Pentagon officials are anxious and fear major upheaval as they prepare for Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, according to reports.
During the election campaign, the president-elect threatened to use “military” force if necessary to handle his political opponents, who he labeled “the enemy from within.”
Officials are nervous for a second Trump administration with one Defense Department official telling the Washington Post that some Pentagon staff and military personnel feel “afraid” because of their experiences during Trump’s first term, citing fears of “chaotic decision-making” and “abrupt leadership changes.”
“People around here are used to transitions — but a lot of them were around for the Trump administration,” the official told the newspaper on the condition of anonymity.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo to personnel staff after the race was called for Trump on Wednesday to calm the waters and steady nerves. Austin, a retired general, said the Pentagon will carry out “a calm, orderly, and professional transition to the incoming Trump administration.”
He stressed that US service members will “continue to stand apart from the political arena.”
“Our fellow citizens have elected the next President of the United States,” the memo said. “As it always has, the U.S. military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next Commander in Chief, and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh would not elaborate on why Austin specified “lawful” orders, according to The Post, and said she would not engage in “hypotheticals.”
Others have weighed in with criticism that Trump lacks an “understanding” of a “nonpartisan military.”
Richard Kohn, a professor and military historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told The Post that the “great danger the military faces” in a second Trump administration is “a rapid erosion of its professionalism, which would undermine its status and respect from the American people.”
“Mr. Trump does not have a real understanding of civil-military relations, or the importance of a nonpartisan, nonpolitical military,” Kohn added.
Another senior official with knowledge of discussions in the Pentagon told The Post there is concern that Biden-appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr, “won’t make it through his full term” once Trump moves into the White House.
Earlier this year Brown responded to Trump’s suggestion that he would allow Russia to “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members if they came under attack but did not contribute enough to the alliance. Trump later doubled down on the comment.
“We have a responsibility to uphold those alliances. US credibility is at stake with each of our alliances, and US leadership is still needed, wanted and watched,” Brown said.
Brown, who Trump selected as Air Force chief of staff in 2020, was questioned by Republicans of the Senate Armed Services Committee about policies surrounding China, Ukraine and the Pentagon that they deemed as “woke.”
In response to The Post’s report, Trump campaign national spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the American public had given him “a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
Scores of top officials from Trump’s first administration have since come out against him following the political turmoil of his first term.
Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, was accused of treason by Trump – with the Republican even suggesting he should be “executed.”
After a book reported Milley had “secret” phone calls with China regarding concerns about Trump following the January 6 riots, Trump posted on Truth Social: “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper was fired by the president-elect and said in 2022 that he believed Trump was a threat to democracy, alleging that his actions led to the events of Jauary 6.
“I think that, given the events of 6 January, given how he has undermined the election results, he incited people to come to DC, stirred them up that morning, and failed to call them off. To me, that threatens our democracy,” he said.
And Trump’s former National Security adviser, John Bolton, left the White House on acrimonious terms after several disagreements with him on foreign policy matters regarding North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan.
Since then, he has denounced Trump and claimed he is “not fit” to be president.
