Special Commentary:

Domestic Politics and the Military’s COVID-19 Response

May 27, 2020 | Professor William “Trey” Braun

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare several long-dormant vulnerabilities, and opportunities,

associated with US national security and military business practices. Military leaders must 

consider political context when making resource prioritization decisions that attend to these 

new perspectives. Three controversial political themes dominate the national security dialogue

in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. First, the nation’s initial focus will likely be on the economic 

recovery effort, while incorporating preparations to mitigate the reemergence of COVID-19 or a 

future pandemic. Second, the nation may experience a prolonged period of austerity, possibly 

combined with greater taxation, to recover COVID-19 related mitigation debt. Finally, because 

of these first two issues, defense budgets are likely to experience cuts. Defense spending is the 

only viable discretionary spending category subject to belt-tightening measures amid the 

divisive political gridlock and vitriol of a highly contentious election year.

Emerging analysis suggests the probability of economic stagnation, uneven sector and state 

economic recovery, mounting national debt, and political infighting in the shadow of a 

contentious election will underpin these themes. However, analyses of military implications are

less developed. Military resource prioritization choices are often biased by traditional 

justification reasoning and conventional force management assumptions. Arguments defending 

these choices may not adequately account for the influence of domestic political agendas, 

structural power pressures, or the military’s culture. 

This paper will examine domestic political trends, their potential military implications, and 

offer a few defense management arguments to augment traditional justification reasoning. A 

future article will consider the influence of stakeholder’s structural power, the culture of the 

Army’s defense management enterprise, and their influence on arguments used to defend 

resource prioritization choices.
DOMESTIC POLITICS

Foreign policy choices influence defense strategies and resource management choices. These 

choices create “winners” and “losers” within the domestic economy, affecting domestic political 

support for those policies and choices. Enterprise leaders must carefully choose arguments used 

to defend or validate resource prioritization choices, as they can generate either resistance or 

support from powerful domestic interest groups.

The Trump administration pursues what it calls a “pragmatic realism” foreign policy. Walter 

Russell Mead describes the Trump administration’s approach as populist-nationalism, and 

aligns it with a Jacksonian tradition of US foreign policy. Two Australian scholars, Michael 

Clarke and Anthony Ricketts, expanded on Mead’s thesis by describing the motivations, key 

themes, and political style adopted by Jacksonian populist-nationalism. According to these three 

scholars, Jacksonians are primarily motivated by a pessimistic view of the political elite. This 

populist view, shared by the Trump administration, is fueled by a loose but interdependent 

cornucopia of concerns about job loss, reliance on foreign supply chains, unlawful immigration, 

cheating (unfair markets, intellectual property theft, state and individual “free-riding”), eroding 

Western values, and a general perception of US decline and failure due to liberal elite influence.

Jacksonian nationalists endorse a minimalist foreign policy ethos. They are anti-globalist, 

but not necessarily isolationist. On pragmatic grounds, they reject the effectiveness of a 

crusading US commitment to advance Western values. They prefer to demonstrate the 

effectiveness of individual rights, free markets, and representative democracy to advance 

individual liberty and prosperity. They apprehend that liberal elites’ foreign policy choices have 

overextended resources, relieved like-minded nations of their share of regional burdens, and do 

not hold theocratic and autocratic societies accountable for their repressive behaviors. 

Jacksonians are not willing to underwrite international political and economic institutional 

governance; however, they are willing to cooperate with other nations—to the extent the US, and 

not an international collective governance body, determines outcomes. Over time, the 

administration’s rhetoric has doubled-down on these views. In light of the COVID-19 crisis, 

these views may be enjoying a greater degree of support among a wider segment of the US 

electorate, especially relative to US-China competition and supply chain vulnerabilities.

Following the acute phase of the COVID-19 crisis, the Trump administration will likely 

prioritize getting the US economy back on track. This effort will include opening businesses, 

curbing unemployment, and continuing small business and US manufacturing growth 

incentives. While the approach may differ, these priorities will likely transcend administrations 

should there be a 2020 transition. Former US Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive 

Democratic nominee for president, promises a decisive public health and economic response to 

COVID-19 on his campaign page. Following initiatives to deal with the crisis, Biden’s plan calls 

for pursuing economic measures to help workers, families, and small businesses, while leading a 

global response to confront future pandemics.
The next domestically energized security priority will likely be supply chain resilience and a 

re-commitment to expanding and securing the US manufacturing base, strategic materials, and 

critical components. These efforts will grow beyond traditional defense readiness priorities and 

into public health readiness, food supplies and distribution, information technology 

components, and social media security. The public’s new awareness of latent US vulnerabilities 

and opportunities will animate any fundamental societal changes resulting from the COVID-19 

crisis.

POTENTIAL MILITARY IMPLICATIONS

The public’s appreciation of US vulnerabilities starts with the direct impact of the virus. 

Military leaders should consider the potential military implications of future public concerns. 

The first subjects to consider are the implications of using military stocks and distribution 

capabilities to augment life-sustaining equipment shortages and to bolster fragile supply chains. 

Other important topics concern the ethical choices associated with the military’s involvement in 

a range of potential pandemic mitigation strategies. Two particularly vexing scenarios with 

ethical implications involve the employment of the military’s extensive surveillance and tracking 

capabilities to assist in contact tracing, and the use of military assistance to augment police 

enforcement of state and federal social distance and isolation protocols. 

On the positive side, the public is becoming more familiar with new means of 

communication, information gathering, and remote learning from kindergarten through college. 

Businesses are also embracing new or expanded business models. Many managers (out of 

necessity) are embracing the virtues of telework for a portion of their workforce. Defense 

managers and military leaders should overcome their fear of losing direct face-to-face control 

over employee production, especially in enterprise management settings. Embracing expanded 

telework would enable defense organizations to reap production benefits offered through hybrid 

synchronous-asynchronous work schedules and distributed operations best practices.

DEFENSE MANAGEMENT SUGGESTIONS

To argue effectively for resources, defense and military leaders must adapt their priorities 

and justifications to account for political and public sensibilities during the COVID-19 recovery. 

The military should examine crisis mitigation efforts and private sector examples of modified 

operations to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The military would benefit from examining how to 

assist civil authorities better with their challenges. The military (especially the Army, whose 

capabilities are most aligned with domestic crises response needs) should examine how to 

develop capabilities and better organize the force to support civil authorities with vulnerability 

mitigation efforts. 

From enterprise to unit level, the military should adapt internally to mitigate vulnerabilities 

and capitalize on opportunities highlighted by this crisis. In the context of operations, the 
military should wargame various readiness vulnerabilities and mitigation efforts associated with 

disease prevention, containment, and degraded operations. In a business context, the 

Department of Defense should examine its telework policies and adopt best practices for 

improving the effectiveness of a distributed workforce. Perhaps most important, the military 

must confront the ethical dilemmas it will encounter if called on by civil authorities to use its

extensive surveillance capabilities for contact tracing or to assist in the enforcement of federal 

and state imposed isolation directives.

One of the more challenging arguments the military must make is the need to retain a robust 

rotational forward presence. To facilitate these rotational forces, senior leadership must 

advocate for a permanent posture forward, enabling relationships necessary to develop hostnation cooperation procedures, detailed operational planning, and expeditionary force reception

preparations. Traditional justifications for forward presence include engagement and assurance 

of partners, force ratio assessments, guaranteed access in an increasingly anti-access/area 

denial (A2AD) security environment, and readily available capabilities to confront challenger 

and rival provocations in the competitive space below armed conflict. As LTG Eric Wesley, the 

deputy commander of Army Futures Command, points out, “You cannot compete if you are not 

present.”

These arguments will not resonate if senior military leaders do not acknowledge the new 

political environment—one shaped by a populist desire for a smaller forward presence

composed primarily of support forces and fewer forces to engage in combat operations. The 

military should consider much smaller footprint multi-functional formations, designed to 

engage with partners and effectively compete with rivals during competition. Doing so must also 

establish the baseline operational intelligence, reception infrastructure, and cooperation 

protocols for rapid expansion using US-based expeditionary forces in the event of conflict. The 

exact permanent presence posture and character of the rotational presence will be dependent on 

the regional context.

1

CONCLUSION

The COVID-19 crisis exposed vulnerabilities, yet offers opportunities to improve US national 

security and military business practices. Potentially, the crisis has also reinforced an expanded 

base of support for many of the Jacksonian populist-nationalist messages proffered by the 

Trump administration. Regardless of the 2020 national election outcome, the next 

administration will need to account for the public’s renewed interest and awareness of US 

vulnerabilities and opportunities in their foreign policy choices. Military leadership will need to 

consider these new domestic political sensibilities when creating security strategies, resource 

priorities, and justification arguments over the next several years.

 

1 For a more detailed army force design and posture analysis in the INDOPACOM Area of Operation 

see: Nathan Freier, John Schaus, and William Braun, An Army Transformed: INDOPACOM Hypercompetition and U.S. Army Theater Design, (Carlisle, PA: USAWC Press) - forthcoming.
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