Relevant excerpts from the chapter (page 91) by Christopher Miller, former SECDEF, in Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership (pdf):
. . .
Priority No. 1: Reestablish a culture of command accountability, nonpoliticization, and warfighting focus.
Priority No. 2: Transform our armed forces for maximum effectiveness in an era of great-power competition.
Priority No. 3: Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border protection operations. Border protection is a national security issue that requires sustained attention and effort by all elements of the executive branch.
Priority No. 4: Demand financial transparency and accountability.
This chapter offers recommendations for improving our armed forces and the civilian organizations that support and oversee them. . . .
. . . . Restore standards of lethality and excellence. Entrance criteria for military service and specific occupational career fields should be based on the needs of those positions. Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive or suffering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service. Physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.
Eliminate politicization, reestablish trust and accountability, and restore faith to the force. In 2021, the Reagan National Defense Survey found that only 45 percent of Americans have “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military”—down from 70 percent in 2018.
1. Strengthen protections for chaplains to carry out their ministry according to the tenets of their faith.
2. Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda. This direction should be reinforced during the Senate confirmation process. Orders and direction motivated by purely partisan motives should be identified as threats to readiness.
3. Reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and provide back pay.
4. Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.
5. Restrict the use of social media solely for purposes of recruitment and discipline any armed services personnel who use an official command channel to engage with civilian critics on social media.
6. Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.
7. Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended. . . .
. . . . Transform Army culture and training. The Army can no longer serve as the nation’s social testing ground. A rebuilt Army that is focused again on its core warfighting mission and empowered it with the tools, resources, and authorities it needs to accomplish that mission must be the next Administration’s highest defense priority.
1. Stop using the Army as a test bed for social evolution. Misusing the Army in this way detracts from its core purpose while doing little to reshape the American social structure. The Army no longer reflects national demographics to the degree that it did before 1974 when the draft was eliminated.
2. Demand accountability in senior leaders to reverse the decline in public support for military service. . . . .
Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership (pdf)
How Trump may shake up DOD: an insider’s view (Defense One)
An interview with Christopher Miller, the acting SecDef-turned-Project 2025 co-author.
Leave a Comment