“The guys will come and set the order.” Does the uniform convert into a mandate, or Why the best generals refused power?

Four thoughts with which this conversation begins…

Clemenceau, who led France in the war’s darkest year, stated it bluntly and precisely: war is a matter too serious to entrust to the military. Clausewitz looked at it from a different angle: war is continuation of politics by other means, that is, politics is primary, not the other way around.

Sherman, the most successful field commander of the American Civil War, in 1884 year responded to the proposition to run for office with a phrase that became a textbook line and a term – the “Sherman statement.”

And finally Dwight Eisenhower, the only general-president of the United States in the 20th century, in his farewell address 1961 warned his fellow citizens not about an external enemy, but about the excessive influence of the military-industrial complex on civilian power. The man who commanded the Normandy landings thought it prudent to warn the nation precisely about the environment from which he came.

This is not a random set of quotes. These are four sides of one frame, inside which the entire democratic world still lives. And before Ukrainian society begins to complete its own frame, it is worth looking at what it is made of in others.

Why did the “frontline party” in Ukraine fail every time?

Ukrainian politics has twice faced the temptation that “people from the front will come and restore order.” Both times the result was the same.

After 2014 year a notable group of volunteers and commanders entered the Verkhovna Rada, but through party lists, not through their own. Attempts to create a separate political entity based on combat experience yielded a much more modest result. A telling case was 2019 year: “Freedom,” “National Corps,” “Right Sector,” the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, OUN and KUN went to elections on a single list, with in the first lines Oleg Tyahnybok, Andriy Bilous, Dmytro Yares, Andriy Tarasenko. Maximum concentration of combat biographies on one ballot in all of independent Ukraine. Result – 2,23% and failure to pass the barrier.

This is not about “bad candidates.” This is about a structural problem, and it has three components.

First. Combat reputation does not scale. A commander whom a brigade adores, to a voter from Chernivtsi, is a surname from the news. Trust in a person and willingness to entrust the country to them are two different psychological operations.

Second. A soldier comes into politics with a language ready-made: orders, discipline, the enemy, betrayal, mobilization of resources. This is a crisis language. Elections are always about what happens after the crisis: tariffs, pensions, jobs, education, return of people from abroad. Here epaulettes do not help; they hinder, because they narrow the candidate to one topic.

Third, most importantly. Ukrainian law deliberately keeps the army out of party politics. Article 37 of the Constitution forbids parties from having paramilitary formations. The Law “On Political Parties in Ukraine” directly forbids military personnel to be members. That is, while a person is in service, they are not a political actor. And when they remove their insignia, they lose exactly the resource that made them interesting: daily presence in the war. This is a trap with no technical exit.

Today this trap operates live. 2 in January 2026 the president appointed Kyrylo Budanov as head of the Office of the President, and the lieutenant general moved from intelligence to the presidential apparatus. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, from supreme commander to ambassador to London. Both cases are about one thing: military levels of public trust convert into a position, but do not automatically convert into a mandate.

American safeguard: seven years of pause…

The United States is the best laboratory for this issue, because there is both the longest tradition and the strictest safeguards.

What works there. Presidents who were generals exist in American history, and among them are prominent figures: Washington, Jackson, Grant, Eisenhower. But let us look at the mechanics. Washington became president not as a battlefield commander but as a man who voluntarily relinquished power after the war: it was precisely the refusal of power that made him acceptable. Eisenhower came to the White House seven years after victory – after serving as the president of Columbia University and commanding NATO, i.e., after a long civilian and political adaptation. Both are examples not of a “fast entry,” but of a long transition.

What does not work. Cases of failure are more eloquent than cases of success. Wesley Clark – a four-star general, commander of NATO’s Allied Command in Europe, announced his campaign in September 2003, led polls for the nomination, but then stumbled on the very first full day of campaigning, giving a weak answer on the Iraq resolution. After a weak third place in New Hampshire, he won only one primary – in Oklahoma – and exited the race in February. Five months – from front-runner to zero. Colin Powell, who in 1995-year was confidently winning hypothetical duels with the incumbent president, simply refused to run, thereby preserving his reputation.

And most importantly – the written rule. The National Security Act of 1947 prohibited officers from heading the Pentagon for 10 years after service; in the 2008-term the period was shortened to seven. This is not about the presidency – about the post of defense minister. There were three exceptions in history: for George Marshall in 1950, for James Mattis in 2017, and for Lloyd Austin in 2021, each time by a separate law passed by both houses of Congress.

The logic of this “cooling-off period” is stated plainly: give a person time to shift from the soldier’s optics to the civilian optics, weaken the tie to a specific branch of the military, and publicly confirm that the army is subordinate to civilian authority, not the other way around.

If we reduce the American experience to theses, we get five lines:

military personnel enter politics with a high initial trust credit and almost zero critics;

this credit burns out extremely quickly as soon as the candidate is forced to talk about anything beyond war;

they are strong in crisis management and weak in coalition bargaining, which is the essence of parliamentary politics;

they bring with them their own internal military audience, and this is precisely what most troubles constitutionalists;

almost all successful cases are people who waited for years, not those who converted fame “from the wheels.”

Two operating systems

Here I will state the thesis as plainly as possible, and it is not about specific surnames. The army and politics are two different types of thinking, and they do not translate one into the other.

The army exists to accomplish a goal set from outside. Its virtues are hierarchy, unity of command, discipline of execution, limits on publicity, willingness to bear losses for the sake of the result. Politics exists to generate a goal. Its virtues are the opposite: openness, competition, public conflict, the right of the opponent to be heard, willingness to compromise, which in military logic is called defeat.

A commander who comes to govern the state brings their virtue as the only one, and it begins to work against the system. Hierarchy in politics becomes authoritarianism. Secrecy becomes non-accountability. The speed of decision-making becomes lack of procedure. This is not about the moral qualities of the person. This is about the incompatibility of operating systems.

Next – auditing. Democracy rests on the ability to check power. But the authority of a military officer comes from something a voter cannot verify: operations under a clearance. This is an authority that cannot be rationally challenged, and therefore by its nature it is unhealthy for the electoral process.

Next – the burden of decisions. Every commander in war makes decisions at the cost of lives. This is not a reproach; it is the definition of the profession. But in politics it inevitably becomes the subject of a campaign: losses, orders, abandoned positions, resource allocation among directions. Avdiivka, mobilization, fortifications – all of this must be analyzed and discussed in parliamentary commissions, historical studies, courts where appropriate. Political campaigning is the worst possible place for such scrutiny, because there truth competes not with lies but with ratings. Then both sides lose: the army gets a public tribunal instead of professional analysis, and politics gets a toxic debate from which no one emerges clean.

And finally – the problem of one’s own audience inside the armed forces. A politician with a uniform has a electorate in the ranks. This is the classic prerequisite for what political science calls “pretorianism”: the army ceases to be an instrument of the state and becomes a participant in internal power struggles. It was this concern that prompted the American seven-year moratorium. That is why Sherman refused. That is why Marshall deliberately did not vote in elections.

What the military is truly strong in

Now the reverse side, because a column listing only risks is a pamphlet, not an analysis.

The state gains in politics people who truly understand the price of a decision. They do not fantasize about war, because they have seen it. They bring management culture of planning, risk assessment, and personal responsibility for the result – a culture Ukrainian bureaucracy catastrophically lacks. They have immunity to populism on security issues. And they are a living legitimization of the state before those who fight: the army must see its people in power, otherwise there is a sense that the front and Kyiv live in different countries.

This is not rhetorical concession. This is why the correct answer is not a ban but a construction.

The right doors to power – and the wrong doors closed

Advisor to the political leadership. Secretary of the Security Council. Head of the defense department after an appropriate time interval. Development of the defense industry. Veteran policy. Parliamentary oversight of the security sector. Security diplomacy. These are not “lesser” roles – they are roles where military experience works to the fullest, without wrecking either the army or politics. What follows is practical.

Institutionalize the pause. Ukraine should make by law what the United States did by law: a time interval between removing the insignia and laying claim to a political post. Not a ban, but a pause. And separately – a procedure for admission to power with an analysis of how exactly those epaulets were removed.

Expand channels where military experience is not politicized. Veteran policy, defense industry, parliamentary oversight, security diplomacy — all this requires people with frontline experience more than the office of the head of state.

Change the language of discourse. We should talk about this calmly, concretely, and without heroization and demonization at the same time. Not “generals are rushing to power,” but “this is why democracies keep a distance between the army and the party.” The difference between these two formulations is the difference between public debate and Russian narratives.

Instead of a conclusion: patience as a qualification…

Patience is not a weakness in politics. It is a qualification.

Eisenhower waited seven years. Washington first relinquished power, and only then took power. Youth and energy can create the feeling that one can take everything now, and then somehow it will be fine. Global experience says otherwise: “now” in politics is almost always “for a short time.” The one who enters big politics through defense and through rapid self-promotion pays for it with a reputation that cannot be restored. Military stain, unfortunately, is hard to wash off a political jacket, and this is already felt in Ukrainian messengers.

The uniform does not convert into a mandate. Not because the uniform is inferior. But because these are different documents issued by different authorities for different purposes. A state that understands this preserves both the army and politics. A state that decides one can simply exchange one for the other usually loses both.

Read the continuation soon.