{"id":75450,"date":"2023-03-01T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/03\/01\/tips-for-generals-how-to-navigate-politics-without-partisanship\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T15:07:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T15:07:47","slug":"tips-for-generals-how-to-navigate-politics-without-partisanship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2023\/03\/01\/tips-for-generals-how-to-navigate-politics-without-partisanship\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips for generals: how to navigate politics without partisanship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With Washington\u2019s partisan politics growing arguably fiercer, military leaders have to figure out how to defend their policies and people without appearing to take a side, a group of longtime D.C. policy hands said Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is impossible to be a leader of an organization and not be a political actor,\u201d American Enterprise Institute\u2019s Kori Schake said, at the Center for Security Studies conference<\/a> Tuesday at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Military leaders have to be able to build coalitions, advocate for their causes, and know \u201cwhen to hide behind your civilian superiors and when to step forward and take a hard question for them,\u201d said Schake, AEI\u2019s director of foreign and defense policy. \u201cThat\u2019s political activity. That\u2019s not scary. And in fact we should want our military leaders to have that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate over how to navigate politics while serving in uniform stems from an uncomfortable new reality that senior officers frequently find themselves in the crosshairs of competing political factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Witness how the military has gotten dragged into a number of partisan fights<\/a> over the past few years, from Trump\u2019s infamous walk across Lafayette Square<\/a> with Pentagon leadership to the saga of now-retired Maj. Gen. Pat Donahoe and his attempt<\/a> to stand up to Tucker Carlson\u2019s misogynistic takes on women in the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The awkward and cringeworthy public moments, especially when top officers are used as political punching bags in open hearings, seems to have dented the public\u2019s trust in the military, according to last year\u2019s Reagan National Defense Survey<\/a>. Respondents pointed to the perceived politicization of the organization as a reason for their declining confidence, from over 70% down to around 40% in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partisan feelings also factored in, with conservative-leaning respondents citing so-called \u201cwoke\u201d policies like renaming of Army posts to remove Confederate-era monikers, while more liberal participants were concerned about infiltration by right-wing extremists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schake offered some quick but likely controversial fixes to tamp down on rising politicization, such as suggesting that Congress ban outlets like MSNBC or Fox News from playing on TV\u2019s in communal spaces on military installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she said <\/b>Congress could get its own house in order, by ceasing the practice of treating uniformed leaders as stand-ins for the White House. She suggested congressional committee leaders could block or exclude fellow lawmakers\u2019 inflammatory political questions of military leaders in open hearings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the leaders themselves could be more savvy. Schake felt that Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should have deferred to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last year when asked whether critical race theory was being taught at the military academies.<\/p>\n\n\n\t