The military is supposed to be an apolitical institution, managed on the basis of merit, yet accountable at the highest level to democratically-elected civilians.

The Biden administration has demonstrated, however, the extent to which military affairs are enmeshed with politics, to the detriment of national security. Conservative groups and elected officials have caught on to the decay in institutional credibility. Ironically, though predictably, progressives and media now decry conservative attempts to preserve the military’s institutional integrity as “politicized.”

Of late, media outlets like the Washington Post and Yahoo came to the defense of Air Force Col. Ben Jonsson, a left-wing officer whose promotion Sen. Eric Schmitt (R.-Mo.) is holding up. In Foreign Affairs, Marquette Prof. Risa Brooks used Schmitt’s hold on Col. Jonsson’s promotion to warn Americans of the right’s politicization of the military. Even the NAACP released a statement in support of Col. Jonsson’s promotion.

Schmitt’s hold comes after two pieces of reporting from The Daily Signal revealed that Col. Jonsson’s leadership tenure has been defined by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), to the point where his personnel choices were based on race. As in other domains, the right has become a target for opposing the left’s 65-year effort to mold the military in its ideological image. But Schmitt’s action regarding Jonsson, far from the politicization of military promotion, is a modest effort to restore professionalism to a heavily politicized institution.