March 14, 2025
Will Trump Reshape the American Military
Last month, the Trump administration carried out a large-scale firing of senior military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of Naval operations, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, and the top military lawyers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. While expected, these moves were nonetheless largely unprecedented, upending longstanding bipartisan and civil-military norms around the continuity of military leadership across political transitions to a new administration. Kori Schake and Erica Frantz join Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend on this week’s episode to shed light on what the Trump administration’s dismissals of military leaders might mean for the state of U.S. civil-military relations, the health of U.S. democracy, and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy,
Kori Schake is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Erica Frantz is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University and a co-author of The Origins of Elected Strongmen.
More from CNAS
-
War in the Middle East: The U.S. Rescues Missing Airman from Iran
Video
Jim Townsend, Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security joins France24 t...
By Jim Townsend
-
No Longer So Mighty? Iran War Tests U.S. Strength and Resolve
Video
Jim Townsend, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security joins The Debate to look at the questions, how should Gulf, European and Asian allies react to th...
By Jim Townsend
-
Donald Trump’s Iran Strategy Is ‘Confused, Not Calculated’
Video
Donald Trump’s plan for Iran is not a deliberate strategy but rather a “stream of consciousness” as his lack of clear objectives risk serious global consequences, says former ...
By Jim Townsend
-
The War in Iran, a Benefit to Putin
Podcast
While the world's attention has turned to the war with Iran, the war in Ukraine continues. Russia has seemingly kicked off its spring offensive, but a meaningful breakthrough ...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend
