“War is too important to be left to the generals.” Georges Clemenceau, French prime minister during World War I
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, a barrel-chested former Green Beret who has fought in five wars over four decades, considers himself a patriot, whose allegiance, he has said more than once, is not to any individual, not to a “king or queen, tyrant or a dictator,” but to the U.S. Constitution.
And Milley has defended his actions before and after the November 2020 election in keeping with his duties and responsibilities as the nation’s highest-ranking officer and senior military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense.
But revelations in the book Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, suggest Milley, driven by fear that a president he believed to be impulsive, unpredictable, and in serious mental decline might start a war and possibly unleash nuclear weapons, may have undermined the bedrock principle of democracy, namely civilian control of the military.
Milley’s defense, that he acted within “his authority in the lawful tradition of civilian control,” hinges on subtle nuance, a question of whether he bumped up close to a red line or blew past it.
And that, in turn, hinges on the accuracy of the account in Woodward’s and Costa’s book and whether it presents the full context of Milley’s interaction with both subordinates at the Pentagon and his counterpart in China.
There are two troubling charges.
Count one: Milley ordered officers in the National Military Command Center not to carry out any orders to launch nuclear weapons without checking with him.
There is nothing in the Constitution about who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons.
While the 1787 document designates the president as commander in chief of the military, it reserves for Congress the authority to declare war.
Launching an offensive nuclear strike might seem to be the ultimate declaration of war. Still, since President Harry Truman assumed the authority for himself at the dawn of the nuclear age, the president alone has had the sole authority to order a nuclear strike, and no one has the authority to stop him.
The book depicts an extraordinary scene that occurred after the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters in a failed attempt to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results.
Milley summons to his office a one-star officer and several colonels who man the National Military Command Center, the war room in the sub-sub-basement of the Pentagon.
Under routine procedures, Milley would be on a conference call with the president, the secretary of defense, and DOD lawyers before any strike was ordered. Still, Milley was worried President Donald Trump might act impulsively, without consultation, as he did with so many other military matters.
”Any doubt, any irregularity, first, call me directly and immediately. Do not act until you do,” the account has Milley saying to the staffers in a paraphrase of his orders.
He then polls the officers individually, looking each in the eye.
”Got it?” Milley asks.
“Yes, sir,” each officer responds as Milley goes around the room.
Milley’s defense is that he was simply telling the officers to follow standard protocols designed to avoid inadvertent mistakes or nefarious illegal orders.
He wants to be in the loop before the button is pushed, presumably to have the chance to talk Trump out of it.
“There’s a process here. There’s a procedure,” Milley reportedly says. “And I’m part of that procedure.”
But in a phone call with Nancy Pelosi at about the same time, Milley is far more definitive, assuring the House speaker, “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell this president or any president can launch nuclear weapons illegally, immorally, unethically.”
In the call, Milley projects confidence he can thwart any attempt by Trump to launch nuclear weapons in his waning days in office.
While admitting he has “no direct authority” to countermand a presidential order, Milley says, “I have a lot of ability to prevent bad things from happening.”
And he gives Pelosi his personal assurance there will be no nuclear strike on his watch.
“I can guarantee you, and you can take it to the bank … the nuclear triggers are secure … as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I can assure you that will not happen.”
The quotes from the Pelosi call are said to come from a verbatim transcript of the exchange.
If the reporting is accurate, Milley appears to have “pulled a Schlesinger,” a reference to when then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger told military leaders not to carry out any orders from President Richard Nixon without first checking with him or Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. George Brown in 1974.
Count two: Milley promised a Chinese general he would tip him off if Trump ordered military action against China.
While private conversations between the chairman and his foreign counterparts to build trust and prevent miscalculation are routine and generally unremarkable, one call between Milley and Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng just four days before the November election appears to suggest that Milley was ready to go so far as to compromise a military operation.
Milley, aware from U.S. intelligence that China was on high alert and, in an effort to reassure Li that the U.S. had no intention of taking military action, allegedly gave the Chinese general the following assurance: ”Gen. Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise. It’s not going to be a bolt out of the blue.”
“I’m hopeful that actually, that part of it isn’t true,” said former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen on ABC, who otherwise defended Milley’s call.
In reaction to the reported exchange, Trump called Milley a “dumb***” and said Milley should be tried for treason if the account was accurate.
Again, the seriousness of the offense depends on the accuracy of the quote and whether there is missing context.
A fuller reading of the account in the book has Milley explaining to Li why a U.S. attack would not come as a surprise and why Milley would be calling.
”If there was a war or some kind of kinetic action between the United States and China, there’s going to be a buildup, just like there has been always in history. And there’s going to be tension. And I’m going to be communicating with you pretty regularly,” Milley is quoted as saying.
Woodward uses a narrative device whereby he conducts his interviews on “deep background” and then reconstructs conversations based on what the subject or someone else with direct knowledge remembers or from government records such as emails or transcripts.
That means the reader doesn’t know if an exact quote, in quotation marks, is, in fact, verbatim.
And Woodward has been known to make minor mistakes in his books.
For example, Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN that in Peril, Woodward conflated events Smith described as happening at the Jan. 6 riot as something he witnessed on a plane ride to his home in Seattle.
“I don’t want to try Gen. Milley or anybody else in the media,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham on Fox recently. “I spent 33 years as a judge advocate in the Air Force, as a military judge, defense counsel, and prosecutor. So, before we court-martial somebody, let’s get the evidence.”
“I want to see the transcript. And I want to hear from Milley,” said Graham. “I will say this … if the book is accurate, and the conversation did occur as described in the book, Gen. Milley undercut civilian control.”
Epilogue
Trump said, “For the record, I never even thought of attacking China, and China knows that,” and he denounced Woodward’s book, as he did the two previous books on Trump, as “fake news” and works of “fiction.”
But for now, Milley’s job seems secure.
President Joe Biden appears in no mood to fire him for what he may or may not have done in the previous administration and expressed “great confidence” in him despite the revelations.
Milley’s four-year term, which does not require further Senate confirmation, runs until September 2023.
But his legacy remains in question.
It may be for future historians to judge Milley’s actions fully. Still, as the authors of Peril note, “Some might contend Milley had overstepped his authority and taken extraordinary power for himself.”
Milley is due to answer questions before the House and Senate Armed Services committees on Sept. 28 and 29.
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.
