The General's Warning: What Eisenhower Knew About Power

On September 28, 2025, President Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to American cities for domestic law enforcement, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorizing 200 Oregon National Guard members for a 60-day deployment to Portland. A federal judge temporarily blocked the move, calling the justification for military deployment "simply untethered to the facts." When the administration tried to circumvent the order by sending troops from other states, the judge expanded her ruling, blocking any federalized National Guard deployment to Oregon.

That declaration marks a break with the boundary Dwight Eisenhower insisted upon between national defense and domestic politics. His 1961 farewell address warned against exactly this misuse of power.

The Soldier Who Understood Restraint

To understand why his warning mattered, recall what Eisenhower had lived through. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, democracy's survival was far from certain. By mid-1942, Nazi control stretched from the Atlantic to the outskirts of Moscow. The possibility that fascism would dominate the world appeared dangerously close.

The decisive moment came in 1944. On June 6, Eisenhower directed Operation Overlord, the D-Day landings in Normandy—the largest amphibious assault in history. Nearly 160,000 troops landed across five beaches. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded on that single day, but their sacrifice allowed the advance that would ultimately defeat Nazi Germany.

Eisenhower had led the largest military coalition in history. He knew how close the world had come to a century ruled by dictatorship. That experience shaped the caution in his farewell. He had seen what happens when military might becomes an organizing principle of national life.

A President Who Governed With Discipline

As the 34th president from 1953 to 1961, Eisenhower steered the United States through the most volatile phase of the Cold War with steady discipline. He ended the Korean War, avoided new conflicts, maintained peace through nuclear deterrence, and kept defense spending within reason. He launched the Interstate Highway System, strengthened science education after Sputnik, and expanded Social Security.

When the Supreme Court ordered desegregation, he enforced it in Little Rock by sending federal troops—not to suppress citizens but to protect them. He understood the difference between defense and coercion.

Above all, Eisenhower governed with restraint. He viewed power as a trust, not a weapon. As Supreme Allied Commander, he had managed the most complex coalition in history under the pressure of total war. He understood both the necessity and the danger of force.

The Warning We Forgot

Eisenhower's farewell address, delivered January 17, 1961, lasted barely fifteen minutes. Most Americans know only one phrase—the military-industrial complex. But it was a meditation on balance: how a democracy preserves both liberty and security.

He reminded Americans that their country now maintained "a permanent military establishment, unprecedented in American experience." Before 1940, the nation had mobilized for wars and then returned to civilian footing. Now, a vast network of bases, laboratories, and contractors formed a standing system. It was necessary—the nuclear age allowed no pause—but it carried moral and political risk.

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," he said. He was warning that habits of war could erode habits of democracy, that budgets and bureaucracies could gain momentum of their own. "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry," he concluded, could ensure that security and liberty "prosper together."

Few presidents have spoken more plainly about the costs of militarization. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed," he told editors in his 1953 "Chance for Peace" address. The farewell address returned to that idea: security must never come at the expense of future generations.

He closed with humility, praying that people "of all faiths, all races, all nations" would have their needs met in peace. He called for "balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future." It was a soldier's reminder that moral strength sustains a nation longer than any arsenal.

A Line We Should Not Cross

Eisenhower would have recognized the October 2025 deployment as a test of civic maturity. The federal judge who blocked it wrote in her ruling: "This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs."

The difference in leadership could not be clearer. Eisenhower, who commanded the Allied forces that liberated Europe, understood that a republic's strength rests on self-restraint. He believed the highest duty of a commander was to keep the sword sheathed unless every alternative had failed.

Today's rhetoric inverts that ideal. It treats force as the first option and civic dissent as disorder to be contained. The danger is not only in the physical deployment of troops, but in normalizing the idea, making it acceptable that military power is an appropriate instrument of domestic politics.

Eisenhower's farewell endures because it is a lesson in proportion. It reminds us that power without conscience corrodes the democracy it claims to protect. He spoke as a man who had commanded armies but distrusted glory, who knew that the tools built to defend freedom can also endanger it.

He left office hoping America would "move forward in good faith, without fear or hate." Democracy, he understood, is sustained by vigilance and restraint—not by military power turned inward.

Edward Saltzberg is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability and writes The Stability Brief.