Charles Q. Brown Jr. used a Foreign Affairs essay published Friday to criticize the politicization of the military and the push to use armed forces for politically contentious domestic missions. He wrote that such missions make military work more fraught and pull attention from the combat mission.
The essay came from one of three authors and arrived after Brown last week said at the Aspen Institute that removals of top generals were not about merit and that the people being removed were very well-experienced. Brown did not name Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth in the essay, even as the targets of his criticism were easy to identify from recent public comments and personnel actions.
Aspen Institute remarks
Brown said, "What is starting to happen now, it is not about merit. All of these people who are being removed are very well-experienced." He made that remark last week at the Aspen Institute, after being fired in February last year.
His comments gave the essay added weight because he was speaking as a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown had been nominated by Joe Biden for that post after Donald Trump had nominated him in 2020 as Air Force chief of staff.
Foreign Affairs essay
In the essay, Brown wrote, "In the face of a genuine national disaster, the public will readily embrace the military’s help," but he warned that using the armed forces for "more politically contentious missions, such as addressing domestic crime in cities, the work of the military becomes more fraught." He also wrote, "Resorting to a military solution rather than fixing the underlying incapacity or dysfunction in civilian institutions diverts the military from focusing on its primary combat mission."
He added, "And as [George] Washington knew, it is not the military’s job to save the republic from political impasses. Indeed if you ask too much of the military, you risk the entire enterprise." That language put a constitutional boundary around the kind of domestic missions Brown criticized without naming the people he was plainly addressing.
National Guard deployments
The essay lands as Trump and Hegseth have tried to deploy the National Guard in blue cities, with the National Guard successfully deployed in Washington, D.C. Brown’s warning addresses the operational tradeoff that comes when the military is pulled toward domestic tasks while civilian institutions are bypassed or left to fail.
Hegseth had already signaled his view in November 2024 on the Shawn Ryan Show, saying, "First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs." He also said, "Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke s--t has got to go."
The White House and the Defense Department were contacted for comment. Brown’s essay left the immediate policy dispute in place, but it also drew a clear line: he said the military should not be the answer to political impasses, and he warned that overuse risks the force itself.
