Retired Gen. CQ Brown raises alarm about increasingly politicized military

As Donald Trump’s second term got underway, Gen. CQ Brown Jr. knew that his job was on the line, but he hoped to continue serving as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. To that end, he attended Trump’s inauguration ceremony as an apparent sign of support, and after the event, the general told reporters that he planned to remain at his post.

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The president had a different plan. At the start of a broader military purge that’s still ongoing, Trump fired the country’s highest-ranking military officer about a month after the Republican returned to the White House.

More than a year later, Brown has had an opportunity to make new assessments from the outside looking in, and he apparently has some serious concerns. The Wall Street Journal reported:

CQ Brown, the retired general forced out of his post as the nation’s top military officer last year, has provided his most direct critique of the Trump administration’s handling of the U.S. military, questioning the deployment of troops in U.S. cities and warning against tainting the armed forces’ service with politics.

In an essay published Friday with two co-authors, Brown cautioned that sending the military into American cities for “politically contentious missions” like fighting crime risked compromising its traditionally apolitical role and diverting it from its combat mission.

The essay in Foreign Affairs magazine that Brown co-authored was striking on its own terms. “[W]hen presidents use the armed forces for more politically contentious missions, such as addressing domestic crime in cities, the work of the military becomes more fraught,” it read. “Resorting to a military solution rather than fixing the underlying incapacity or dysfunction in civilian institutions diverts the military from focusing on its primary combat mission. And, as [George] Washington knew, it is not the military’s job to save the republic from political impasses. Indeed, if you ask too much of the military, you risk the entire enterprise.”

But as the Journal noted, the Foreign Affairs piece also roughly coincided with Brown raising public concerns about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to strike officers from military promotion lists and push out high-ranking personnel.

“What is starting to happen now, it is not about merit,” Brown said at a discussion of civil-military relations hosted by the Aspen Institute. “All of these people who are being removed are very well experienced.” (He did not reference Hegseth or Trump by name.)

Part of what makes these developments notable is the retired general’s title: Brown isn’t just another voice, he’s the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a highly decorated and broadly respected military leader who spent more than four decades serving in uniform.

What’s more, the retired general has a reputation for restraint, not political broadsides. When he starts issuing public warnings about the politicization of the armed forces, it’s wise to heed his concerns.