On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that “In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa…

“In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. ‘General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.’ Li took the chairman at his word, the authors write in the book, ‘Peril,’ which is set to be released next week.” Washington Post

Both sides are critical of Milley’s calls as reported, arguing that, if true, they violated the principle of civilian control of the military:

“If this is true, it’s astonishing. I have never heard or read anything like it in the history of U.S. civil-military relations. It would mean Milley stepped out of the chain of command, obstructed what he saw (correctly or not) as the commander in chief’s policies and intentions, and promised to give the enemy’s top general warning of an impending attack (if the president ordered one), thus denying us the advantage of surprise…

“Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the question of whether Milley was right to oppose a surprise attack on China. Do we want the nation’s highest-ranking military officer opposing or circumventing an attack in the way that Milley supposedly did? It would have been better, for democracy and for the chain of command, if Milley had organized a group opposed to attack from within the Defense Department’s civilian directorates, the State Department, the intelligence community, and so forth.”
Fred Kaplan, Slate

“Gen. Milley should be asked to clarify, under oath, the context of his communications with China and nuclear launch procedure when he testifies before the Senate on Sept. 28. America’s military brass rightly has deconfliction channels open with adversaries when their forces are in proximity, but promising a tip off before the President ordered an attack would be an outrageous usurpation…

“Mr. Trump was erratic in the final days of his term, staging an unprecedented if doomed political effort to overturn an American election. But if Gen. Milley genuinely felt the President was that much of a global menace, he should have sounded the alarm and resigned. Figures like William Barr and Don McGahn constrained Mr. Trump’s worst instincts without eviscerating political norms… If Americans are to trust their democratic institutions, and the world’s other powers are to trust America’s defense commitments, it needs to be clear that the military is under the elected President’s control.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal

Other opinions below.