President Obama’s decision to nominate Marine Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a very good move. It’s also a little bit of a surprise: Even though it’s been clear for a while that Dunford was going to be the last man standing in the competition to succeed the outgoing chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Dunford doesn’t fit the profile of an “Obama General.”
Rather, Dunford is what one might call a “Mattis General.” That is, he is a no-nonsense Marine infantry officer, cut from the cloth of retired Gen. James Mattis, and representative of a generation of Marine leaders who distinguished themselves mightily in the post-9/11 wars. Indeed, Dunford commanded one of the regiments in Mattis’s 1st Marine Division that led one of the initial attacks in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Other senior commanders in the division included Gen. John Kelly, nearing the end of his tour as head of U.S. Southern Command, and Lt. Gen. John Toolan, now head of Marine forces in the Pacific theater.
That the president should turn to a Mattis protégé is more than a little ironic: The White House hates the plain-spoken and ascetic Mattis, who particularly pained the politicos who are the president’s closest security advisers. While Mattis took extreme care that the disagreements remain behind closed doors, the administration took petty revenge by announcing Mattis’ retirement six months in advance, by press release and without notifying Mattis. It was Foreign Policy’s Tom Ricks who told Mattis the news; in a subsequent report, Ricks revealed that “a particular point of disagreement was what to do about mischief Iran is exporting to other countries. Mattis is indeed more hawkish on this than the White House was. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in particular was irked by Mattis’s insistence on being heard.”
A hopeful interpretation of the “Fighting Joe” Dunford nomination is that it reflects a new level of maturity and judgment on the president’s part about the military in general and civil-military relations specifically. Obama’s taste in generals has been atrocious. The sycophantic former deputy chairman of the JCS, Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, was often reported to be the president’s “favorite general,” but ended up retiring under a cloud, his security clearances revoked for allegedly leaking to the New York Times about the “Stuxnet” hack-attack on Iran. Dempsey, the outgoing JCS chairman, has increasingly appeared to be a White House sock-puppet, becoming enmeshed in partisan squabbling with congressional Republicans, angering Sen. John McCain especially. McCain recently declared Dempsey to be “an echo chamber for the president” and “the most disappointing chairman of the Joint Chiefs that I have ever seen.”
Thus, despite his impressive record and combat credibility, Dunford faces a tough task if he is confirmed as the nation’s senior military officer. While dates for confirmation hearings have yet to be set, the Senate will no doubt want to get Dunford’s advice on the strategic and military implications of any Iran nuclear deal. This would be an early indicator of whether Dunford is indeed a “Mattis General,” concerned about the larger Middle East balance of power and the erosion of the U.S. position in the face of an Iranian bid for hegemony, or an apologist for the president.
This year’s budget battle will be a second test. The president’s request increased defense spending over the sequestration levels specified by the Budget Control Act (BCA), but matched it with an increase in domestic accounts. The Congress responded by upping the defense total, but used the mechanism of “overseas contingency operations” funding, or war-related expenses that sidestep the BCA restrictions. The White House and Congress are on another shut-down-the-government collision course, and the temptation will be to suborn the new chairman to take sides. If Dunford, like Dempsey, appears to be an Obama echo chamber rather than an independent-minded professional, his chairmanship will be dead on arrival.
