From The Hill: Questions swirl at Pentagon after wave of departures

How might the military respond to recent presidential actions?

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Is it a coup, a push to withdraw from Afghanistan or just some petty score settling?

That’s the question that has swirled in defense circles amid a wave of firings and resignations at the Pentagon that saw the ouster of the Defense secretary and installation of several aides seen as loyalists of President Trump.

The shakeup has led Trump’s critics to sound the alarm, with Democratic lawmakers and others fearful of what the Pentagon’s new leadership will try to push through in Trump’s remaining two months in office.

But others say the Pentagon’s vast bureaucracy and the military chain-of-command make any radical changes in less than 70 days difficult.

“All this speculation about, ‘Is Trump going to do something with the Insurrection Act, is he going to invade some country?’ No,” said Mark Cancian, a former defense official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

While “it’s not impossible that he would try some precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Cancian said, the military “could slow roll him” on anything he directs.

In a speech on Veterans Day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff Gen. Mark Milley touted the apolitical nature of the military. It’s a message he’s delivered frequently in recent months, but one that received renewed attention amid the upheaval.

“We are unique among militaries,” Milley said at a ceremony marking the opening of the National Museum of the United States Army. “We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution.