not normal,” said Lapan. “In the schoolhouse, they’re teaching the building blocks. They’re teaching ‘maximum disclosure, minimum delay, engaging’ — and then they’re watching what’s happening at the Pentagon and going, ‘Wait a second, these things don’t match.’ And I’m there to tell them, now that that I’m not uniform, ‘No they don’t.'”
“Don’t see what’s going on at the Pentagon now as being the way you should conduct business,” said Lapan, who is now the vice president of communications at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
At the same military-media conference, another retired Marine public affairs officer, Lt. Col. Joseph Plenzler, said it’s now more important than ever for the military, which enjoys considerable credibility, to engage with the press and the public.
“Any story, especially if it’s contentious with a protagonist and the opposition, is like two people trying to paint on a canvas at the same time. If one person stops painting, the other one’s going to paint the picture.”
That was the advice Plenzler dispensed to the generals he worked for while in uniform, and he argues it’s as true today as it was then, even as many of the old norms have gone the way of the horse-mounted cavalry.
There’s no doubt that Trump, with his mastery of Twitter and penchant for impromptu Oval Office and helicopter-side press engagements, has rewritten the rules for strategic communication.
But it’s an open question whether those who desire for a return to the good old days of the formal briefings and fine-tuned policy statements are stuck in the past, yearning for a bygone era that’s not coming back.
It could just be that the new normal is the new normal.
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner‘s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
