The Senate Armed Services Committee heard Tuesday about the “dangerous precedent” that could be set if President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, receives a congressional exception to serve without waiting the required seven years since retirement.
Chairman Jim Inhofe questioned if the military had become too politicized and if it is now necessary to halt Austin’s nomination not on merit but on preserving civilian control of the military.
“After 40 years of successful military service, it would be natural and comfortable for Lloyd Austin to surround himself with previous military colleagues,” Inhofe said, highlighting a growing concern that civilian voices will be silenced at the Pentagon and military leaders will become increasingly partisan.
Inhofe and other senators and witnesses quoted from the 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission report that read: “Decision-making is drifting away from civilian leaders on issues of national importance.”
Expert witness Lindsay Cohen, associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said that granting another exception to the 1947 National Security Act would build on that trend.
“I think it is a dangerous precedent to grant two in a row,” Cohen said in response to a question from New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.
Several Democrats and an independent on the committee agreed, with sharp questioning from Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Angus King of Maine, and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who promised to oppose an exception for Biden’s pick for the top job at the Pentagon.
“I have publicly stated that I did not support an exception for Gen. Austin,” Duckworth said, noting that Austin’s four years in retirement fell far short of the seven-year requirement.
Duckworth opposed granting a congressional exception to President Trump’s nominee, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, in 2017.
“A secretary of defense having personal relationships with the majority of the highest-ranking uniformed leaders still puts them in a difficult situation,” she said. “The top supposedly civilian leader and the top military leaders have very similar professional backgrounds and have spent their entire adult lives in the same military culture.”
‘Politicization’ of the military feared
Witness Kathy McInnis, an international security specialist with the Congressional Research Service, warned that allowing military officers to transition to political roles may lead many to believe the military is not truly nonpartisan.
“The exception will swallow the rule,” Blumenthal said.
“The reason for the principle of civilian control is not only to protect our democracy against military interference,” he continued. “It is to protect the military against excessive interference, political, partisan interference that may jeopardize the professionalism and effectiveness of our military.”
In his opening remarks, Inhofe praised Austin’s four decades of service but questioned whether as secretary he will have the management skills to oversee the “world’s largest and most complex organization,” including navigating congressional oversight and interagency battles.
He also wondered aloud whether having two flag officers from the same service — Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley — would lend the necessary diversity of opinion for tackling national security problems.
“It’s also reasonable to ask whether the appointment of two generals to political positions in four years will increase the politicization of the senior military officers corps,” Inhofe said.
Other senators and witnesses stressed the concern that civilians will be pushed further away from the decision-making process at the Pentagon.
“No one that I’m aware of thinks that the confirmation or the waiver for Mr. Austin would break the back of either civilian control or American democracy,” said Cohen. “What we are worried about is its role in weakening these norms and institutions and their importance.”
Cohen added that Austin would need to prove to Congress that he would safeguard civilian control of the military and that it would be incumbent on Congress to “work extra hard to restore those norms and those institutions.”
Warren was especially concerned that civilian voices had been muted during Mattis’s tenure.
“It is clear that a lot of work must be done to restore civilian voices to their proper balance in the decision-making process at the Defense Department,” she said.
“Civilian control of the military is a bedrock principle in our country,” Warren added. “I believe in this principle deeply, and that’s why I voted against rewriting federal law for Jim Mattis, and it’s what I’ve been saying for Lloyd Austin.”
In a two-minute video released by the Biden-Harris transition team, Austin describes a military career of firsts as a black man and all but assumes he will be granted the exception and confirmed as Defense Secretary.
“My goal is to not be the last,” Austin says while wearing a suit as dramatic music plays and photos of his time in uniform appear on screen.
“Hopefully, we can set those conditions in place that ensure that I’m not the last corps commander to command in combat or the last CENTCOM commander,” he says, “and certainly not the last African American secretary of defense.”
