As Sarah Westwood reports, President Trump’s picks for senior Pentagon positions are raising eyebrows.
Pat Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, is the new deputy secretary of Defense.
And, if Trump gets his way, Ellen Lord, CEO of defense contractor Textron Systems, will head up the Pentagon’s weapons acquisitions team.
Similarly, Trump’s intended nominee for secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, is a senior Raytheon government affairs official. And his nominee for undersecretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, is a vice president at Lockheed Martin.
What’s the problem with all this?
Well, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pointed out to Shanahan last month, “I am concerned that 90 percent of defense spending is in the hands of five corporations, of which you represent one. I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the hen house.”
McCain’s concern is well made.
The Pentagon is a vast government bureaucracy with an extremely large budget. Putting a handful of defense contractors in charge opens the door to waste and corruption. The risks here are real. Look at the boards of any major defense firm, and you’ll likely see an array of former high-ranking military and Pentagon officials. They are there, on big salaries, because they have the personal relationships, knowledge, and networks to guide their employers to lucrative govenrment contracting. That helps explain why so few firms control such large stakes in the defense contracting business.
Another risk with Trump’s appointees is that they might be more predisposed to approve big-ticket procurement items rather than the equipment and services actually needed by the military. During the 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq, for example, the Pentagon was far too slow in delivering mine-resistant vehicles to frontline forces. Instead, senior officials played nice with big cost overruns in programs like the F-35 joint strike fighter. Mine vehicles weren’t where the money was.
Ultimately, Trump has a real challenge on his hands. The Pentagon needs a lot of money to effectively protect U.S. interests, but Congress is obsessed with wasting much of it. Correspondingly, if Trump is serious about reforming the Pentagon to make it more efficient and effective, he’ll need the best possible team in place at the Pentagon.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is great, but stacking the top ranks of the Defense Department with contractors doesn’t seem like the way to go. Trump has rightly made a big deal out of Pentagon waste, but I’m not convinced that former defense contractors will do battle with their former paymasters.
On the contrary, these choices reek of cronyism and the deepening swamp.
