US Foreign Policy

The Department of Defense and the Military

Michael Flynn

Professor

Department of Political Science

011C Calvin Hall

meflynn@ksu.edu

2025-10-27

Lecture Overview

Historical background
Organization of the DOD
Organization of the Military
Military leadership and politics

Key Questions

How has the organization of the US military changed over time?
What is the general structure of the US military—What are the key organizational entities and how do they relate to one another?
How have the economic interests of political parties affected their relationships with the branches of the military?
In what ways is the military a political institution?
What’s the difference between non-political and non-partisan?

Historical Background

The military of olden times looked a lot different than it does today

The Military was initially two separate, independent entities

Department of War (Army)
Department of the Navy

Size and aims were also very different

Both Navy and Army were small
Both were intended to be focused on external threats

Henry Stimson and Frank Knox. Secretaries of War and Navy (respectively) during WWII. Oversaw the US war effort, and both reported directly to President Roosevelt. Both Republicans.
Independent services led to coordination problems.
Stimson and others also criticize FDR’s administrative abilities. Bad at giving direction and keeping subordinates organized.
President Truman stated: “We must never fight another war the way we fought the last two. I have the feeling that if the Army and the Navy had fought our enemies as hard as they fought each other, the war would have ended much earlier.”
Henry Stimson: The JCS was “an imperfect instrument of top-level decision,” because “it remained incapable of enforcing a decision against the will of any one of its members.” (See JCS History)
George Marshall: “the lack of real unity has handicapped the successful conduct of the war.”
This prompts discussion of a major reorganizational drive for the US military

Historical Background

National Security Act of 1947

Creates the National Military Establishment (NME)
Department of Defense (DoD) follows in 1949
Army Air Corps becomes independent Air Force
Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps brought under one unified organization with one civilian secretary

Historical Background

James Forrestal

First Secretary of Defense
Former Secretary of the Navy
Resigned March 28, 1949

Defense Department Organization

Main components

Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD)
Military Departments
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Combatant Commands

Defense Department Organization

But wait, what are these things?

Summary of key military entities
Office of the Secretary of Defense	Military Departments	Joint Chiefs of Staff	Combatant Commands
Civilian side of the military	The military side (which also contains a civilian side)	Upper level management of military leadership	Focus on warfighting/planning
Secretary of Defense, Deputy, Assistant, and Under Secretaries	Army, Navy, Airforce, Space Force	Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice Chair, and other service chiefs	Made up of personnel from different service branches
Civilian offices and bureaues	Less about warfighting, more about recruitment, doctrine, and management	Principal military adviser to the president (CJCOS)	Focus on specific geographic or functional AOR

Defense Department Organization

Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986

Greatest reorganization of the US military since National Security Act of 1947
Removed Joint Chiefs of Staff from the operational chain of command
Creates Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chain of command runs straight to combatant commanders:

Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986

Major reorganization of US military
Removes JCS from the operational chain of command. Chain of command runs directly from the president to the SECDEF to the combatant commanders.
Intended to promote a more holistic approach to defense. Since the CINCs command forces from every branch, it was believed they would be less parochial than service chiefs.
Coordination problems still exist:
(Apocryphal?) During Grenada invasion an Army officer had to use his AT&T card and a payphone to call in air support for his troops because Army and Air Force were not operating on the same frequency
Also each branch buys similar equipment, but it is not necessarily interchangeable. This contributes in some ways to maintaining service independence, as this scheme prevents individual services from being folded into one another too readily. Massive transaction costs associated with combining branches since we would have to decide what equipment to stick with, how and when to train new people on new equipment, etc.

Defense Department Organization

Secretary of Defense

Current Secretary: Pete Hegseth
Retired US Army Major
Former Fox News commentator
Responsible for overseeing the organization of the armed forces, the development of national defense strategy, and reporting on various issues to the President and Congress.

Current Secretary

Pete Hegseth
Weird choice, he doesn’t have a lot of relevant experience.
Military experience, but nothing at the policy or strategic levels. Others, like Chuck Hagel, who served as a Sergeant in Vietnam, served for years in the Senate developing policy expertise.
He got into political advocacy after leaving the Army, becoming the Chair and President of Vets for Freedom, but was fired from Vets for Freedom after the organization accrued substantial debts.
He launched a failed campaign for Senate in Minnesota in 2012.
Also left Concerned Veterans for America in 2016 due to mismanagement and alcoholism.
Reports of sexual assault and a payment of $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault. She was also asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, also gave the FBI information about allegations of abuse and alcoholism directed at her sister, Hegseth’s second ex-wife. She gave a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlining these allegations.
Allegations of continued alcoholism, sexual assault, and mismanagement of veterans’ organizations and PACs arose during his confirmation hearings.
Opponents included Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, a veteran and victim of sexual assault. Ernst eventually voted for Hegseth after he promised to support legislation to address sexual assault in the military.
Any of this would have been enough to sink previous nominees.

Statutory Requirements:

Requirements and limitations are outlined under Title 10, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 2, Section 113 of US Code.
1. Must be a civilian (e.g. “Appointed from civilian life”)
2. Military service limitations:
- Seven year time window for anyone below one-star GOFO rank. May not have served “within seven years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in a grade below O-7”.
- 10 year time window for one-star and above GOFO rank. May not have served “within ten years after relief from active duty as a commissioned officer of a regular component of an armed force in a grade O-7 or above”.
See the following article for more details
Danielle Hegseth Statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee
Political Appointment subject to Senate Confirmation
Often has a military background (not always)
- Lloyd Austin was career Army, retiring as a four-star general.
- First African American Secretary of Defense.
- Also disappeared for three days and was hospitalized after a prostate cancer diagnosis and complications during surgery. Did not inform anyone else within the Biden administration. Somehow was not fired.
Other SecDefs have had academic backgrounds.
- Ashton Carter was a physicist before entering politics.
- Harold Brown (SecDef under President Carter) got his PhD in nuclear physics at age 21.

Discussion Questions:

Debate about whether or not military background is necessary or even desirable to be secretary of defense.
Discuss this as a class: Why might it be good? Why might it be bad?

Organization of the Military

But 2019 was a big year for the military!

Christopher W. Grady, Vice Chair Joint Chiefs of Staff

David W. Allvin, Air Force Chief of Staff

Eric M. Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps

Daniel R. Hokanson, Chief of National Guard Bureau

B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations

Dan Caine

Unusual nomination process
Trump and Hegseth fired Caine’s predecessor, Charles Q. Brown.
Caine had left military service and retired in 2024 as a Lt. General.
Caine had not previously served in roles statutorily required to be appointed to CJCOS.
Title 10 Section 152:
- Chairman serves for a period of 2 years, beginning in odd-numbered years. May be reappointed to one additional two-year term.
- Eligiblity: Officer must have served as 1) vice chairman of the joint chiefs, 2) chief of staff, or 3) commander of a unified or specified combatant command.
- President can waive these requirements if they deem this to be in the national interest, but it’s never happened before.
- The Chairman is a general or admiral, and outranks all other officers, but “may not exercise military command over the Joint Chiefs of Staff or any of the armed forces.”
Coast Guard is not an official member since it falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
Space command falls within the Department of the Air Force. Doesn’t have it’s own separate Department.
This is akin to how the Marine Corps falls within the Department of the Navy but is its own separate service.
Air Force Secretary overseas both Air Force and Space Force
Currently two service chiefs are only serving in actinv capacity.
- Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has placed a hold on military promotions to protest DoD policy of providing accommodations to service members who need to travel to seek an abortion. Troops and dependents are allowed to use time off and use official travel to get to other states to seek reproductive care. This can also include in vitro fertilization and other pregnancy aids. See here
- DoD Policy is set by civilian leadership and administrations.
- Promotions are voted on in a single omnibus vote. Senate had to break the chair of the joint chiefs, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Army Chief of Staff out into three separate individual votes.
- Hundreds of other promotions are being held up, and it would take weeks to vote on all of them individually.
- “The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said this week that voting on the more than 260 military nominations through the regular procedure would take 27 days with the Senate working “around the clock” or 84 days if the Senate worked eight hours a day.” See AP Story.
- This means some key roles don’t have occupants or some officers are trying to perform two jobs at once.

Organization of the Military

Joint Chiefs of Staff and Joint Staff

Equip, train, and organization of individual service branches
Serve as senior uniformed advisers to the president, National Security Council, and Congress
- Note: They’re not in the operational chain of command
- Chairman is the highest ranking uniformed military officer
- Joint Staff organized into different focus areas
Guide the development of new weapons systems, technology, and force structure
Set routine administrative policies

Organization of the Military

Combatant Commands

Oversee US military forces from all branches operating in a particular area of responsibility (These can be geographic or functional)
Plan and execute military operations
Advise the president and members of Congress on military operations, battle plans, war efforts, etc.
Answer directly to the president and secretary of defense

To right: Then Commander of Central Command, General David Petaeus

The Military in Politics

Long tradition of the US military being “apolitical”, but what does this mean?

Civilian control of the military IS a political arrangement.
A-political versus non-partisan
But there’s a puzzle: How do we “reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize?” (Feaver 2003, 2)
Civil-Military relations has a couple of key parts:
- How the civilian population and the military relate to one another
- Military actors intervening in civilian political processes
- Civilians politicizing the military

The Military in Politics

Chairs of the Joint Chiefs and Appointing President's Party
Party	Air Force	Army	Marine	Navy
Democrat	2	6	1	0
Republican	4	4	1	4

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, testifies before House Armed Services Committee in 1949.

Sometimes political conflict spills out into the open

Revolt of the Admirals was a case in the late 1940s rooted in interservice rivalries and unification of military under DoD
Navy was concerned that the rise of the Air Force and the emphasis on strategic bombing and nuclear weapons would leave it vulnerable to cuts or elimination.
President Truman sought to hold the FY1950 defense budget to $15 billion, but individual services combined calculated they needed $29 billion.
Navy were planning a supercarrier capable of launching larger bombers that could be used to deliver nuclear weapons, but these bombers didn’t exist yet.
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson ordered the supercarrier program to be halted on April 23, 1949.
Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan wasn’t consulted and resigned in protest
House Armed Services Committee hearings investigating allegations of corruption began in the summer of 1949
- Navy leadership (active duty and retired) began attacking the civilian leadership of the DoD, the Army, and the Air Force. Specifically calling out the Air Force and the entire plan for relying on B-36 bombers and atomic weapons. Also claimed the Navy was being intentionalyl sabotaged and destroyed.
- Eventually General Omar Bradley testified that Navy leaders were:
“fancy Dans who won’t hit the line” unless they could call the signals. “I believe that the public hearing of the grievances of a few officers who will not accept the decisions of the authorities established by law. . . have done infinite harm to our national defense, our position of leadership in world affairs, the position of our national policy, and the confidence of the people in their government.”

Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Clifton Cates, discusses the Marine Corps’ fragile position relative to the other service branches in testimony before Congress, 1949.

Military leaders trying to avoid becoming politicized

Military leaders often try to avoid becoming embroiled in politcal conflicts. But this can be tough when the president and congress both press military leaders for information that may conflict with executive policy.
In the lead up to to the Iraq War there was substantial conflict over manpower requirements
Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and others insissted that US forces would be greeted as liberators and the post-war stabilization operations would be easy.
This obviously turned out to not be the case.
In hearings before the invasion in 2003, General Shinseki (then Army chief of staff) was being grilled by Senator Carl Levin on manpower requirements. Shinseki was loathe to publicly contradict his boss, but eventually relented and said “several hundred thousand” troops would be needed.

Politicization of military leaders

Military personnel, both active duty and retired, have become important symbols of political legitimacy.
Retired general/flag officers provide sought-after endorsements by political leaders of both parties
This presents problems in that it creates or reinforces the perception that civilian leaders are only legimitized by the approval of military officials (obviously this is difficult since both sides typically attract military endorsements).
It also shifts the focus of foreign policy to the military, when the military doesn’t know much about most areas of foreign policymaking. We rely much more on civilian officials and expertise, and yet they don’t carry the weight of uniformed personnel.
Notably both Flynn and Allen have been investigated for lying to the FBI about foreign contacts and lobbying efforts on behalf of foreign governments.

President Trump walks to St. John’s Episcopal Church with Attorney General William Barr (over President’s left shoulder), Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (middle), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of of Staff General Mark Milley, June 1, 2020. Attorney General Barr ordered peaceful protesters to be forcibly dispersed from Lafayette Park to to clear the way for President Trump to walk to St. John’s for a photo op. General Milley and Secretary of Defense Esper later distanced themselves from the action.

The use of military personnel for political purposes.

Politicians often want to be seen in a military context to signal seriousness, expertise, authority, command, etc.
Over the summer of 2020 President Donald Trump’s Attorney General ordered military forces to attack peaceful protesters gathered in opposition to police brutality in Lafayette Square in Washington, DC.
The goal was to create a photo op of the president appearing with military officers walking to St. John’s Church, at which point he held up a bible.
This is messaging and signaling for core constituents. It didn’t really do anything other than inflame tensions and protests in DC.
But military leaders later became accutely sensitive to the perception that the military was involved in ordering the dispersion of protestors and that they were actively involved in the effort to attack peacefully protesting individuals.

Top panel: An article published on Fox News online on October 11, 2022 linking Army recruiting crisis to “woke” military. Bottom panel: Results of the 2022 DoD Youth Survey.

Notes:

In general, people don’t have a good understanding of why people join the military
43% of individuals surveyed list pay and benefits as a primary reason for joining. This is the largest single reason listed.
“Perhaps the survey’s most surprising finding is the large gulf between respondents with military experience in the AVF and their families. Veterans of the AVF and active-duty service members are more likely to acknowledge that the market matters in service members’ decisions to join the military, but their families are more prone to deny its role in these decisions.” See Krebs and Ralston 2020
Does Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training crowd out “more important” types of military training? Sergeant Major of the U.S. Army Michael Grinston reported in Congressional testimony on March 9, 2022: “As the sergeant major of the U.S. Army, Michael Grinston, stated in recent congressional testimony: “When I looked at it, there is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training.” He then added, “And if you go to [One Station Unit Training], there is 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and still only one hour of equal opportunity training.” See Risa Brooks War on the Rocks article here.

Admiral Alvin Holsey, Commander SOUTHCOM

General Timothy Haugh, Director NSA and Commander CYBERCOM

Notes

CQ Brown fired after complaints over his comments on race and military service during the 2020 George Floyd riots. Pete Hegseth appeared on the Shaun Ryan show #143 on November 7, 2024 where he discusses that leaders like Brown need to be removed for promoting DEI, gender ideology, etc. Argues that military needs more focus on “lethality” and less on social issues.
- Hegseth and Ryan also see instances like the trial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher as evidence that the military is too focused on “woke” political correctness over war-fighting capabilities.
- Gallagher was accused of killing a young ISIS captive in Iraq after administering emergency medical care. Members of Gallagher’s team reported him to NCIS. Members of Gallagher’s SEAL team also took pictures with the dead boy. Members of Gallagher’s team also reported that Gallagher would regularly brag about kills, sometimes involving civilians.
- The case against Gallagher fell apart when a witness for the prosecution changed his story last minute and claimed to have stabbed the prisoner. Corey Scott was a medic who witnessed the events and was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony. Scott later testified that he and not Gallagher killed the prisoner.
- In 2021 Gallagher also commented on the podcast “The Line” that the “intention was to kill him” and that they intended to administer medical treatments until the prisoner died.
- See CBS News report on Gallagher’s case.
After firing Lisa Francetti Hegseth declared that the Administration was “putting in place new leaders that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting, and winning wars.” See New York Times report
Linda Fagan was fired ostensibly for insufficient attention to the Southern Border and the flow of drugs, as well as the Coast Guard’s handling of sexual assault cases. Reports also indicate that it was due to excessive attention to DEI initiatives. Coast Guard investigations into handling of sexual assault preceded Fagan’s time as Commandant and the committee conducting the investigation never briefed her US Naval Institute Article on Fagan
David Allvin was asked to resign. Reporting on what lead to his firing is contradictory, with some alleging that it was due to Allvin’s and the Air Force’s planned organizational changes, with other sources reporting that Allvin was a vocal supporter of Trump’s planned Air Force policies.
General Timothy Haugh was fired as head of Cyber Command in April 2025. CNN article on firing
Air Force JAG was replaced by his deputy, Major General Rebecca Vernon. Less than one year into the job, and lacking SEnate Confirmation, she announced she is retiring in January of 2026. Defense One Article
The Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) are responsible for ensuring commanders and personnel follow the law. They also provide legal advice on different issues, and prosecute/defend personnel in courts martial. See Jurist article
- They also investigate potential violations of the law.
- Hegseth claimed that ““We want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks.”
- In Hegseth’s book the War on Warriors he referred to JAGs as “jagoffs”.
- Civil-Military relations experts feared that this represented an effort to reduce constraints on the executive and remove impediments to getting military personnel to follow potentially illegal orders.
DIA director Kruse fired after DIA issued a preliminary report suggesting that the strike on the Fordo nuclear facility in Iran only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months. CBS News report