President-elect Joe Biden reportedly has chosen retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to be his first secretary of defense, opting for a distinguished former military commander to wind down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to numerous reports.
Austin, 67, would be the first African American to lead the Pentagon, outpacing reported finalists, such as former front-runner Michele Flournoy and Obama Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson. Biden had promised Monday that he would make the defense secretary announcement on Friday.
The decision means Biden is going with a commander he knows. Austin served as head of U.S. Central Command between 2013 and 2016, helping to navigate the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Obama administration.
He also led the Iraq campaign from September 2010 to December 2011 and served as vice chief of the Army from January 2012 to March 2013.
Austin enters the Department of Defense at a challenging time, one that follows a hefty Trump defense budget reconstitution early in his administration that was scheduled to flatten. The result will be an inflation-strained defense budget while two wars wind down and adversaries aggressively ramp up their capabilities.
Biden has thus far built an administration rooted in former Obama officials, indicating a likely continuation of pre-Trump defense policies. In November, Biden began unveiling his national security team, with a clear preference for familiar faces with “centrist” reputations, including Antony Blinken, the former deputy secretary of state, elevated to the top diplomat job.
After retiring from the Army in 2016, Austin joined the board of military contractor Raytheon and served on the boards of steel producer Nucor and Tenet Healthcare.
The choice of Austin comes within weeks of word that Biden had narrowed down three finalists.
Flournoy’s star rose fast, with the former DOD policy chief considered to be the favorite until liberals challenged her ties to the defense industry. Word also circulated that Biden wanted someone with whom he already had a personal relationship.
Likewise, Johnson was a strong contender with DOD chops as former general counselor, but he befell recent criticism for his role in unpopular Obama-era immigration policies.
In choosing Austin, Biden taps a 40-year military veteran who will satisfy the liberals of his party who had been calling for more minority representation among his top Cabinet picks.
Austin will have to calm a Pentagon ship rocked by recent firings and resignations that followed President Trump’s post-election bloodletting.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper was sacked by the president in November after 16 months. His senior advisers, including his chief of staff and two undersecretaries, then resigned before Trump installed loyalists from the National Security Council.
Trump then ordered an abrupt drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 each.
The personnel moves were viewed as disruptive to steering the giant bureaucracy and the troop movements, while in line with Trump’s campaign promise, potentially giving space to the Islamic State and al Qaeda to rebuild in the two war theaters.
“This incoming team is going to find that they are overwhelmed just trying to keep their hands on the basic policy processes that are going on within the Pentagon,” Zack Cooper, a security analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, recently told the Washington Examiner, talking about Trump’s late-game substitutions.
Retired Army Deputy Judge Advocate Maj. Gen. John Altenburg told the Washington Examiner he feared rocking the giant DOD ship: “I think it makes it tough for government to function.”
“There’s a ripple effect like that. It makes it difficult for the rest of the department,” he added.
Experts believe the new defense secretary will quickly move to analyze Trump’s lame-duck security decisions and reverse or modify some in their first days.
Those could include halting a call to draw down 12,000 U.S. troops from bases in Germany and curtailing the troop movements in Afghanistan, which have been used as leverage to hold the Taliban to a Feb. 29 peace deal.
In Iraq, which also serves as a base of operations for a small contingency force battling back the Islamic State in eastern Syria, a U.S. presence is both practical and strategic as Russia vies for influence west of the Euphrates.
Troops in Iraq help train the Iraqi security forces to root out terrorists, and they serve as a balance of power against Iran, which seeks to expand its influence in the country and would rejoice in a U.S. pullout.
