Reuters: Trump To 'Cleanse' Pentagon Officers And Generals
- 14.11.2024, 8:11
Everyone close to Mark Milley will “disappear”.
Members of President-elect Donald Trump's transition team are forming a list of military officials to be fired. The new list is likely to include members of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Reuters reported.
According to two anonymous agency sources, layoff planning is at an early stage and could change in the process of shaping the Trump administration. According to them, such a decision will be an unprecedented reshuffle in the Pentagon.
At the same time, one of the sources questioned the feasibility of such perturbations in the US Department of Defense.
Everyone close to Mark Milley will “disappear”.
It is not yet known whether Trump himself will support such an initiative, although in the past he has actively opposed the leaders of the defense department who criticized him. During the election campaign, the Republican spoke about the dismissal of "awakened" generals, as well as those responsible for the dubious withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
A second source told Reuters that the new administration is likely to focus on American officers linked to former Chairman of the Trump Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Bob Woodward, in his new book War, quoted the general as calling the president-elect a “fascist to the core.” Trump's allies turned against Milley for such disloyalty to the former president.
“Every person Milley promoted and appointed will step down. There is a very detailed list of everyone who is assosiated with Millie. And all of them will disappear," said the second interlocutor of the agency.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff include the top officers of the U.S. Armed Forces, as well as the leaders of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, National Guard, and Space Force.
"Iron" head of the Pentagon
The announcement of the plans to dismiss the top leadership of the US Armed Forces came a day after Trump elected Fox News commentator and veteran Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary. He recently demonstrated a willingness to purge the Pentagon.
“The next president of the United States must fundamentally change the top leadership of the Pentagon so that we are ready to defend our country and defeat our enemies. A lot of people need to be fired,” Pete Hegseth noted in his 2024 book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.
However, it is not known whether the lack of managerial experience of Hegseth may complicate his approval in the Senate and whether a more traditional alternative to this position will be able to implement such large-scale dismissals.
In addition, Hegset had his eye on Milley's successor, Air Force General Charles Brown. In his book, the newly elected Secretary of Defense reflects wether Brown could have gotten the job if he hadn't been black.
“Did his skin color matter? Or his skills? We will never know, but we will always doubt - what at first glance seems unfair to CQ. But since he's made the race card one of his biggest business cards, it doesn't really matter,” Hegset wrote.
The first Reuters source noted that Brown will be among the many officers who will resign.
"The chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all deputy chiefs of staff will be dismissed immediately," the source said, noting that this is only preliminary planning.
Bureaucratic redundancy or boasting
Some current and former U.S. officials downplay the possibility of such a major personnel reshuffle, saying it would be unnecessary and devastating at a time of global turmoil as wars continue in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The first source of the agency said that from a bureaucratic point of view it would be difficult to dismiss and replace a significant part of the US top military leadership. The source suggested that such planning could be bragging on the part of Trump's allies.
However, a second Reuters source suggested that the Trump team is considering reducing the Joint Chiefs of Staff due to bureaucratic redundancy.
According to the source, such reductions can be sustained in an organization of such a scale as the US Forces.
“These people are not irreplaceable. They are very replaceable. And then the other thing too is there is no shortage of people that will step up. In World War Two, we were very rapidly appointing people in their 30s or people competent to be generals. And you know what? We won the war," the source said.