The U.S. military is increasingly politicized. Active-duty personnel need to prepare.

First, young military professionals must work to understand political leaders and the pressures they face, and the military should actively encourage their young leaders to do so. The active-duty military must always stay apolitical, but adherence to that norm does not mean service-members should stay willfully blind to political realities. A working knowledge of the political environment will help service-members recognize when their mission is being exploited by a partisan agenda, and later in their careers it will help them separate partisan rhetoric from their decision-making processes on military matters. This distinction could prove vital to the future military’s non-partisanship.

Furthermore, admirals and generals, especially those who interact with civilian policymakers, need sharp political awareness every day – and the U.S. military cannot expect its senior leaders to suddenly develop that awareness when they reach the upper echelons. Military leaders aren’t politicians and, in a world where politicians respected civil-military norms, deep political fluency would not be a prerequisite for military leadership. But if norms against politicization continue to erode, future admirals and generals will need to be considerably more politically knowledgeable and agile if they are to have any chance of preserving the military’s non-partisan ethos.

Finally, young military leaders should immerse themselves in the long history of U.S. civil-military relations.