Why Conservatives Turned on the U.S. Military
Right-Wing Attacks Are Eroding Trust in the Armed Forces
By Ronald R. Krebs and Robert Ralston
RONALD R. KREBS is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.
ROBERT RALSTON is Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, September 2019
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Conservative American pundits and politicians have found a surprising new punching bag: the "woke" U.S. military. "Anti-American indoctrination [is] seeping into parts of our military," Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, railed in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee in June. "Holy crap," Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, tweeted in May in response to a recruitment ad showcasing the U.S. Army's diversity. "Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea."
In the ongoing controversy over "critical race theory" (CRT)—a framework for analyzing racism that was once confined to the
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Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-09-28/why-conservatives-turned-us-military