The truth behind the Mark Milley story
Yes, tensions with China were high when the Joint Chiefs chairman intervened, but for reasons that are in some ways scarier than Trump’s craziness.
Last week’s big Washington Post story about Gen. Mark Milley—about action he took in the final months of the Trump presidency to ensure that Trump’s emotional instability didn’t lead to war—sounded like something out of a Heroes of The Resistance TV series. Without authorization—and undaunted by the consequences of going rogue—the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had called his nervous Chinese counterpart and reassured him that things were under control: He wouldn’t let Trump start World War III. It seemed too dramatic to be true.
Apparently it was. And I’m not just talking about the “going rogue” part—about the fact that what the Post called a “secret” phone call by Milley may have actually involved lots of people, including a State Department official and a note taker whose readout of the call was circulated through the usual channels.
I’m also talking about the whole saving-the-world-from-Trump theme: the idea that the Chinese fears assuaged by Milley were all about what havoc this uniquely mercurial president might wreak.
In that version of the story, this phase of extreme and harrowing US-China tension ended when Trump left the White House—so we can breathe a sigh of relief and move on. But a look at some of the underreported details of the Milley episode suggests we shouldn’t move on; it suggests that, Trump’s instability aside, America’s national security establishment was needlessly alarming China in the final months of his presidency—and that this may reflect establishment tendencies that persist today.
There’s also a second lesson that emerges from this closer look at the Milley story—a reminder that people in other countries don’t necessarily look at the world as we do. They may not be quite as obsessed with Donald Trump as we are and may be highly attentive to things that escape our notice entirely. For example:
See the shoulder patch in the illustration above? It’s gotten almost no attention in America. But in September of 2020—only weeks before the first of Milley’s two reassuring calls to China—it got the attention of the Chinese government. The patch was being worn by US military personnel participating in “Exercise Agile Reaper,” which involved going through the motions of attacking an island.
The island used in the exercise was America’s, and the US military didn’t say whose territory the real-world target of such an attack might be. But the patch offers a clue: it features a map of China, in red, beneath an image of a drone called the MQ-9 Reaper. Above the drone is a gruesome skeleton wielding a scythe: the grim reaper himself. And for good measure: in the middle of the map of China are crosshairs—like, you know, as if we were about to bomb the place.
On September 29, as these exercises were drawing to a close, the South China Morning Post—a Hong Kong newspaper that, though not run by the Chinese government, often reflects its perspective—devoted a whole article to the shoulder patch and its context. The headline: “Does this US military uniform suggest it is preparing for war with China?”
A month later the Post answered its own question with a headline that read…
The full version of this article is for paying subscribers only. I hope you’ll consider becoming one! To do that—and read the rest of this article—click the Subscribe button below. This piece and all other Nonzero Newsletter content will then be fully available here.