What Trump Doesn’t Understand About the Military

In 1783, George Washington faced a potential mutiny of the Army. Two years after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Congress still hadn’t paid American servicemen and was repudiating promised pensions. Alexander Hamilton, then in Congress, encouraged soldiers to rebel, because he thought the pressure would lead Congress to approve the taxing authority he sought. Washington reproached Hamilton in a letter: An army is “a dangerous instrument to play with,” he wrote. In this, as in so much else, President-Elect Donald Trump does not share Washington’s sensibilities.

Trump has spoken repeatedly of his plans to use the American military domestically: for policing the border, deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, repressing protests. He would not be the first president to use the military for some domestic purpose. Others have done so to break strikes, tamp down election or race riots, and enforce court orders or tax collection. But overreach in this area can do real damage to the relationship between the American military and the public. In his first term, Trump showed that he was willing to push that boundary.