Once in Thrall of ‘the Generals,’ Congress Now Gives the Orders on Military Issues

The shift mirrors broader societal frustrations after two decades of wars, a pervasive problem of sexual assault and harassment of female troops and the exposure of political extremism in the ranks.

WASHINGTON — President Bill Clinton, newly elected and eager to fulfill a central campaign promise, moved in 1993 to end a ban on gay men and women in the military, but he was stymied by senior military officers, who coordinated with a deferential Democratic senator, Sam Nunn of Georgia. More than 15 years later, Mr. Clinton’s messy compromise, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was repealed, but only after a new generation of senior Defense Department officials told a hushed panel of reverent senators that the time had come. The military’s relationship with its civilian masters is regularly strained, as it was under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump. But now, increasingly, it is lawmakers from both parties who are telling “the generals” how things are going to be, and less the other way around.