When the Military is Pulled into Politics | Robert Pape

[00:00:00] What happens when the fighting comes home and we have a contentious election and violence in the streets? We get stuck in a domestic escalation trap of our own creation. Welcome to the At the Water's Edge podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines and take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 24th of September, 2026. Let's get started. Today we're talking about domestic violence at home, how it impacts elections, and what it means for our military men and women with the one and only Robert Pape.

[00:00:27] And if you've enjoyed this content with the professor, as always, like, subscribe, share with a friend. With that, let's get to Pape. Well, professor, good morning and welcome back. How are you doing? Oh, I'm doing good, Scott. Thank you for having me. I'm personally doing very well, and I'm looking forward to talking with you. Unfortunately, again, we're going to talk about some unhappy subjects, but hopefully by doing this in advance,

[00:00:56] what we're going to do is we're going to be more aware of what is coming. And that has been my purpose for 30 years, Scott. That's what I've been doing. It's not just reacting after the fact. It's looking forward. And what I really want to do today is talk about what's coming in November in our country here in the United States,

[00:01:18] and then how that interacts with the Iran war and what that means for especially our serving military. And this is a critical audience. You know we've been on a lot. And this is about to go even up more in terms of how critical we're about to have a discussion. So thank you, Scott, for doing this. Not really appreciate it.

[00:01:47] And you have a brand new book out talking about this thing. It launched two days ago. We'll flash the cover up here for everybody. Lincoln Show notes. Everyone go buy it. All right. Love the cover art here. Our own worst enemies, America in the age of violent populism. Robert Pape. There seems to be some schmutz on the cover. That doesn't bode well, but I'm sure we'll get into that. Well, they did that on purpose. That is the press. So they do that on purpose.

[00:02:13] They actually did this with my book, Dying to Win, way back when. So if anybody gets a hardback copy of that, and those hardbacks go like hotcakes, and then it's all paperback. So you can't get them. In fact, I've got only a couple of hardbacks. So just so you know, it's not like they treat me much different than you guys out there. And so, but the book did just come out, and I've been working on this book for five years.

[00:02:40] It's solid, full of real research, but it was never written to just sit on a shelf. And even though it just came out, the real importance here is November, as we're going to talk about. And we have about six weeks till we get to November. I think it's actually almost five and a half now, so we're getting there fast. This is the time to understand what's coming in November.

[00:03:08] Because once you wait until the problem happens, you can't think. You can't think. This book goes through all the dynamics of what's breaking our country apart. 20 national surveys of support for political violence in the United States for over five years. It goes through the whole trajectory of political violence, answers all the questions. Is it rising on the right or the left? Why are there reasons?

[00:03:34] Why is it happening now and not 20 years ago and not 20 years from now? All of that is laid out. But what I want to talk today about is people can go to the book, and they can go and get. There's a whole lot there. Also, the history of this, the 60s, the 20s. So there's a whole lot in there to bone up on if you want to understand where we're heading. What I want to talk about is the clock. The clock. Okay?

[00:04:05] So with political violence, we're around an election. What a lot of people, and President Trump's already, by the way, dropped. He might call out the National Guard. Things like that. But what a lot of people think, Scott, and it's very understandable. What they think is the problem is voter intimidation before the election.

[00:04:25] And the problem is, oh, President Trump, a week before the election, he'll call out the National Guard or her surge ice into areas here. And that will lead to intimidation. And then a lot of people react, well, that won't intimidate me. I'm now more determined to go and vote than ever. Okay? And that's true. Because the problem with political violence is not mainly, I'm not going to say it's not at all, but it's not mainly voter intimidation. Okay?

[00:04:55] Although all the candidates will tell you that. I study it. Okay? I'm not a candidate for office. I study it. So, no, that's not the problem here. The big problem, I should say. The big problem is starts and the clock starts. The danger zone starts the moment the polls close. Why? Because the moment the polls close, the counting starts.

[00:05:25] This is not about pre-vote intimidation. Real political violence, you saw this January 6th. It all starts. The clock of actual danger zone starts the moment the polls close, the moment the counting starts.

[00:05:47] And it goes all the way through the certification of the vote and the seeding of the, I'll just put in quotes, the winners. And the key issue is, will the losers let that happen? Yeah. That's the issue. And we can talk about scenarios. The Atlantic has laid out scenarios to worry about.

[00:06:15] All of these here are underweighting the reality of what's coming. It's very much like February of this year, not really taking seriously, we were about to get into an escalation trap with Iran. We're heading into a domestic escalation trap, Scott, where it's the same logic. Okay.

[00:06:42] What's going to happen is starting the moment the polls close, there's going to be counting. And what happens with counting? Winners and losers. Winners and losers. And what happens is, are the losers going to accept the loss? Okay. This is the big deal. Okay. Now, what does the loss mean? Back to the escalation trap here.

[00:07:12] So we've talked about it on your show numerous times. The military is now very used to thinking about this internationally. Unfortunately, this is what's coming in November domestically. It's the domestic escalation trap. And unfortunately, the military is likely to get wrapped into this as people are already starting to connect some dots. Okay. So what happens here is, first of all, let's talk about what does losing mean? Well, with the Iran war, it means Iran becomes the fourth center of world power. We've all talked about that.

[00:07:42] You've heard this many times. And it's actually happening. Okay. What it means domestically is, President Trump's presidency is irreparably shattered. And that has enormous consequences for the Republicans, for the whole idea of what MAGA even stands for. That has enormous consequences. Some people say, oh, well, what does President Trump really care?

[00:08:11] He's now made many billions of dollars. He'll just go and retire and play golf. Okay. No, most of that money is in crypto, Scott. And that's going to go up in smoke faster than a Hunter Biden painting. Okay. All right. So let's just be clear. We know we're not thinking we're not actually processing what we're saying here. We're saying it. This is just like, by the way, in February. I mean, literally, it's the same thing. Oh, no, it's not going to be a problem.

[00:08:41] We're not going to have a long war. If we do a bombing, it's just a drive-by shooting. I'll be done in a day. J.D. Vance. Literally, the week before the bombing started. We never possibly think about a long war. Well, see, it's interesting you see that point of the crypto angle because now Trump's saying he's going to give every American $5,000 if the Republicans hold on to the House and Senate. Makes sense because where's the money going to come from? His crypto holdings. I'm just kidding. He's not going to do that. But he's not going to do that.

[00:09:08] So you're saying we shouldn't put a lot of weight in the fact that Trump says he doesn't care about the midterms and folks saying that, well, he's already a lame duck anyway. So why does it matter? No, I think he doesn't care about the vote. Oh, okay. He may be honestly saying he doesn't care about the vote. Okay. So let's go ahead, Scott. Has any American president, though, ever effectively used political violence to influence the outcome of an election?

[00:09:35] Because I'm thinking back to, okay, 2020, Biden still comes into power. Donald Trump. Gore versus Bush. No, Donald Trump. Gore versus – no, Donald Trump. So the book goes through in Chapter 5. The book basically, by the way, shows political violence is rising on both the right and the left. So if anybody thinks I'm picking on one side or the other, no, you will see the George Floyd violence in the summer of 2020 whole chapter.

[00:10:04] Okay. You will see January 6th whole chapter. Notice how that makes those sides unhappy. You see? You're just, like, making everybody mad. Do you have any friends? No, I do. The 70% in the middle. Oh, okay.

[00:10:19] No, what – Scott, this is – there's – believe it or not, although there's tens of millions of people who support political violence now on both sides of the aisle, and the book lays all that out, there's 70% in the middle who abhor political violence. This book is for the 70%. This book is for the middle. You see what I mean? And that middle is the democracy. That's who our democracy is. It's the 70%.

[00:10:47] So the fact is, I've got – that's basically who's on the sub stack. You want to know who are the 80,000 on the sub stack here? Well, this is obviously – if all you want to hear is MAG is right or MAG is wrong, you're just not going to pay for that. I mean, that's just not what you're getting. You're going for forecasting. You're going for looking forward. You're looking for the substance here. And you want to know. Get ahead of the risk. The same thing happening here.

[00:11:14] Except it's going to be much, much more direct here and the consequences here. So what happens here is the loss here, the loss – the last time we saw President Trump lose an election, and I do believe it was legitimately lost here, he went to great lengths to say it was not a loss. And 20% of the public believed him.

[00:11:44] That's not two people. That's not three people. That's an enormous amount, and that's 40% of the Republican Party, just to kind of give some numbers there. That is not just three people sitting in the West Wing of the White House or Steve Bannon. Now there's a whole podcast network that supported that and so forth. But this is a – there's a lot at stake here when the losers lose. And who was the president at that time?

[00:12:13] It was Donald Trump. And he used a lot of the powers, I think all the powers of his office here, to call a crowd of 120,000 to Washington to basically have them – encourage them to march. He said he would be right there with them at the front. Literally, that's what he said at the Ellipse. He said he wanted them to pressure the weak.

[00:12:43] He called them Republicans. That's who he was targeting. He made it very clear Mike Pence was number one. And then what happened is at 2.23 p.m. on that day, he put out a tweet to all that 10,000 people who were right around the Capitol, hanging on it, literally hanging on it, that Mike Pence let us down. And you know what happened after that? Boom. The storm – yeah. Couldn't hold it. No.

[00:13:11] That is how you do it. He never said, storm the Capitol. In fact, there's a line in his speech where he says, be peaceful. One line in an hour-long speech. And went on – yeah, yeah. You see right away. He's got some good lawyers. Exactly. So what I'm saying is – now, we don't know the future for sure, okay? And that's the same with the Iran war. Same with American political violence. But this – the dynamics here are pointing in a direction.

[00:13:39] This is – we can study – and this is what I've been doing for 30 years. Now, let me, though, start to talk a little bit more about what this means a little bit for the military because I think this is very, very important. So everybody has been hearing about will President Trump declare martial law? Will he bring out the National Guard? Will he bring out the U.S. military?

[00:14:07] And the military, we'll recall, on September 30th of last year, President Trump called all 800 admirals and generals to the Pentagon for the one and only time that's ever happened since there was a Defense Department in 1947. We've never done that before here. And what did he tell them? He told them directly, be prepared to go into Democratic cities and treat them as training grounds.

[00:14:37] And if you don't like it, get out. He said that in those words, people can go look it up. I'm not – I'm just quoting President Trump, not paraphrasing it. These were his words, okay? Now, that's very important to hear. Now, also, that was before the Iran war.

[00:14:58] And people want to – should know that the Supreme Court, the courts, they've actually ruled against Trump using the National Guard without the approval of the governors and the mayors for ICE and so forth. So the courts here have been a guardrail. But there is a big problem with that, Scott. A lot of people are thinking, oh, sure, that's just going to happen again. That Democrats thinking, well, we're just going to have some lawyers, going to get out of this with lawyers. There's a big thing they're forgetting. It's called the Iran war.

[00:15:28] It's called the Iran war. And the president is commander-in-chief of national security. So we get – and President Trump has already been saying that as soon as the midterm is over, and I think he means, and everybody's checking it, is November 4th. That's when the counting starts. He's going to settle the Iran war. Well, think about what that means.

[00:15:50] If he escalates in a major way starting on November 4th, now he has a much stronger legal argument that's much more difficult for the courts to beat back, that he needs to have either help from the National Guard, maybe surge of ice. He's got multiple tools at his disposal.

[00:16:17] At the outer end could even be martial law, though that might not happen, of course, right away. But the bottom line is all of those guardrail protections that we're thinking, oh, sure, it'll just kick in. No, he couldn't possibly get it through. He now has, with the Iran war, an incredibly powerful argument for the courts.

[00:16:37] And the courts simply, if you go back to World War II, you look at the detentions of Japanese and all this, the courts say, no, we're not dealing with this when there's a war going on. Come back later and we'll talk about it. So what's basically, and you can bring on Jeff Stone, people in the University of Chicago, the top legal scholars in the country on this, and they will all tell you that what I'm saying and bring them on from the right and the left, they'll all agree to this.

[00:17:04] The courts, when there's a war, they're particularly hands off on the president, even when it comes to what he does domestically. And that's very important to understand. Let me ask you this, then, because war with Iran's one thing, but it's not been declared by Congress. If I go back to 2020, we were in the global war on terror. And I remember waking up in Bagram Air Force Base on January 6th, checking the news and going, holy crap, what's happening at home?

[00:17:31] So how is the Iran war seemingly giving him a better legal framework for the use of military force domestically than he had in 2020 when we were in the middle of Afghanistan still? Oh, no, no, no, no. We have much, much more threat here from Iran. And Iran is already threatening our carriers. By the way, Iran may decide. I focused on the danger zone only from President Trump's side.

[00:17:56] But we need to understand, when you have internal problems for a country, this tends to be a catalyst to international, an accelerant to international war. It's called the diversionary theory of war. When the government of the state that's having the internal problem lashes out and tries to divert that, people can go look it up. It's called diversionary theory of war.

[00:18:24] Then there's the windows logic on the other side, where when there's an internal problem, outside powers attack. That's when we encourage Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in 1980. See, what happened was Iran was going through an internal problem. Remember that little thing called the revolution? And we didn't just sit back and say, oh, yeah, yeah. No, that's all fine with us.

[00:18:46] We've tried to pour gasoline on the fire to have it go our way by encouraging Saddam Hussein to attack into Iran in the heat of that revolution. And if people go back and read The New York Times in those months, there's a real optimism on the part of American presidents here that we're going to actually reverse that revolution. We're going to basically steer it in the direction we want to. Well, that's not a one off, Scott.

[00:19:14] This is a pattern in international politics. And so the fact is, once you have internal problems, and we've had very serious internal problems already here, this tends to encourage internationalizing this from both sides. And so you end up with a situation where that was just not the case with Afghanistan and so forth.

[00:19:42] When, if anything, we're heading to peace with Afghanistan. We're negotiating with the Taliban, recall. I know I was advising the Trump White House in the summer of 2019 on exactly that issue. So this is not just simply, no, the parallel here is not the same. And yes, there will be legal arguments here. But notice that the problem here is this is going to be in a limbo.

[00:20:08] I'm talking about the months of November and December when the new Congress hasn't even been seated yet. And suddenly you have a limbo period. It's called a lame duck period. Here again, this is a period where the president's powers are normally, there's a lot more discretion typically given. And so this is, I don't say there's no, I'm sure Democrats will bring lawsuits. I'm not saying they won't.

[00:20:37] But the issue here is that this is just a different world. And so, and the other point I want to make is that in the fall of 2020, President Trump was surrounded by a cabinet of guardrails, essentially. If you look at the people around him and also Mark Milley, if you look at the people around him, these were people who were not at all in favor of doing a lot of the things.

[00:21:02] Remember Milley said that Trump wanted him to call out the military and couldn't he shoot them in the leg? I mean, people can go and look this up. I mean, remember that? Well, Milley said no to that. Well, you've got a different, what Trump has done is he's surrounded himself by a whole different pool of people. And what has happened in the last year and a half is he has fired those he didn't think were loyal enough. Pam Bondi's out.

[00:21:29] She won't prosecute those Trump opponents. Man, she's out. Okay. And just look at what's happened over and over and over again. So I'm not telling you we have a crystal ball that we can exactly see. This is the same as the escalation trap internationally.

[00:21:46] That said, we need to understand the risks and we need to understand that this will involve the military here or could, I should say, involve the military in ways that are very, very serious, have long consequences. And the most important thing right now is to become more deeply aware. Remember Milley? I'm just going to quote again, Milley.

[00:22:14] He said he wanted to know what's really going on. Well, that book, this book is for somebody like Milley. This is for, this is written for the 70%. It's not pro-maga. It's not anti-maga. It is written to explain to someone who's really scratching their head. How can this be happening in our country? This is five years of my life to try to answer that question, Scott.

[00:22:40] And I was working on that every day for five years until essentially February 1st of this year. Yeah. That's, and it just worked out. That's when those galleys had to go in. And what happened? That's when we started moving the armada. It's interesting you bring up Milley because he famously had the plan to resign rather than carry out certain orders to deploy federal troops or to nationalize the National Guard and deploy those if Trump asked him to.

[00:23:07] And we saw that every other joint chief of staff member line up to resign in line if they were asked to do that to protect this norm of there's limits to the use of military force in the United States. We see a military right now, though, that's conducting military operations of full-blown war without authorization of Congress, despite the War Powers Resolutions votes being made several times.

[00:23:29] What happens, American people want to know, and folks in the military want to know when they get these orders, what happens when the Trump administration says in response to voting irregularities in Georgia, hey, everyone at Fort Moore, get out there, seize the machines. Hey, go stand there on the corners. Like, that seems like there'll be an automatic constitutional crisis. So here's my direct answer and direct advice on that issue.

[00:23:55] Point number one, notice for that Trump speech that he gave at the Pentagon, he said, you're either on board with this or get out. And so he has been shaping his officer corps over the last year in ways that are much, much more directly beholden and loyal to Trump as the individual holding the office as opposed to the office itself. That's just simply a fact here.

[00:24:25] And so what that means is that counting on the resignations, Scott, to save our country, I don't think is, that's not my advice here. I'm not telling them to do that because I'm here to actually say, what could we do to really help the country in this situation? Okay.

[00:24:48] And the number one thing that I think that not just President Trump, but everybody needs to hear is how when you involve the military in domestic politics in this way, it makes everything worse. It makes everything worse.

[00:25:12] And I think that the, this is how you really do the best for our country, because you see, I can definitely understand your, I mean, let's go back in a lot and compare it to the Iran war. We know in February, there are meetings here and there were probably, there were some in January where the military leaders, our top military leaders are briefing the president here. Uh, I would like to see, and I think I said this on your show.

[00:25:40] I'd like to see those, those briefings here. I want to see just how firmly they explained to president Trump that Iran's going to take Hormuz. Okay. I want to see, did they point out to him? They almost took it. They're just about to do it in June. When we stopped the war, I want to see how direct was that or how much was it? Well, of course there may be something that doesn't go right. So there's only one way to know and, uh, which see the top secret briefing and okay. You say, well, it's classified.

[00:26:10] Well, okay. But what exactly are we keeping from Iran at this point? Okay. I mean, I'm not quite sure I get that one. So, so let's, I just don't buy this, uh, hiding under classification stuff. And so I think that it's really, but here I'm saying a similar thing, which is that, um, president Trump has the power to fire people. So he can keep firing people and they can resign. And we have, you know, what a million, two in arms here. I mean, we got a lot of people in the military.

[00:26:39] He's going to find somebody who's going to execute those orders. And probably pretty quick, uh, here. And so I just don't buy that is, um, now for individuals, I'm not telling them what to do. I'm really not because that's a moral choice. That's a direct personal choice. I have, uh, officers who have come to get their PhD under me. So, so I, I definitely, um, I don't have to feel that pain. I'm in a different position here.

[00:27:05] And so I don't mean to minimize that at a personal level either. That, that is a, it's a, it's a, it's a, I can only, I do know some about this directly, but I, I, I really do, uh, uh, appreciate our, our folks here so much for what they're going through. And so what I want to say is though, what needs to happen is we've got, uh, five and a half weeks. What we need to do is we need to bone up on this.

[00:27:33] We have to get much, much more deeply aware of what's happening to our country. And then it really is important, uh, that we start to think through, uh, here and then be able to present much, much more forcefully than, Hey, sir, this might not be a good idea. Uh, that what happens when you involve the military in politics at this level. And, um, this is just extremely, extremely important.

[00:27:59] And I think this is really the message I want to give because I think this could be the way to actually do some good. Um, it, it's important by the way that it be, uh, developed deeply. It's, it's again, that, that, and, and, um, uh, and then we talk about the, the real, uh, the real issues here. And I think you see this with me all the time. We talk about nuclear just on your last show.

[00:28:23] We talk, we go through these and this is how you avoid the worst outcomes. You don't hope they just don't come up because of course, no one would ever think of that. I'm sorry. They are. And they, and, and, and, uh, and, and you don't say, well, they touched the stove. They'll never do that again. I'm sorry, president Trump pardon everybody for January 6th, including the 600 who beat the police.

[00:28:52] And we have the pictures and videos of them doing it. And I've studied all 1,575 of those individuals, uh, over with research teams, 150,000 pages of court documents. So again, this is the professor paper research that you used to seeing, uh, here and, um, uh, but it's coming now, now time.

[00:29:15] And so the reason, um, uh, I, I, uh, I, I thought this was going to be a very, very, um, uh, contentious, if not dangerous election already with the Iran war that now this makes things, uh, even worse. And this is even now more important. And of all the groups in the country, uh, it's the military who needs to understand this more than anybody else.

[00:29:43] Um, and it's not because the military's job says domestic. No, that's not it. It's because, um, we need to realize that who better than the military to be able to really explain to our leaders the consequences of doing, going down these paths.

[00:30:08] And, and again, it's, it's, uh, I realized that, um, it's, it's personal. A lot of people don't want to be, you know, there or something that that's perfectly right. Right. But this is, this is what we have in front of us, Scott. And this is what it means, I think, um, to do the best for our country under the most, one of the, probably the most trying time we're going to have, where we're going to have a contentious election right alongside the worst war in our lifetime.

[00:30:38] Wow. Uh, you're at time now, right? I know you got to go. I should, I should go for the others who today's it's a bit, these are all busy days and I'm sorry to say they're going to get, there, there's a good chance they will get busier, Scott, because these, these streams, you know, in the Ghostbusters movie, some of your listeners will call this, but, you know, he says, don't cross the streams. And, uh, and when Venkman said, uh, define problem.

[00:31:09] Awesome. Well, I'll save my follow-ups for next time. Then, uh, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Love the book. I've been reading through it so far. Uh, highly recommend link will be in the show notes for folks who want to go pick up a copy and we'll see you, I believe next week. Uh, we're going to see you Monday. Monday. See you Monday. Awesome. Thank you very much. Okay. Bye-bye.