In a recent Lawfare article, Graham Parsons argues that political neutrality in the U.S. military may sometimes require officers to resist even lawful orders from elected civilian authorities. He contends that obedience alone is insufficient in a democracy—that military officers have a professional and ethical duty to protect civil society from elected leaders who might misuse the military for partisan ends.

While Parsons raises important concerns about the dangers of politicizing the armed forces, his proposed solution is both misguided and dangerous. It asks military officers to step into a constitutional void that neither their oath, their training, nor their institutional role equips them to fill. In attempting to safeguard democratic values, his approach risks undermining the very pillars that uphold them.

The U.S. Is Not Turkey—and That’s the Point

Parsons’s theory flirts with a model more familiar to nations such as Turkey, where the military has long claimed a special role as the guardian of secular democracy. That tradition culminated in repeated coups and eventually enabled Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to consolidate power by purging the military of dissenters. This is not a model the U.S. should seek to emulate.

The genius of the U.S. system lies in its rejection of military guardianship. The Constitution vests command authority in the president, not to enable tyranny, but to ensure unity of command and civilian supremacy—“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” (U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). Allowing individual officers to second-guess whether a policy “clearly threatens civil society”—as Parsons puts it—when the courts and Congress have not objected is an invitation to fragmentation, politicization, and possibly insubordination. This approach would erode the chain of command by substituting personal judgment for lawful authority, effectively empowering individual officers to act as unelected arbiters of constitutional order. Once this precedent is set, the military risks devolving into competing factions, each interpreting policy through its own political or ideological lens—precisely the scenario the framers sought to avoid. President Truman’s dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951 serves as a stark reminder: Even the most celebrated commanders must subordinate their views to civilian authority, lest the military begin to dictate policy rather than execute it.

The genius of the U.S. system lies in its rejection of military guardianship. The Constitution vests command authority in the president, not to enable tyranny, but to ensure unity of command and civilian supremacy—“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” (U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). Allowing individual officers to second-guess whether a policy “clearly threatens civil society”—as Parsons puts it—when the courts and Congress have not objected is an invitation to fragmentation, politicization, and possibly insubordination. This approach would erode the chain of command by substituting personal judgment for lawful authority, effectively empowering individual officers to act as unelected arbiters of constitutional order. Once this precedent is set, the military risks devolving into competing factions, each interpreting policy through its own political or ideological lens—precisely the scenario the framers sought to avoid. President Truman’s dismissal of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951 serves as a stark reminder: Even the most celebrated commanders must subordinate their views to civilian authority, lest the military begin to dictate policy rather than execute it.

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