The U.S. military operates on the bedrock principle of civilian control of the armed forces. American military officers are pledged to be apolitical, saluting smartly and carrying out the policies of their civilian overseers.
But what if there are no civilians around to salute?
Should the Army keep planning for a smaller force? Should the Pentagon buy more F-35s? What about the social initiatives ordered by the previous administration, such as the full integration of transgender troops? How about the drive to put women in combat jobs, or recent moves by the services to make job titles more gender-neutral?
After a change in administration, especially as a new party led by Donald Trump takes over, there will be a period in which senior military officers, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders will effectively have more power to make small decisions, but less authority to make big ones.
The reason is that while traditionally the newly appointed defense secretary gets a quick hearing and expeditious confirmation, all the deputies and assistant secretaries can take months to put in place.
That creates what retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno and Nora Bensahel, a Distinguished Scholar at American University, called the “oversight gap,” in an opinion piece published this week at War on the Rocks.
Barno and Bensahel argue the dearth of political appointees in the Pentagon weakens civilian oversight and “creates a major and perhaps unfair bureaucratic advantage,” where some senior military leaders might be tempted to “try to lock in long-sought changes or build bureaucratic momentum for favored policies.”
“I don’t think there is malice involved in this, I think it’s normal bureaucratic politics,” Bensahel told the Washington Examiner. “But it’s so important to maintain a nonpolitical military, they have to resist the temptation to do that.”
The Pentagon is unique among Washington bureaucracies in that it has a parallel management structure with a civilian boss for every senior military officer, because as the French statesman Georges Clemenceau so famously put it, “War is too important to be left to the generals.”
But when the civilian service secretaries who oversee the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines leave on Jan. 20, it’s the military service chiefs who must carry on. Without policy guidance, the four-stars can subtly speed up or slow roll an initiative.
And unlike in the case of the Cabinet, the president inherits the generals promoted by the previous administration, including the Joint Chiefs and their chairman who serves as the primary military adviser to both the president and the defense secretary.
On Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Ash Carter called on the armed services to help with an “orderly transition.”
“I am very proud of the way each and every one of you conducted yourselves during this campaign, standing apart from politics and instead focusing on our sacred mission of providing security,” he said. “I know I can count on you to execute all your duties with the excellence our citizens know they can expect.”
In 1993, President Bill Clinton inherited Gen. Colin Powell, who had achieved rock star status in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. At the time, Powell did not support the newly-elected president’s plan to lift the ban of gays in the military. The chairman serves at the pleasure of the president, and could be replaced at any time by someone more in line with the president’s views, but firing generals is a politically risky move.
The Joint Chiefs chairman typically serves four years, two terms and two years each. But that’s not written in stone. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, for example, was not nominated for a second term, when he lost the confidence of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Of the seven members of the Joint Chiefs, five are set to serve at least through late summer or early fall of 2017, and two until 2018, that is assuming they are not renominated by the new president. Current Chairman Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford’s first term expires in September, unless the president decides to keep him.
But the current crop of combatant commanders, the four-star generals and admirals who are in charge of America’s fighting forces, are even newer in their positions, and therefore will be around longer.
Of the nine combatant commanders — which include the supreme NATO commander who must deal with the Russian threat, the U.S. Central Command chief overseeing the war on the Islamic State, and the U.S. Strategic Command leader in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal — all but two assumed command this year.
“The big advantage is it gives the department stability, which you absolutely want in an organization that is still involved in wars around the world today,” Bensahel said.
But while that provides continuity, it also means the new administration could find it difficult to pivot to a radical new strategy, until it has its own policy people in place, because there may be little constituency for policies that may have been unpopular or simply lacked support from the top brass.
“The thing they need to do the most is avoid boxing in the new administration,” Bensahel said. “They have to remain very flexible because the strategic guidance they get could change quite dramatically.”
Carter’s pet projects include his “Force of the Future” initiative to reach out to young millennials and his “DIUx” or Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, an ambitious effort to forge ties with Silicon Valley and streamline the acquisition of technology.
At a recent forum at City College of New York, Carter fielded a question from a student who wanted to know if his “Force of the Future” initiatives would survive after he’s gone.
“I’m confident they will,” Carter said “because they make so much sense.”
Whether they will make as much sense to the next defense secretary is what Donald Rumsfeld would call a “known unknown.”
