Mark A. Milley

In 2018, Esper and Milley also led the roll-out of a new Army Combat Fitness Test. The new fitness test was designed to improve overall combat readiness and mimic physical tasks and stresses associated with combat and was set to replace the 40-year-old Army fitness test by October 2020. Milley said: "We want to make sure that our soldiers are... in top physical shape to withstand the rigors of ground combat. Combat is not for the faint of heart, it's not for the weak-kneed, it's not for those who are not psychologically resilient and tough and hardened to the brutality, to the viciousness of it".

In early 2017, Milley and then-Sergeant Major of the Army Daniel A. Dailey began considering the possibility of bringing back an iconic two-tone uniform known as the "Pinks and Greens" to honor the "greatest generation" of soldiers who fought in World War II.

The Army believed the reintroduction of the uniform would give soldiers a uniform for professional environments that honored the Army heritage, reconnect today's soldiers with their service history, strengthen pride, bolster recruiting and enhance readiness.

According to an Army Times poll conducted in the fall of 2018, of the 32,000 respondents, 72 percent indicated they were ready to embrace a new uniform, while 28 percent said they were happy with the current blue Army Service Uniform. Soldiers did express concerns about the need for an additional uniform as well as the costs associated with acquiring the new uniform. The Army tried to address this concern in its official roll-out announcement on 11 November 2018, indicating the uniform would be cost-neutral for enlisted soldiers, who would be able to purchase the new "everyday business-wear uniform" with their existing annual clothing allowance. The Army also indicated the new uniform would come "at no additional cost" to U.S. taxpayers and would be made in the U.S. Secretary of the Army Esper, who also championed the iconic "pinks and greens" uniform and worked with Milley and Dailey on the initiative, approved its return in November 2018.

In 2018, Milley was involved in deciding whether the Army would publish a controversial study on the 2003–2006 Iraq War. Milley reportedly decided he wanted to read the two-volume, 1,300-page, 500,000-word document before making a decision. Milley also directed that an external panel of scholars review the work. After the panel returned glowing reviews on the study, including one that described it as "the gold standard in official history", Milley continued to delay publication so he could review it further. When confronted by a journalist from The Wall Street Journal in October 2018, Milley reversed these decisions, ordering the study published officially and with a foreword from himself. He said the team who wrote the study "did a damn good job", the study itself was "a solid work", and that he aimed to publish the study by the holidays (2018).

Within days of this revelation, two members of Congress who sit on the House Armed Services Committee (Reps. Jackie Speier, D-California, and Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona) sent a letter to Army leaders expressing their anger over the delay. In a press release accompanying the letter to Milley and Esper, Speier said, "This is simply the Army being unwilling to publicly air its mistakes. Our military, Congress, and the American people deserve nothing less than total transparency on the lessons the Army has identified so that we may use those lessons to avoid costly, and too often deadly, mistakes of the past". The two-volume study was published 17 January 2019.

In May 2019, Milley commissioned a U.S. Army War College report on the impact of climate change on society as a whole and on the U.S. military. The report was written by U.S. government officials from agencies including the U.S. Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA and released in August 2019. It outlined the possibility of blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war due to collapses of the country's aging power grid, its food supply systems, and the U.S. military. The report also mentions the likelihood of increasing water scarcity and failure of global food systems in developing countries which would result in an increase of civil and military conflicts.

Milley reportedly considered resigning over the incident in front of the St. John's Church, going so far as to draft a highly critical resignation letter to President Trump, but then deciding against handing the letter over to him. The resignation letter draft was later published in 2022. At the last minute before submitting the resignation letter to the president, Milley opted against resignation and instead apologized for his presence at the St. John's Church incident in a video recorded as his commencement address at the National Defense University on 11 June. At the commencement speech he explained that he should not have been at the event because his presence created a perception of military involvement in domestic politics.

After losing his bid for reelection in November 2020, Trump and his allies made attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, presaging the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021. According to I Alone Can Fix It, a July 2021 book by The Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, Milley became concerned Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates: "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed. You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns".

Rucker and Leonnig's book also quoted Milley as saying "this is a Reichstag moment", comparing Trump's attempts to overturn the election to the event used to cement Nazi Germany and referring to Trump's false statements about electoral fraud as "the gospel of the Führer". Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration: "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in". Trump later said that he had not threatened or spoken about a coup and falsely claimed that Obama had fired Milley.

On 12 January 2021, Milley and the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement condemning the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Trump and reminding all service members of their obligation to support and defend the Constitution and reject extremism. They said: "As we have done throughout our history, the U.S. military will obey lawful orders from civilian leadership, support civilian authorities to protect lives and property, ensure public safety in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". In an interview on 2 April, Milley said that the military reaction and response were "sprint speed" and "super fast". Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said from her personal experience that was not the case, and called for a commission to find the truth.

According to a September 2021 Axios report, in mid-2020 Pentagon officials were concerned about the Chinese having received bad intelligence from dubious sources that had them worried about a possible surprise U.S. strike against China. In a report released in November 2021, the Pentagon confirmed these Chinese worries and that Esper had directed Milley and the deputy assistant defense secretary for China Chad Sbragia in mid-October to reassure their Chinese counterparts that the U.S. "had no intention of instigating a military crisis against China". Milley called his Chinese counterpart on 30 October.

In Woodward and Costa's book Peril, the authors wrote that on 30 October 2020, four days before the U.S. presidential election day, Milley called his counterpart in China, General Li Zuocheng, quoting Milley as saying: "I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay... We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you ... If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time. It's not going to be a surprise". The authors wrote that Milley again called Li in January 2021, two days after the 2021 United States Capitol attack, quoting Milley as saying: "Things may look unsteady... But that's the nature of democracy... We are 100 percent steady. Everything's fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes". Unnamed defense department officials said Sbragia had called his Chinese counterpart two days earlier, with the authorization of then-acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller. One briefed on Milley's call said that it was "implausible that (Milley's call) would have been done without" Sbragia's knowledge.

Both calls were by video conference where fifteen people were present, including a State Department representative and notetakers. CNN reported that Milley consulted with Esper in conducting the October call. Politico reported that a former senior defense official said Milley asked Miller for permission to make the January call, and that Miller said Milley "almost certainly" informed him about making the call, but he did not recall receiving a detailed readout afterwards. On 15 September, Miller told Fox News that he did not authorize the call and called for Milley to resign or be fired; multiple sources told Fox News that the calls were conducted with full knowledge of Esper and Miller.

Two days later he told CNN that "he likely would not have been informed of such routine engagements that either his office or Milley would have had with China" and that he was criticizing the call in October, not the one in January. At a congressional hearing on 28 September 2021, Milley testified that both calls were coordinated with the staffs of Esper and Miller both before and after they were made. The Wall Street Journal reported Pentagon officials said Miller had been apprised of the call. Milley's spokesman said, "All calls from the Chairman to his counterparts, including those reported, are staffed, coordinated and communicated with the Department of Defense and the interagency".

Milley stated that the calls were "routine calls ... in order to ensure strategic stability" and "perfectly within the duties and responsibilities of the chairman". In hearings before the Senate and House Armed Services committees on 28 and 29 September, respectively, Milley said he did not intend to undermine Trump with the calls, adding that he "was communicating to my Chinese counterpart on instructions, by the way, to de-escalate the situation" and that Trump "has no intent to attack and I told [General Li] that repeatedly". After the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Milley also spoke to other military leaders around the world, including in the United Kingdom, to reassure them "that the U.S. government was strong and in control".

Woodward and Costa also wrote that after the attack on the Capitol, Milley became concerned Trump might "go rogue", telling staff "You never know what a president's trigger point is". According to the book, he took extraordinary action to protect national security by insisting he be personally consulted about any military action orders by Trump, including the use of nuclear weapons, and instructed the directors of the CIA and NSA to be particularly attentive to developments. This was perceived by some former officials and outside analysts as "inserting himself inappropriately into the chain of command". On 8 January, Milley assured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a call that "the nuclear triggers are secure and we're not going to do—we're not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral, or unethical to happen".

Milley's reported comments and actions drew criticism from multiple Republicans. Trump described Woodward and Costa's reporting as "fake news" and "fabricated", stating that he "never even thought of attacking China". Trump also said that if the reporting was true, then he believed Milley should be "tried for treason" for talking to Li "behind the President's back and telling China that he would be giving them notification" of an American attack.

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Marco Rubio called on Biden to fire Milley, stating that Milley had undermined "the sitting commander in chief" and "contemplated a treasonous leak of classified information to the Chinese Communist Party in advance of a potential armed conflict with the People's Republic of China". Many Republicans accused Milley of treason and called for his resignation, firing, or court-martial. Alexander Vindman said that Milley needed to resign if it was true that he broke the chain of command. Twenty-seven House Republicans, all members of the Freedom Caucus, wrote to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding an Army Regulation 15-6 investigation into Milley's actions and for Milley's security clearance to be suspended.

Historian and Brookings Institution senior fellow Max Boot, a critic of Trump, wrote that "Milley had no choice but to do what he did". He also wrote that "Trump, Rubio and all the rest of the rabid partisans who accused a decorated combat veteran of treason based on a hasty misreading of a book excerpt" needed to retract their statements and apologize. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden had worked closely with Milley and considered him to be a patriot. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby stated that Milley had the trust and confidence of Austin.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said that he had "no concerns that Milley might have exceeded his authority" and that Democratic lawmakers "were circumspect in our language but many of us made it clear that we were counting on him to avoid the disaster which we knew could happen at any moment". Biden later said he had "great confidence" in Milley. Senator Angus King said that Milley had "rendered the country a significant service", and U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services chair Jack Reed told reporters that "de-escalating international tensions was part of Milley's job". Former United Nations ambassador and Trump national security advisor John Bolton defended Milley as a "staunch supporter of the Constitution and the rule of law".

Upon the inauguration of Joe Biden as president in January 2021, Milley was invited to remain in his position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and accepted the offer. He ceremonially relinquished office as chairman to General Charles Q. Brown Jr. on 29 September 2023, and his term officially ended on 30 September.

In June 2021, a report from an Associated Press investigation found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were recorded as lost or stolen in the last 10 years, most of them by the U.S. Army. Some of them were later used in violent crimes; in one case, stolen automatic rifles were sold to a California street gang. Reports say that when Milley learned of the scandal, he was shocked, and stated he would consider a more systematic fix on how the military keeps track of its firearms. However, some claim that Milley actually downplayed the report of 1,900 lost or stolen military firearms.

In November 2022, Milley urged Russia and Ukraine to find a "political solution" to the Russo-Ukrainian War, saying that the war in Ukraine is unwinnable by purely military means. In February 2023, Milley said that Russia had lost "strategically, operationally and tactically" and that it was "paying an enormous price on the battlefield" in Ukraine.

On 30 June 2021, Trump suggested that Milley should resign, implying that he was unwilling "to defend [the US military] from the Leftist Radicals who hate [the United States] and [its flag]". This came after Milley's defense of studying a broad range of ideas including "critical race theory" and news reports that Milley and Trump engaged in a shouting match over military involvement in the 2020–2021 US race protests. Trump previously denied the incident and accused Milley of falsifying it.

On 23 June 2021, Milley attracted notice for telling Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz that he found it "offensive" that the U.S. military was being characterized as "woke" for including "critical race theory" in its West Point curriculum and that he wanted "to understand white rage – and I'm white. What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?"

In their September 2021 book, Peril, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote that after the election Milley had become aware of a Trump military order to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by 15 January 2021, which had been written by two Trump loyalists without consultation with national security officials. The authors reported that after Trump refused to concede his election loss, CIA director Gina Haspel told Milley, "We are on the way to a right-wing coup" and was worried Trump might attack Iran. In remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 28, Milley denied that he agreed in a call with Nancy Pelosi that Trump was "crazy" as stated in the book, stating that he was "not qualified to determine the mental health of the president of the United States".

In September 2023, Trump stated in a post on Truth Social that Milley's call to Chinese authorities following the storming of the United States Capitol attack was "an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH". In response to the threat, Milley stated, "I'll take appropriate measures to ensure my safety and the safety of my family". In 2024, Milley said he feared being court-martialed if Trump were to be reelected. He also called Trump the "most dangerous person ever" and said that Trump was a "fascist to the core". On 19 January 2025, Biden issued preemptive pardons to Milley and other officials, stating that they "should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense".

In December 2020, Milley met with the Taliban in Doha in an effort to arrange peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Milley believed that U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan to prevent another terrorist attack like the September 11 attacks.

As the withdrawal of U.S. troops was in its final days, the Taliban launched an offensive against the Afghan government, quickly advancing in front of a collapsing Afghan Armed Forces. U.S. intelligence believed that the Afghan government would likely collapse within six months after the withdrawal of NATO troops from the country. On 21 July 2021, Milley reported that half of all districts in Afghanistan were under Taliban control and that momentum was "sort of" on the side of the Taliban. Kabul was captured by the Taliban on 15 August 2021, prompting an international airlift of civilians at Kabul International Airport, which remained under temporary U.S. and NATO control.

On 26 August 2021, after the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport that led to the death of 183 people, including 13 U.S. service members, Republican senators and members of the House called for the resignation of President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin, and Milley.

In late September 2021, Milley, at hearings before both the Senate and House Armed Services Committees said that the withdrawal from Afghanistan and evacuation from Kabul was "a logistical success but a strategic failure". He rejected demands from Republican committee members to resign. On an 25 October 2024 podcast with Joe Rogan, when talking about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Donald Trump claimed that Milley said "It's cheaper to leave it" in regard to the military equipment they had in Afghanistan and what to do with it when the US military left.