The administration couched the removals as consistent with the presidential prerogative to choose its military advisors. Previous presidents did have this power, and every administration has fired a few military leaders, made some surprise appointments, or exercised close presidential scrutiny of the selection of personnel to a few of the seniormost positions. None has relieved so many, nor shaped the appointments so forcefully, this early in the president’s tenure. No previous administration exercised its power in this dramatic fashion for fear that doing so would effectively treat the senior officer corps as akin to partisan political appointees whose professional ethos is to come and go with changes of administration, rather than career public servants whose professional ethos is to serve regardless of changes in political leadership.

The administration couched the removals as consistent with the presidential prerogative to choose its military advisors. Previous presidents did have this power, and every administration has fired a few military leaders, made some surprise appointments, or exercised close presidential scrutiny of the selection of personnel to a few of the seniormost positions. None has relieved so many, nor shaped the appointments so forcefully, this early in the president’s tenure. No previous administration exercised its power in this dramatic fashion for fear that doing so would effectively treat the senior officer corps as akin to partisan political appointees whose professional ethos is to come and go with changes of administration, rather than career public servants whose professional ethos is to serve regardless of changes in political leadership.

These personnel moves have been poorly explained to both the public and the individuals relieved, but one thing was made clear: None of the officers had committed a grave fault—insubordination or dereliction—that would have made their removal obvious and noncontroversial. To relieve so many senior officers so soon in an administration amounted to a dramatic break with past precedent, raising two obvious questions: What are historical norms and best practices around relieving senior military leaders, and how should senior officers still serving function in the present moment?

Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and soldiers on the lawn of the White House.

The power to determine who will lead the military is an important lever of civilian control. The framers of the Constitution saw it as vital and took pains to share that power between the executive and legislative branches. Civil-military relations theory likewise underscores the role of the rewards and punishments inherent in the up-or-out system of promotions. When presidents have expressed an extreme reluctance to exercise control for fear of the political clout of senior military officers—think President Bill Clinton during his first months in office—the resulting diminished expectation of punishment can produce an unhealthy imbalance between military and proper civilian control, producing needless friction that corrodes trust within civil-military relations.

Over the past two decades, presidents and their secretaries of defense have removed leaders—or forced their resignations—for a variety of reasons. Among other cases, for example, the George W. Bush administration removed Adm. William “Fox” Fallon from U.S. Central Command for publicly disagreeing on Iran policy and Air Force chief of staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley for systemic deficiencies in the handling of nuclear weapons and other concerns. The Obama administration removed Gen.