The Friday Night Massacre: Firing the Joint Chiefs
On February 21, 2025, the administration fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (first ever), the Chief of Naval Operations (first female CNO), and the Coast Guard Commandant (first woman to lead any military branch)—all in one night. This article examines what five former Defense Secretaries meant when they issued an unprecedented joint condemnation, and what the purge reveals about coup-proofing dynamics.
Analytical Frame: Huntington, Nordlinger, and "Coup-Proofing by Stacking"
Civil-military relations scholarship gives a precise vocabulary for what "purges" do in institutional terms.
Samuel Huntington's classic distinction between objective civilian control and subjective civilian control is the cleanest starting point. Under objective control, civilians govern by protecting military professionalism—maintaining apolitical promotion norms, preserving the officer corps as a technical institution, and relying on law and professional ethics to keep force aligned with constitutional ends. Under subjective control, civilians govern by politicizing the military—shaping appointments and careers so that loyalty to an ideological project (or leader) becomes the pathway to advancement.
Eric Nordlinger's work on coups complements Huntington by emphasizing how legitimacy and perceived permissibility shape coercive institutions. In Nordlinger's logic, when a regime fears "legitimacy deflation" or anticipates conflict over contested orders, it has incentives to reshape the coercive apparatus so that potential veto players inside the security sector are neutralized.
The modern comparative literature calls one common mechanism stacking: replacing or bypassing professional promotion criteria to install loyalists, thereby reducing the probability of resistance to questionable orders. Lindsay Cohn's analysis in this tradition highlights a paradox: stacking can reduce coup risk against the executive while increasing the risk that the military becomes usable for domestic political aims—and less effective for national defense.
Additional scholars have refined this framework. Erica De Bruin's empirical work at Hamilton College, particularly "How to Prevent Coups d'État," provides the field's most comprehensive data on counterbalancing dynamics. Caitlin Talmadge at Georgetown documents competence costs in "The Dictator's Army." Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz analyze how personalist regimes build parallel coercive structures in "How Dictatorships Work." Nancy Bermeo's research on democratic backsliding identifies "executive aggrandizement"—where elected leaders use ostensibly legal mechanisms to weaken checks—as the dominant modern pathway to authoritarian consolidation.
The Night Of
On a single Friday night—February 21, 2025—the administration executed the most sweeping purge of senior military leadership in American history:
General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was fired. Brown was the second Black chairman in history (after Colin Powell) and had been confirmed by the Senate 98-0 just 16 months earlier. He had developed the strategy that defeated ISIS. No Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had ever been fired before.
Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Chief of Naval Operations, was fired. Franchetti was the first woman to serve as CNO and the first woman to sit on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Defense Department refused to provide any justification for her removal.
Admiral Linda Fagan, Coast Guard Commandant, had been fired within hours of the inauguration in January—while waiting to have her photo taken with the new president at the Commander-in-Chief Ball. She was the first woman to lead any branch of the U.S. military.
The Judge Advocates General of the Army and Air Force—the top military lawyers—were also removed. Lieutenant General Charles L. Plummer (Air Force TJAG since 2022) and Lieutenant General Joseph B. Berger III (Army) were dismissed without replacement.
By the end of the night, no female four-star officers remained in the United States military.
The Stated Rationale
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was explicit about the justification. In his words: "Any general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s--t has got to go."
General Brown's firing was specifically linked to a 2020 video he recorded after George Floyd's murder, in which he discussed his experiences with racial discrimination in the military. A video where a decorated combat veteran reflected on racism he had personally experienced was characterized as disqualifying for command.
Admiral Franchetti's firing was justified with claims she was "unqualified" and had been selected for "optics" rather than merit—despite her 38-year career, command of carrier strike groups, and unanimous professional endorsements.
The pattern was clear: the criterion for removal was not incompetence but perceived ideological deviation. Officers who had acknowledged the existence of racism or supported diversity initiatives were targeted regardless of their combat records or professional achievements.
The Lawyers
The firing of the Judge Advocates General requires separate analysis because it reveals something beyond ideological purging.
JAGs are the military's internal legal authority. They advise commanders on the lawfulness of orders, ensure compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and serve as the institutional check that prevents illegal commands from being executed.
Defense Secretary Hegseth explained why they had to go: he didn't want lawyers who would be "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief." In his book, he referred to them as "jagoffs." Senator Jack Reed was blunt about the implication: "If you're going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers."
The specific personnel changes reveal the strategy. Lieutenant General Charles L. Plummer (Air Force TJAG since 2022) and Lieutenant General Joseph B. Berger III (Army) were removed. Plans were announced to downgrade future TJAGs from three-star to two-star rank—reducing their institutional authority. Six hundred JAGs were slated for transfer to the Justice Department to serve as immigration judges, depleting the military's legal capacity.
Most revealing: Timothy Parlatore, Hegseth's personal lawyer of eight years, was commissioned as Navy JAG Corps commander. The appointment of a personal loyalist to lead military legal oversight crystallizes the objective: legal review as instrument of executive will rather than constitutional constraint.
The practical effects became visible within months. In August 2025, Marine Colonel Paul Meagher, serving as SOUTHCOM JAG, warned that planned boat strikes in the Caribbean "could amount to extrajudicial killings" and would "legally expose service members involved in the operations." His legal opinion was overruled by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel. Strikes began September 2, 2025—weeks after his objections. This is what JAG removal looks like in operation: legal warnings issued, documented, and ignored.
Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks observed: "Trump firing the Army, Navy, and Air Force JAGs [is in some ways] even more chilling than firing the four stars. It's what you do when you're planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down."
In Huntington's terms, this is a direct strike on the institutional infrastructure that makes objective control viable: professionalism depends not only on training and promotion norms but on internal systems that encode legal restraint and responsibility. Removing senior legal officers is a way of reducing the probability that unlawful commands are slowed, documented, or refused.
Coup-Proofing Has Costs
Coup-proofing has costs. Caitlin Talmadge's research in "The Dictator's Army" documents how these practices degrade military effectiveness: promotion patterns shift from merit to loyalty, training focuses on regime protection over combat readiness, command structures fragment to prevent coordination, and information restrictions prevent officers from gaining situational awareness.
Erica De Bruin's empirical work reveals an additional dimension: 63% of autocracies between 1946 and 2010 used counterbalancing strategies. Her central finding exposes a dangerous tradeoff—counterbalancing reduces the likelihood that coup attempts will succeed, but it is not associated with fewer coup attempts. The creation of a new security force actually increases the odds of a coup attempt in the following year. Jonathan Powell's research identifies yet another risk: heavily coup-proofed regimes see a considerable increase in civil war likelihood.
The February purges demonstrated these dynamics in real time.
General Brown had developed the strategy that defeated ISIS. Admiral Franchetti had commanded carrier strike groups. Admiral Fagan had decades of operational experience. Their replacements were selected for loyalty rather than equivalent achievement.
The nomination of Lieutenant General Dan Caine to replace Brown as Chairman was particularly revealing. Caine, a three-star general, had never led a combatant command or served as a service chief—the traditional prerequisites for the Chairmanship. His appointment required a "national interest waiver" to bypass standard requirements. His qualification was not expertise but perceived loyalty.
This tradeoff—loyalty for competence—is characteristic of coup-proofed militaries. It makes them less effective at their nominal mission (national defense) while more useful for their actual purpose (regime protection).
International Parallels
The patterns visible in February 2025 have clear precedents in other countries that consolidated authoritarian control.
Turkey after 2016 provides the most instructive comparison. Following the failed July 2016 coup attempt, Erdoğan purged over 130,000 civil servants without due process, including 24,000 military officers, 3,774 judges, and 5,800 academics. Freedom House downgraded Turkey from "Partly Free" to "Not Free" by 2018. Academic analysis identifies that "democratic decline mostly stemmed from Erdoğan's personalization of institutions and control of the military's political power after the attempted coup." The Turkish case demonstrates how purges accelerate after failed resistance—and how quickly a democracy can consolidate into autocracy once the security apparatus is captured.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein exemplified the full counterbalancing architecture: a Republican Guard of 150,000 men commanded by his son Qusay, with officers disproportionately from Saddam's Tikrit region, receiving better equipment and pay than regular forces. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) demonstrated the competence costs—Republican Guard units stayed near Baghdad for regime protection rather than deploying to combat. Regime survival took priority over military effectiveness.
Syria's Republican Guard showed similar sectarian stacking, with Alawite recruitment from Assad family strongholds and command by Bashar's brother Maher. Unlike the conscript army that suffered mass defections during the civil war, the Guard's "rigorous loyalty mechanisms, familial ties, and sectarian homogeneity" minimized fragmentation—though it ultimately collapsed against the 2024 rebel offensive. Loyalty delayed but did not prevent institutional failure.
Sudan demonstrates counterbalancing's catastrophic endpoint. President Omar al-Bashir created the Rapid Support Forces in 2013 as a counterweight to the regular military. The RSF grew wealthy enough through gold mining and mercenary contracts to pledge over $1 billion to Sudan's Central Bank. In 2019, the parallel force joined the regular military in overthrowing its creator—then turned on its former coup partner in 2023. The result: 12+ million displaced, 150,000-250,000 killed, 25 million food insecure. The U.S. designated the RSF as having committed genocide in January 2025.
The comparative pattern is clear: loyalty-based security forces may protect regimes in the short term, but they degrade institutional capacity and create conditions for catastrophic failure.
The Warning from 2021
In December 2021, three retired generals—Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba, and Steven M. Anderson—published an op-ed in the Washington Post warning about potential military involvement in a disputed 2024 election. They urged the Defense Department to conduct "war games" simulating scenarios where active-duty troops or veterans might support an insurrection.
Their fear was that partisan polarization had infected the military sufficiently that some personnel might follow political loyalty over constitutional obligation. They called for immediate action to reinforce constitutional norms within the chain of command.
Instead, the chain of command was purged to ensure loyalty over constitutional fidelity. The internal checks they hoped would prevent illegal orders—the senior officers, the JAGs, the professional culture—were systematically removed.
The Self-Coup Equation
Research on self-coups—where elected leaders seize extraordinary power that dismantles constitutional constraints—identifies the military's stance as the decisive variable. More than 80% of self-coup attempts by democratically elected leaders succeed, compared to roughly 50% for traditional coups. The key predictor of success is whether the armed forces back the undertaking. A third of all self-coup attempts by elected leaders since 1946 have occurred in just the past decade.
This is why coup-proofing matters. A leader planning to operate outside constitutional limits needs confidence that security forces will comply with illegal orders. The traditional American military—with its professional ethos, legal oversight, and constitutional loyalty—might refuse. A purged military, stacked with loyalists and stripped of legal advisors, is less likely to resist.
The February massacre created a military leadership selected for compliance rather than constitutional fidelity. It removed the lawyers whose job was to say no. It signaled that future advancement requires political loyalty. It replaced professional officers with ones chosen for ideological alignment.
Five former Defense Secretaries—Hagel, Mattis, Austin, Carter, and Cohen—issued an unprecedented joint statement calling the dismissals "alarming" and raising "troubling questions about the administration's desire to politicize the military." The condemnation crossed party lines and ideological boundaries. It was ignored.
If the goal were simply to lead an effective military, none of this makes sense. If the goal is to ensure the military will follow orders regardless of legality, it makes perfect sense.
The Pattern Continues
The February 21 purge was not an isolated event. It was part of a systematic effort to reshape the entire national security apparatus.
The Inspector General purge (documented in the previous article) eliminated oversight of executive agencies. Court defiance demonstrated that judicial rulings would not constrain executive action. The military purge ensured that senior commanders would not resist unconstitutional orders.
Each piece reinforces the others. Oversight is eliminated. Legal constraints are removed. Loyal commanders are installed. The architecture of constraint—the institutional mechanisms designed to prevent exactly what is happening—is being dismantled systematically.
What Resistance Would Require
Military resistance to illegal orders depends on officers willing to refuse those orders—and institutional structures that support such refusal.
The JAGs provided that institutional structure. Their job was to advise commanders that orders were unlawful, giving officers legal grounds to refuse. With the JAGs removed, officers who question orders have no institutional backing. They face the choice alone: comply or resist without support.
The senior commanders provided models of professional integrity. Officers throughout the ranks looked to the Joint Chiefs to understand what military professionalism required. With leaders selected for loyalty rather than professional values, that modeling shifts. The message to junior officers is clear: your career depends on compliance, not principle.
Resistance becomes harder when the institutions that enable it have been destroyed.
Military Fracture Risk
The purges create risks beyond reduced effectiveness. An amicus brief signed by four former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs warned that returning to an "overwhelmingly white officer corps" exercising authority over a 40% nonwhite rank-and-file mirrors the racial tensions of 1969-1970, which produced 300 internal disturbances and 71 troop deaths during the Vietnam War era.
The February 2025 purge sent unmistakable signals. By the end of the night, no female four-star officers remained in the United States military. Admiral Franchetti's firing—justified with claims she was "unqualified" and chosen for "optics"—conveyed a clear message about whose advancement the institution would support. Women currently comprise 18% of the active-duty force; leadership signals matter for retention.
The removal of Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to NATO, deprived the country of vital expertise in international alliance management at a time of historic strain in transatlantic relations.
Multiple democracy indices have registered these developments. The V-Dem Institute classified the United States as an "electoral autocracy" in late 2025, with director Staffan I. Lindberg predicting future elections will not be free and fair. The Polity data series states "the USA is no longer considered a democracy and lies at the cusp of autocracy." Protect Democracy's Authoritarian Threat Index rates the U.S. at 3.4 out of 5 (Severe Threat), with experts predicting a 19.2% four-year likelihood of democratic breakdown.
The Carnegie Endowment's comparative study found U.S. backsliding proceeding "faster than Hungary or Poland"—though with less institutionalized consolidation. This suggests an unstable equilibrium: rapid erosion without permanent capture, creating conditions for either recovery or accelerated collapse.
Living Under Praetorian Conditions
The Latin term "praetorian" derives from the Praetorian Guard—the Roman emperor's personal military force. Political scientists use "praetorianism" to describe systems where military forces become political actors, deploying their coercive power for partisan purposes. Huntington’s warning about praetorian politics is not “the military wants power” so much as “civilian institutions lose the capacity to channel conflict”—and coercive institutions begin to arbitrate outcomes.
The United States military was designed to be the opposite: a professional force serving constitutional governance rather than any particular leader. The norms that sustained this model—merit-based promotion, apolitical service, legal oversight, loyalty to the constitution rather than the commander-in-chief personally—developed over generations.
Those norms are being dismantled. Not gradually, through erosion, but deliberately, through purge. The February 21 massacre was not an accident or an excess of zeal. It was a strategy for ensuring that the world's most powerful military will comply with orders regardless of constitutionality.
Whether those orders will be given remains to be seen. But the preconditions for compliance have been established.
This is the twelfth article in a series examining democratic decline. The next article documents ICE's transformation into a parallel security force—tripled budget, doubled personnel, compressed training, ideological recruitment—and what authoritarian scholarship reveals about counterbalancing dynamics.