ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
Here's a line that caught our eye this week. Quote, "to capture a democratic nation, authoritarians must control three sources of power - the intelligence agencies, the justice system and the military," end quote. That's from a piece written by Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. Nichols is a staff writer there and a professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, and he argues that President Trump has already brought America's intel agencies and the justice system under his control. But the military remains the last obstacle, at least for now. Professor Nichols, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
TOM NICHOLS: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
LIMBONG: All right, so the central fear in your piece, as I understand it, is that the president aims to use the U.S. military to exert control over Americans. Lay out the evidence for our listeners that that is what he intends to do.
NICHOLS: Well, I think all you have to do is look at the way he is sending troops into cities that don't want him there, troops into cities and states where the governors and the mayors have said, no, thank you. We don't need your help. And he's been doing this almost since the moment he came into office, and I think he's trying to acclimate Americans to having troops in the streets, to using the military as a show of force and a display of his personal power by putting them into cities, specifically in places where they're not wanted, to get people used to the idea that he can do with the military whatever he wants.
LIMBONG: You know, the president has faced legal issues over his military orders, right? But he's also fired the top legal military officers. And as I understand it, Defense Secretary Hegseth argued that he didn't want lawyers to block orders by the commander in chief. What is at stake here, particularly when it comes to the role the law is supposed to play here?
NICHOLS: Well, if you're firing all your top lawyers, that should raise a suspicion that you're about to issue orders that are not legal, or else you wouldn't be worried about what your lawyers are going to tell you. And I think that these are all moves that should worry Americans and make them very concerned about the state of their democracy.
LIMBONG: Yeah. In your piece, you hearken back to the stable days of 2017, right? You cite this quote from Air Force General John Hyten, who was then-head of the U.S. Strategic Command. And he was asked at this panel about, like, what do you do when the president asks you to do something illegal? Can you just, like, break down the - how it, quote-unquote, usually works?
NICHOLS: Ah, the good old days of 2017.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
NICHOLS: General Hyten was asked, how would you react to an illegal order? And I think when you're talking about the commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces, that's a really interesting question. And General Hyten said, well, I would simply tell the president that's not legal. And Hyten said, I'm sure the president would then say, well, what would be legal?
Well, that is probably true of all 45 presidents, except this one, who will probably say, if his track record on such things is any evidence and as I pointed out in the piece, don't worry about what's legal. I'll cover you. I've got that taken care of. And I think especially now that the Supreme Court has granted Trump effectively monarchical immunity as a president, I don't imagine that he would say, well, oh, thank you, general, for telling me what's not legal. Please tell me what I can do that is legal. I think he's going to say, I've given you an order, do it, and I've got your back. I'll cover you.
LIMBONG: President Trump has said that the military strikes on drug cartels are meant to protect Americans, right? And I think in your piece, you warned that that could open the door, again, to using the military against Americans themselves. Can you make that link for us?
NICHOLS: The president's decided that he can kill these drug runners because they are effectively terrorists. He calls them narcoterrorists. And as an aside, I should point out, this is part of the problem of the promiscuous use of the word terrorist ever since 9/11, that anybody we want to take out is, by definition, a terrorist. So the president has said, these people are terrorists. I have the right to kill terrorists. I have the right to kill terrorists on my own determination and without interference from anybody else. It's not a big jump from there to say, I have a right to kill terrorists anywhere I want to kill them, including here in the United States.
LIMBONG: All right, I want to end this conversation sort of where we started. So you argue that the intelligence agencies and the justice system have fallen in line with the president. What can stop the military from doing so?
NICHOLS: Well, agencies that have civilian leaders in them are easier to capture because you can just fire people, as Trump did, and bring in someone completely unqualified, completely without any background, somebody like Tulsi Gabbard, who really has no business being the director of national intelligence. She has no background in it. Her only qualification is that she's loyal to Donald Trump.
That's harder to do if you're trying to replace three- and four-star generals and admirals because those organizations in the military commanded by two-, three-, four-star officers, they rely on those officers to have that 25 or 30 years of experience. There's a reason that they have that third and fourth star because they bring with them a particular qualification. You can't simply fire a four-star officer and turn to some, you know, captain or major and say, tell you what, you're a general now, because the result would be disaster not only for the military as an organization, but it would put our national security and our national defense in mortal peril, and people realize that. You're going to need people who have actual military experience.
LIMBONG: Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Tom, thank you so much for taking the time.
NICHOLS: Thank you.
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