How would a Donald Trump presidency affect our military and foreign policies? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by Arnold Punaro, author of On War and Politics: The Battlefield Inside Washington's Beltway, Vietnam War veteran, on Quora.
There are several things that concern me about a potential Donald Trump presidency. First, I believe he could set off a crisis in civilian-military relations. Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump has called our generals "rubble" and our military a "disaster," insulted prisoners of war and one of our greatest war heroes, John McCain, belittled the Purple Heart, and picked a fight with a Gold Star family, all of which shows to me that he has little understanding and respect for our military. He has said he would bring back torture, which is an unlawful order that the military would be constitutionally bound to refuse. When a presidential nominee calls our military a "disaster," it has a real and serious impact on the way our allies and adversaries perceive our military, and is detrimental to the morale of our men and women in uniform. And he's just wrong. While we need to improve our warfighting readiness and accelerate modernizing our technology, the men and women in uniform today continue to prove they are the best in the world.
He has also said he would fire the generals, an incredibly dangerous move that would risk politicizing our military. Military officials are duty-bound to give their best military advice to the Commander in Chief, regardless of his or her political affiliation. To suggest that our current generals have breached that inherent trust that is the bedrock of our civilian-military relations is irresponsible and just flat-out incorrect. I know all of the current Joint Chiefs and Combatant Commanders and they are the finest and most experienced generals since Eisenhower, Marshall, and Nimitz.
There is one area that Mr. Trump could have a positive effect on, and that is the management within the Department of Defense. The Pentagon is in need of serious structural and institutional changes and it needs an influx of fresh managerial ideas, especially from the business sector. With Mr. Trump's business contacts, there's a potential that he could bring in the fresh blood the Pentagon needs, but it's unknown if he fully understands the problems the Pentagon faces and knows how to fix them.
As for our foreign affairs, he has already damaged some relations and made leaders, the world over, more than raise an eyebrow at his claims that more countries should have nuclear weapons and that NATO is obsolete. These a both dangerous and irresponsible views and would have serious implications if he were elected. If Mr. Trump were to follow through on his statements, then we would likely see countries like South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others starting up their own nuclear weapons programs, which would make the world as a whole less secure. On the NATO front, our allies would lose confidence in the United States, which would hurt our standing in the world and damage the stability that Europe has seen since WWII. This is a two-way street as our allies have come to our help in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we will need their support in the future as well.
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