As soon as we sit down, General Mark Milley, the recently retired chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wants to “establish boundaries” — something his daughter taught him was important. I explain that we will discuss geopolitics and security, but caution that our lunch could meander in odd ways. Given that Milley served as the top military adviser to President Donald Trump, he is no stranger to unorthodox moves.
In his 44 years in uniform, the four-star officer saw his share of action overseas. But the most tumultuous period of his career was in Washington when he served as chairman for the final 16 months of Trump’s presidency.
One flashpoint came when Milley let himself become a prop in a political stunt that Trump pulled in June 2020. Dressed in military fatigues, he joined the president for the first part of an infamous walk to a church near the White House — a piece of theatre that Trump intended as a response to the Black Lives Matter protesters who had been forcibly dispersed from the area. Milley, who had been attending a meeting in the White House, says he thought he was accompanying Trump and then secretary of defence Mark Esper to see the National Guard troops and police near the White House.
Milley later conceded that his participation had created the impression that the military was involved in politics. He considered resigning, but instead issued a public apology, which infuriated Trump.
Later, in 2023, Trump accused Milley of committing “treason” when he called his Chinese counterpart before the 2020 election to ease Chinese fears — detected by US intelligence — that the president might attack China. The call had actually been authorised by the defence secretary. Milley called again two days after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021. He later told Congress that the calls, which were joined by many officials, were intended to “prevent war between great powers”.
We are meeting at Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia — a fitting venue for a soldier who spent his youth visiting revolutionary war sites with his parents. It was established in 1770, five years before the US Army and six before America declared independence.
When Milley arrives, he is not wearing fatigues or any army uniform. Dressed from head to toe in slightly rumpled black, the 65-year-old could be mistaken for a collarless Irish priest or — with his Boston accent — a character from Martin Scorsese’s movie The Departed.
We have a window table but he thinks the room is too loud, so we retreat to another room that has the feel of a dimly lit Irish pub. I joke that he is playing to his ethnic stereotype. He finds a table and sits with his back to the wall — like a special forces soldier who wants full visibility.
Midnight on September 30 2023 was the “magic moment” when Milley retired as chairman and became what his son calls a “spectator”. Being chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is “a seven-day-a-week job, 24/7 sort of thing. You’ll get calls in the middle of night,” Milley says. “You go from that to zero, literally no calls.”
He still has a small security team, who are hovering nearby, but no longer has a staff to schedule his life. Like many “spectators”, he now relies on Google. “We keep our calendar literally on an iPhone,” he says. “I feel much more actually in control.”
Milley is a force of nature, built like a tank and with what one writer described as “four-star eyebrows”. As the top officer in the US military, he kept a hectic schedule that was demanding even for much younger staff. Accompanying him on foreign trips, I would jokingly ask his team what it was like working for someone who never switches off. “Best job in the navy!” one would exclaim with a smile.
He has a later engagement with his wife Hollyanne, a nurse, giving us 90 minutes. I’m worried about time because Milley has the gift of the gab, apt to lace answers with historical references that stretch back beyond the Treaty of Westphalia. I have bet a friend $5 that he will mention the 1648 treaty at lunch.
I am slightly disappointed that he’s not wearing a pair of rugged Blundstone boots, the Australian brand that he once told me that he and his wife liked. The evening before our lunch, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd had shown me a selfie of him and Milley showing off their RM Williams, another Aussie boot. “RM Williams are very, very nice boots,” he says, before adding with a chuckle: “I’m wearing some really old loafers.”
We’ve both ordered the “Ice Well Wedge” salad with bacon and gorgonzola. Milley picks the prime roast beef and brie sandwich, and I choose the John Gadsby Burger, which has more gorgonzola. Our salads arrive in minutes.
He orders a Coke but joins me when I say I will have wine. He goes for a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon and I get a Californian Pinot Noir.
Milley says he now has time to see his two kids and three grandkids. “I’m doing a few things, but it is a much, much different rhythm and frankly more enjoyable”. (Those things include teaching at his alma mater Princeton University and also at Georgetown University.)
The fourth consecutive Irish-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Milley grew up in a blue-collar part of Winchester, north of Boston, where most residents were Irish or Italian. He says his upbringing — both parents served during the second world war — gave him a “deep sense of patriotism”.
Princeton had a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, which, along with a strong pitch from an ice-hockey coach, sealed the deal. “I could play hockey, get a great education and have an opportunity to serve,” he says.
His father, who saw intense fighting in the Pacific during the war, wasn’t thrilled. “He was like, ‘Why are you doing this? I bled enough for this country,’ kind of thing.”
“I had no intention of making a career in the military,” Milley says. “I thought I’d come in the military, serve four years, pay back my ROTC scholarship, and then go to law school, business school or whatever.”
Milley had many roles as he climbed the ranks. He did combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was deployed to countries from Egypt and Panama to Haiti. He spent two years in the demilitarised zone separating South and North Korea.
Given the dramatic events in the world in recent months — including the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted shortly after his retirement as chairman — I am curious if he misses the action. “Not at all,” he says, convincingly.
Milley may be relaxed but he is still paying attention. A voracious reader, he keeps on top of the news. He also keeps tabs on hearings on Capitol Hill — which I imagine must be more fun now that he is out of the congressional crosshairs.
He had some bruising experiences in Congress, including when Republicans accused the military of being “woke” and questioned why it was teaching “critical race theory”, which addresses racial privilege. “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” he quips. “What is wrong with having some situational understanding about the country which we are here to defend?”
From the comfort of his own home, he now finds some hearings “quite informative” — but with a caveat. “If someone is sitting there watching hearings all day long . . . I’d have to question their mental stability.”
I am interested to learn that he recently watched a hearing with JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon, which made more sense a few days later when the bank announced that it has hired him as an external consultant.
Milley is interested in technology, so I ask about the impact of artificial intelligence on the military. He thinks AI, combined with robotics, will play a “fundamental and perhaps even decisive role” in a future armed conflict between nations.
Is China leaping ahead in technology, or are such fears overblown? “They have not leapt ahead of us — yet,” he says. “They have created a very powerful military. They are not the equal yet of the United States . . . But, no it’s not overblown.”
The key to avoiding war with powers such as China or Russia, Milley says, is a strong military, which is crucial for deterrence. Washington has spent the past few years trying to boost deterrence with allies in the Indo-Pacific.
But how do you determine if deterrence is working? Milley starts by conceding that you “can’t prove a negative”.
I notice that he himself is engaging in deterrence: he has pushed away his half-eaten salad and is attacking the fries that came with his sandwich.
Returning to China, he says that while that country’s leaders have been “flexing their muscle” around Taiwan, “you can reasonably conclude deterrence has held because you haven’t seen a Chinese attack”.
“Part of the reason they’re using the methods they’re using . . . is because China thinks the cost of outright military aggression would be very high. My guess is they’re probably right. Because cost exceeds benefit, China arguably is a rational actor, they’ve chosen not to use military force yet. That doesn’t mean that’ll hold forever.”
I ask Milley about the timelines that several top US officers had issued publicly for possible Chinese action against Taiwan — including one that warned about 2027 — and why no officers have piped up over the past year. He says he did not tell the senior brass to quieten down and is not aware of defence secretary Lloyd Austin having done so.
Milley says Xi Jinping challenged the People’s Liberation Army a few years ago to be the most powerful military power in east Asia by 2027, explaining that what the Chinese president was essentially “talking about is Taiwan”.
“That date is tied to the anniversary of the founding of the PLA, so there’s symbolism there. Now, can they achieve that or not is an open question,” says Milley, adding that capability and intent are two separate things.
Shifting course, I ask about the suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over North America a year ago. He says the US government concluded that its intelligence collection effort was “inconsequential” — but declines to say if that was because the balloon had limited capabilities or because the US jammed its surveillance systems.
We pivot to Ukraine and the opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives to provide more money to help the country. He says the war has reached a “stalemate” and that US and European support is critical. Without that support, he warns, Russia will over time gain a strategic advantage that will be devastating. “It will be tragic, because at that point the Ukrainians will no longer be able to successfully defend themselves.”
He sees the debate in Congress as a test of whether you think US support for the rules-based international order is important. He sides with those who say that not backing Ukraine is “signalling a deathblow” to that order.
Does he think part of the problem is that Americans have just seen two decades of war — in Afghanistan and Iraq? “Absolutely. 100 per cent,” Milley says emphatically. “They’ve kind of had it with wars and forever wars.”
But he stresses that the US-led rules-based order with its network of alliances has helped prevent great power conflict. “Those rules have done a lot to make the United States a very rich, powerful, capable country.”
Moving to the conflict in Gaza, does he agree with President Joe Biden that the Israeli military response has been “over the top”? He demurs, saying he will not weigh in on the president’s comment.
Israel responded to Hamas’s October 7 attack “in many ways like any nation-state would”, he says. But it faces a “very difficult military problem”, given how Hamas governs the densely populated Gaza Strip through “the barrel of a gun”. Milley argues that Israel has done “pretty well” tactically in destroying a lot of Hamas, but says it is paying an “enormous” strategic cost with the loss of international support.
I have finished my burger by now, but Milley is pacing himself. I abruptly interrupt him when I notice that an associate nearby has taken out a credit card. The FT has to pay, I say, before realising that she is paying her own bill. “Can someone pay for me?” Milley asks with a mischievous grin.
“I’ll pay for you,” I reassure him, thinking that I may not have clearly explained the FT’s “boundaries”.
We are close to finishing our lunch, and I realise that in addition to the bill (which the FT will pick up), I will be personally on the hook for $5 because he has failed to mention the Treaty of Westphalia.
Back on the conflict in Gaza, Milley says “Israel might be better served by shifting gears a little bit and doing an intelligence-driven special operations, precision-guided munitions type of approach.” He thinks they may be contemplating that but sees another problem. “The key is a political strategy, and I don’t see a political strategy.”
I quickly move to the proverbial elephant in the room — and increasingly in rooms around the world: Trump. Does Milley have a patriotic duty as a citizen to talk about things that happened when he worked with Trump? Milley is widely believed, for example, to have played a key role in making sure that Trump did not attack Iran in late 2020.
Milley used to carry a copy of the US constitution as a reminder that the military swears to defend the constitution — not the president. A reference to not taking an oath to a “wannabe dictator” in his retirement speech was widely interpreted as a jibe at Trump. But Milley pushes back at my line of questioning, saying that a retired general is never really a “private citizen”.
“I’ve fought for my freedom of speech. I’ve fought for the constitution,” he says. “There’s nothing technically illegal about speaking out . . . But I think it’s highly inappropriate for generals, retired or active, to opine on politics.”
We have to wrap up. He has eaten only half of his sandwich. Is he taking his kids’ advice about his health? His associate signals that he has to go, but perhaps noticing that I have had a second glass, Milley makes clear he has a final mission to accomplish. “I want to finish my wine,” he declares.
Days later, I text him to check a detail. Milley can be very jocular, particularly when he is talking in private, but he never forgets the sombre side of his heritage. Now he reminds me that it is the 79th anniversary to the day that his father landed on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima for a battle that took the lives of 7,000 Marines.
“We should never forget and always honour their sacrifice,” he says.
Demetri Sevastopulo is the FT’s US-China correspondent
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