From Korea to the Pentagon, having spent over 40 years in uniform, Gen. Mark Milley was the driving force behind the United States’s aggressive policy of encirclement and decisive confrontation with Russia. His dystopic vision used to propose total domination of "the men in uniform" over elected politicians.
As chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Milley was the force behind the resignations of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the U.S. envoy Brett McGurk, who used to oversee the effort to defeat the Daesh terrorist network.
Milley could not finalize the dismemberment of the Russian Federation or the creation of a united “Kurdistan” in Iraq and Syria; but as long as the George Bush-Barack Obama-Joe Biden legacy survives in the White House, in the departments of state and defense, he may still keep his fingers crossed!
But first, he has to pray really hard that the man he hated and tried to dig a pit for, Donald Trump, the disgraced and anti-democratic ex-president of the U.S., who probably will be a convicted felon soon, would not be able to squeeze back into the White House. So many politicos think that Biden’s unpopularity could give Trump his shot at this seemingly impossible dream; therefore, Milley did the right thing by leaving his post as the chairperson of the Joint Staff, not waiting to be kicked out by the president.
Milley’s boss as the secretary of defense, James Mattis, himself a former Marine Corps four-star general and Milley’s commander in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, had also resigned his portfolio when Trump ordered an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria. Milley was much more resilient: He believed that U.S. forces should not withdraw from the Middle East but made sure their stay could be realized in many other ways.
Trump had talked to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about the details of Türkiye’s defeating the Daesh terror group and had decided that neither spending millions of dollars to keep the U.S. forces in Syria nor creating a legitimate ally out of PKK terrorists there would be necessary. He further added that Türkiye was, all alone, sufficient to get rid of that “artificial” terror organization.
In fact, Trump had, years ago as the Republican presidential candidate, called President Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the “founders” of the Daesh in an interview. Trump was referring to the strange and unexplained situation that the terrorist group, after having been literally obliterated in Afghanistan had materialized in the Middle East and seized parts of Syria, Iraq and Libya.
Following Mattis, Brett McGurk, U.S. special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter Daesh's Iraqi branch, had also resigned from his post. McGurk, an American diplomat, attorney and academic who served in senior national security positions under President George W. Bush, was appointed to this post by Obama in 2015 and was retained in that role by the Trump administration. But he announced his resignation following Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Now, McGurk serves as assistant to the president and as the national security council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa in the Biden administration.
McGurk’s decision had come just days after Mattis’ announcement; both expressed outrage over Trump’s sudden decision. But that decision never turned into an action, thanks to Milley. McGurk had criticized Trump's decision to withdraw from Iraq and Syria, telling reporters, “Obviously, it would be reckless if we were just to say, well, Daesh is physically defeated, so we can just leave now.”
In those days Türkiye had defeated Daesh, forcing the terrorists to withdraw into a remote area in the eastern parts of Syria. Mattis, on the other hand, would not be willing to settle with criticizing the Syria decision but went as far as criticizing Trump’s worldview, declaring him an enemy of NATO and the 79-nation anti-Daesh coalition.
Not Milley. He would not cross the lines; he was a strong believer that soldiers should act like soldiers and “civilians” – even if they are elected officials – should not butt in on military matters. Trump had no idea, for instance, why the U.S. forces were in Syria. So, the new Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Milley “were consulted over the last several days by the president regarding the situation and efforts to protect U.S. forces in northern Syria in the face of military action by Türkiye,” the Defense Department’s spokesperson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, several former state and defense officials started bombarding the U.S. public opinion with op-ed pieces praising the contribution of the PKK's Syrian presence, the YPG, and affiliated so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces,” to the campaign against Daesh. The so-called SDF had “freed tens of thousands of square miles and millions of people" from the grip of Daesh, and now it was the U.S.’ turn to "protect them from the Turkish assault."
Consequently, the White House officials said Trump had been persuaded not to pull the military out of Syria immediately!
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius tells us that: “Milley, at first glance, seems to be a modern-day George Patton, barrel-chested and often profane in private, with an ex-hockey player’s sense of leadership as a contact sport.”
But Ignatius dismisses this resemblance immediately after, explaining, “He is a Princeton graduate with an encyclopedic knowledge of military history and a familiarity with arcane nuclear theorists such as Thomas C. Schelling.”
The model of “barrel-chested and often profane in private” Patton has long gone. Milley was a general as headstrong as George Smith Patton Jr., who singlehandedly shaped the political map of Europe after World War II. Had he not lost his life in a traffic accident, he probably would have had a very different impact on Russia and China. But his militaristic philosophy about Russia and China passed on to several U.S. military leaders, among them Milley.
James Clark, in his "Task and Purpose" article, described Milley as “a lightning rod for scrutiny and controversy as chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” who often found himself “in the crossfire of a red-hot culture war.”
Could it be that Milley still represents the generation of U.S. commanders who see Russia and China as “archenemies of the Western Culture”? He incessantly warned the members of the Congress about the dangers created by “the increased partnership between Iran, Russia, and China." He kept saying it would make them “problematic for years to come.”
On open forums, Milley asked the lawmakers “to lower the rhetoric on China” and said, “We’re not on the brink of war with China,” but every lawmaker coming out of closed committee meetings when Milley was testifying talked about the ways to save Taiwan from the Chinese tiger.
Milley envisioned that the road going to Beijing should be passing from Moscow; hence, he has been behind the hundreds of billions of military and financial aid going to Ukraine. He has been the main architect of U.S. bases on and around the Aegean Sea. He never bothered to notice that all those Greek islands had been demilitarized by agreements and treaties – and put U.S. tanks on them.
In his vision, that road to Moscow could start from the Lebanese and Israeli shores and pass through Syria, Iraq and Iran. The “independent Kurdistan,” uniting the Kurdish areas of Iraq with the Syrian lands held by PKK affiliates, should be ready soon. He visited "Rojava," the autonomous administration of north and east Syria, probably more than he visited his grandchildren. His departing gift to mullahs has been the release of $6 billion in Iranian funds as part of a prisoner swap for five Iranians held in the U.S.
Despite how carefully designed the last armageddon with Russia and China is, it is still a dystopic vision of world dominion. Patton used to say, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
His modern version, Milley repeated him with different words, “We've got to get this army hard, and we've got to get it hard fast.”
That is what the Joe Biden administration has been doing for the last four years.
