When Dr. Kori Schake talks about American power, she doesn’t start with tanks or treaties.

She starts with restraint.

 

“We would have a very different civil-military relationship in the United States,” she told an audience at NMC on Feb. 19, “if it didn’t start with George Washington laying the foundation.”

 

In a political moment defined by institutional strain, foreign entanglements, and rising distrust, Schake’s visit to the International Affairs Forum (IAF) was less a lecture on defense policy and more a meditation on the fragile architecture that has kept American democracy intact for nearly 250 years.

 

Moderated by retired Marine Corps Major General Mike Lehnert—who served 37 years and later received the Peacemaker Award for his human rights work in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—the discussion quickly moved beyond abstract theory and into present-day tension: politicization of the military, domestic troop deployments, strained alliances, and the question of whether the United States is still perceived as “the good guys.”

 

Schake’s argument, drawn from her recent book The State and the Soldier, rests on a deceptively simple claim: the American military has never threatened

civilian governance. Not because it lacks power, but because early norms constrained it.

 

After the Revolutionary War, Washington refused to leverage the loyalty of the Continental Army to pressure Congress for back pay and pensions. “An army is a very dangerous instrument to play with,” he warned at the time: a moment Schake describes as foundational. The precedent he set—that civilian leadership determines strategy and resources—bought time for institutions to harden around democratic control. 

 

The result, she argued, is historically rare. “As strong, as popular, as influential as the American military is,” she said, “they have not ever been a threat of a military coup.”

 

But rarity is not permanence.

 

In an interview with the White Pine Press earlier that day, Schake described her own entry into this field as accidental. “It was less a conscious choice than just the kind of collection of serendipitous opportunities,” she said. A year spent studying Soviet and American militaries after college led to work under General Colin Powell during the final years of the Cold War—saying she was “the only civilian in a staff of 1,500 military officers.” Those experiences shaped her belief that civil-military health depends on clarity, legitimacy, and public trust.

 

When asked what norm feels most fragile today, her answer was: “Political activity by junior uniformed people.” Senior officers, she explained, are steeped in institutional tradition. Younger service members are “more impressionable.” At the same time, she warned, civilian leaders are “shattering the norm of expected restraint” in how they engage in the military.

 

One of the evening’s most sobering exchanges came when she addressed a widespread civilian misconception: that the military can simply refuse unethical orders.

 

“There is a widespread public expectation that the military can refuse orders they think are unethical. And that is just not true,” she said. Service members can refuse illegal orders, but doing so invites court-martial, and “the burden of proof is on the person who refused to obey the order.” That, she emphasized, is not a weight civilians should expect soldiers to carry.

 

“If we get to the point where a president is issuing an illegal order,” she added during the event, “the system has already failed.”

That failure, in her view, begins not in barracks but in civilian institutions.

 

Throughout the conversation, Schake returned to alliances as the true engine of American power. The run-up to the 1991 Gulf War, she said in her interview, remains “the best example I’ve seen of the United States doing something hard and doing it well,” because it built broad international support through diplomacy and explanation.

 

Today, she worried the opposite is occurring.

 

“I cannot think of a time since 1949 that America’s alliances have been tested as strongly as they are now,” she said. Rhetoric questioning NATO commitments and threatening allies’ territories like Greenland undermines credibility. “Being the good guys actually really matters,” she said plainly.

 

Her concern is not abstract. “America’s ability to act in a world is actually enabled through cooperation of other countries,” she explained. Bases, overflight rights, shared intelligence, these are not entitlements but relationships. And relationships depend on trust.

 

Domestic division complicates that trust. “When there is sharp domestic division, it makes it harder for allies to consider us reliable,” she said. The American system, by design, does nothing until political arguments are settled. But prolonged paralysis signals instability abroad.

 

History, Schake believes, offers instructions—if used properly. “History lets you learn from other people’s mistakes,” she said. “It’s the cheapest way to think your way through a problem.”

 

In her book Safe Passage, she argues that the peaceful transition of global dominance from Britain to the United States was historically unique. She does not see similar conditions between the U.S. and China. “If China were to supplant the United States, it’s much more likely to happen through warfare than through peaceful transition.” 

 

She also cautioned against complacency. “We have lost the perspective that a really good military can still lose wars,” she said, pointing to China’s vastly greater shipbuilding capacity. Military strength without industrial depth and allied backing may not suffice. 

 

At the reception before the event, community members voiced both anxiety and urgency. Jim and Barb VanDam said they hoped Schake would address escalating tensions in civil and foreign military affairs and expressed a desire for greater student engagement. “Look around,” they said, “it’s all older folks.”

 

Interlochen instructor Brian McCall, who brought students to the forum, described shrinking political parameters and an overwhelming “free market on facts” that makes it difficult for students to parse what is true. 

 

NMC student Victoria Strelczuk, attending for a Contemporary Ethical Dilemmas class, described Gen Z as deeply aware but economically constrained. “We’re in the trenches,” she said, adding that greater financial stability would likely mean “a lot more activism.” 

 

Schake addressed that tension directly. 

 

“Distrust of the American government is a fundamentally healthy thing,” she said. “But cynicism isn’t.” The remedy, she argued, is participation: running for office, joining institutions, improving them from within. “Cynicism doesn’t fix the problem.”

 

Near the end of the evening, she described the Constitution as “an invitation to struggle”. Struggle is not dysfunction, abdication is. In her view, what has destabilized the system most is Congress failing to exercise its Article I authority. 

 

The military, she repeated, cannot repair civilian weakness. That responsibility belongs to voters, lawmakers, and citizens—including the students at NMC.

Because if American democracy falters, Schake suggested, it will not be because generals overthrew it. It will be because civilians failed to defend it.