The war launched to bring about regime change in Iran has led to a kind of regime change in the United States, a country famous for "democratizing" other countries. The political intervention last week, culminating in the dismissal of numerous high-ranking military officers, including the Army Chief of Staff, appears to have created an unprecedented imbalance/imbalance between the military and the military in American history. While some resignations from top security bureaucracy preceded this, this latest move, overseen by Secretary of War Hegseth, constitutes a coup at the very top of the military in the midst of war. Even if at first glance it seems like a "management choice" expected from a Trump-style leader, the dismissals are a highly unusual move that brutally touches upon one of the most sensitive fault lines of the US establishment: the traditional military-civilian balance.

To understand this latest development, which signifies a redefinition of the line between civilian authority and military professionalism, it is worthwhile to examine political scientist Samuel Huntington's work, "The Soldier and the State." In his 1957 book, Huntington explains the relationship between the military and civilians in modern democracies using two distinct models: “objective” and “subjective” civilian control. According to him, objective control involves preserving the professional autonomy of the military while remaining subordinate to civilian authority; subjective control, on the other hand, involves the complete politicization of the military, binding it to the absolute authority of the leaders based on loyalty.

In this work, written nearly 70 years ago, Huntington pondered how civilian politics could be preserved in the shadow of a massive military structure that had recently emerged victorious from World War II, established NATO to counter Soviet expansion, and won the Korean War. His fundamental question was whether it was possible to keep such a large military force under control through democratic means in a constantly vigilant environment. Could the military be both so powerful and yet remain detached from politics?

This question, now a subject of serious debate in the US, has created an interesting and oxymoronic polarization. Liberal Democrats, who under normal circumstances should support the trend towards civilian rule, are emphasizing the wrongness of intervening in a military order during wartime, while some Republican conservatives appear to have sided with Trump. The liberal Democrats' concern is that this intervention will lead to the formation of a command structure based on loyalty rather than merit. This is naturally extremely contrary to the American military tradition, which is structured according to the idea of ​​an autonomous, professional, and impartial armed force.

Republicans, on the other hand, argue that the constitutional authority of commander-in-chief rests with the US President and that this should be considered an operation to improve efficiency, not a purge. Trump and his inner circle believe that the military is already politicized and has become opposed to them, not to the war. According to them, the dismissals are nothing more than a way to depoliticize the armed forces and restore the system to one based on the supremacy of elected officials.

The theoretical basis and norm upon which the Trump administration is based is the claim that democracy is a regime based on the supremacy of civilians. Indeed, sociologist Moris Janowitz, one of Huntington's strongest intellectual opponents, views the military not merely as a warring entity but as an institution intertwined with society and incapable of being entirely apolitical. According to him, the armed forces cannot build a professionalism detached from society; and its raison d'être is not perpetual war, but permanent stability. Since in democratic systems the ultimate decision-making power belongs to civilians, the integration of the military into the system is essential.

Huntington's approach, which advocates for an autonomous army, is that "objective civilian control achieves its goal by professionalizing the army and making it an instrument of the state; subjective civilian control achieves its goal by civilianizing the army and turning it into a mirror of the state." In other words, he believes that political interventions in institutional continuity are wrong. The way we see now, where an "elected king," even with the authority, disrupts military institutionalization and turns it into his own mirror, is, according to those who think this way, problematic.

The debate in the US is now centered on the system as a whole. The key argument in analyses by the RAND Corporation and the Atlantic Council is that such moves should not be viewed in isolation. According to them, personnel policies should be considered in conjunction with the state's overall discourse and security strategy. If a leader targets institutional structures with concepts like "deep state" and "disloyal bureaucracy," and simultaneously replaces high-ranking military personnel, it would be wrong to interpret this as a purely technical decision. This is a process of new political construction. However, such decisions disrupt the balance of authority and obedience within the military, leading to political leanings determining appointments, and also damage the institutional memory and professionalism of the military. Therefore, at this point, it's not just about "who is in command," but "which mind is at work." The problem for the whole world is precisely this: a mind that treats a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives as a "PlayStation game" and claims to know how to fight better than the generals has seized control.