Trump's 'harebrained' approach is destroying the military: expert

Trump and Hegseth Are Turning the Military Into a Loyalty MachineAn Army veteran quoted in The Bulwark says Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are wrecking the armed forces through politicized promotions, reckless operations, and a military justice system that appears to reward MAGA friendliness and punish everyone else. That is the surface story. The real story is power: who gets to decide what the military is for, who gets protected, and who gets discarded.Power Sits at the TopThis is not a tale of institutional drift. It is command authority being used to remake the institution around personal and political loyalty. Trump is the political center of gravity. Hegseth is the enforcer. The Pentagon is being managed as an extension of Trump’s media ecosystem, not as a professional military chain of command.That matters because the military is one of the few state institutions with enough force to make political obedience matter in the real world. When the secretary of defense is described as pulling promotion candidates off a list based on what he saw on his X feed, that is not a quirky management style. It is patronage politics wearing a uniform.Merit Is the First CasualtyThe source is blunt about the damage: a system built on experience and capability is being replaced by a system built on political preference. That is the point. Once promotions can be distorted by ideological favor, the armed forces stop functioning as a meritocratic institution and start functioning as a loyalty sieve.The article’s language about “harebrained” leadership is too soft for what this represents. A fool can make mistakes. A political operator can deliberately reward allies, sideline critics, and teach the entire command structure that competence matters less than obeisance. That is not accidental decay. It is a method.Recklessness Is Not an AccidentThe source links this political capture to a botched strike that killed 120 schoolgirls and to what Donovan describes as a rushed operation with a possibly unlawful legal basis. Whether every legal judgment in that account is ultimately upheld is a separate question. The political significance is already clear: haste, opacity, and aggressive force become easier to sell when the institution is already subordinated to loyalty.This is how governments launder recklessness. They treat catastrophic consequences as the byproduct of confusion, when the deeper problem is a leadership culture that prizes speed, dominance, and performative toughness over lawful restraint. That culture does not drift into civilian death by mistake. It creates the conditions for it.Discipline for the Loyal, Discipline for Everyone ElseThe piece also points to a second layer of corruption: unequal enforcement. If conduct tied to MAGA displays or personal proximity to Trump-world figures is excused while everyone else faces punishment, then military justice is no longer a system. It is selective immunity.That is how political capture stabilizes itself. Not just by installing loyalists, but by teaching everyone below them that the rules have social meaning, not legal meaning. The lesson is simple: comply with the faction and you are protected; fall outside it and the institution rediscoveres discipline.Anonymous Alarm Is Still AlarmThe article cites anonymous Republican lawmakers and other conservative voices who are suddenly worried about politicization, military leaders who may not be relaying troops’ observations, and the likely cost of a widened Iran war. Those warnings are useful, but they also reveal a familiar cowardice: people wait until the machinery is already contaminated, then speak in anonymity and shock.That is the chronic failure of elite oversight in a collapsing democracy. People with access see the pattern early. They object late. They hedge their names. Then they act surprised when the damage becomes irreversible.The Pattern Is Loyalism Before LawThe larger lesson is not just that Trump politicizes institutions. It is that authoritarian politics always begins by converting professional systems into personal ones. The military is especially dangerous in that process because it gives the political leader access to organized force while demanding obedience as a virtue.What the source captures, despite its own cautious framing, is a regime logic: loyalty over law, politics over merit, spectacle over competence, and consequences pushed downward onto people who are expected to keep the machine running. That is how institutional rot is made to look like management. Get full access to Systemic Error at paulstsmith.substack.com/subscribe