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The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal (Tom Nichols in The Atlantic)
The Military Is Being Forced to Plan for an Unthinkable Betrayal
Attacking an ally would be a perversion of everything the armed forces have been trained to do.
By Tom Nichols
January 19, 2026, 3:49 PM ET
-snip-
American officers know what Trump is planning—the world knows it, because Trump won’t stop saying it—and their minds will rebel at directives to take everything they’ve prepared to do for years and apply it backwards, against the people they have trained to work with and protect. The president, in other words, will be ordering them to do something they have been trained never to do.
-snip-
Some military officers will shrug at Trump’s ravings and say that orders are orders, and that yesterday’s friends are today’s enemies. Every defense organization has people in it, uniformed and civilian, who are morally hollow and see only figures on a map that must be targeted for elimination. But most Americans, and the members of the military that serves them, are decent people. They know that attacking your friends is evil and mad. I am certain that the men and women of the armed forces will be conflicted and disturbed as they try to turn Trump’s unhinged obsessions into a coherent military plan.
In the end, however, if senior officers—starting with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of each service—follow Trump down this dark road, the officers and enlisted people below them will likely obey the chain of command. Such an outcome would be a tragedy, and potentially a global catastrophe.
It is not up to the armed forces to put a stop to Trump’s ghastly ideas. Every molecule in the body of almost every uniformed American service member is likely to reject doing something they have spent a lifetime training never to do, but the United States is not run by the military, nor should it be. Americans, and their elected representatives, must take this burden away from the armed forces—now.
Attacking an ally would be a perversion of everything the armed forces have been trained to do.
By Tom Nichols
January 19, 2026, 3:49 PM ET
-snip-
American officers know what Trump is planning—the world knows it, because Trump won’t stop saying it—and their minds will rebel at directives to take everything they’ve prepared to do for years and apply it backwards, against the people they have trained to work with and protect. The president, in other words, will be ordering them to do something they have been trained never to do.
-snip-
Some military officers will shrug at Trump’s ravings and say that orders are orders, and that yesterday’s friends are today’s enemies. Every defense organization has people in it, uniformed and civilian, who are morally hollow and see only figures on a map that must be targeted for elimination. But most Americans, and the members of the military that serves them, are decent people. They know that attacking your friends is evil and mad. I am certain that the men and women of the armed forces will be conflicted and disturbed as they try to turn Trump’s unhinged obsessions into a coherent military plan.
In the end, however, if senior officers—starting with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of each service—follow Trump down this dark road, the officers and enlisted people below them will likely obey the chain of command. Such an outcome would be a tragedy, and potentially a global catastrophe.
It is not up to the armed forces to put a stop to Trump’s ghastly ideas. Every molecule in the body of almost every uniformed American service member is likely to reject doing something they have spent a lifetime training never to do, but the United States is not run by the military, nor should it be. Americans, and their elected representatives, must take this burden away from the armed forces—now.
It is not up to the armed forces to put a stop to Trump’s ghastly ideas of war against NATO. The United States is not run by the military, nor should it be. Americans, and their elected representatives, must take this burden away from the armed forces—now.
— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) 2026-01-19T21:10:21.622Z
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
3 replies
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