President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to serve as his secretary of defense has worried some military analysts who are concerned that Austin’s Mideast-centered career does not make him ready for the current national security challenges facing America.
The 41-year Army veteran served as head of U.S. Central Command, overseeing 20 countries in the Middle East, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from 2013 to 2016.
Brookings Institution scholar Michael O’Hanlon told the Washington Examiner the top three national security challenges facing the next secretary of defense are China, Russia, and modernization.
“I’m not yet prepared to predict that he will do well in the job,” he said. But he noted, “The last thing we want to do is wind up in some unnecessary war with Russia or China over things like the Senkaku Islands or Syria or something that’s entirely secondary to core American interests.”
“You’ve got to approach these countries with a nuanced and deep understanding of where they’re coming from and how to affect their calculus, how to affect their ambitions,” he said of America’s great power rivals Russia and China. “And not just get lured into the idea that this is the next big cold war.”
American Enterprise Institute China security scholar Zack Cooper told the Washington Examiner that he was surprised by Biden’s decision to choose another Army official with deep Mideast experience to serve in a leadership role at the Pentagon.
“What we’re saying publicly is that the top priority for the U.S. Defense Department is China,” he said. “So, that seems to be a mismatch.”
Cooper pointed out that chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Mark Milley, who forged his career in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, would serve as Biden’s principal military adviser.
Asia watchers are worried that the nomination of Austin is a signal that Biden’s focus will be getting out of Afghanistan and the Middle East quickly, said Cooper, but that shifting focus to Asia will be “a secondary concern.”
“However you evaluate that track record of his last 10 years in uniform, it was focused fundamentally on the Middle East,” O’Hanlon said of Austin’s military record.
He also led the Iraq campaign from September 2010 to December 2011 before serving as the vice chief of the Army from January 2012 to March 2013.
O’Hanlon said President Trump’s first defense secretary pick, retired Gen. James Mattis, had a penchant for reading military history broadly and also served on NATO’s transformation command, giving him an understanding of global circumstances.
“I don’t know that Austin had any comparable sort of broadening position that was beyond the immediate Middle East in terms of its scope,” O’Hanlon said.
The security scholar described the Middle East as a region of “broken politics and insurgent and extremist movements,” characterized by short-term crises and immediate problems.
“Just completely different from the Russia and China and technology portfolios,” he said.
“Technology and modernization of the military have to be at the center of what any future secretary of defense focuses on because we’re at such a decisive moment, such a fast-changing moment in the nature of warfare,” he added.
Former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper frequently stressed the threat posed by China and the country’s aggression and intimidation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Current acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller is finishing a swing through the Asia-Pacific region, having visited partners Indonesia and the Philippines before stopping Thursday at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii.
“The focus on China probably will continue broadly within the Defense Department,” said Cooper. “The hard part is transitioning from talking more about China to doing more on the military side to actually compete effectively.”
Cooper said an early sign from Austin that an Asia focus is in the works will be if he makes the case to cut spending where his lifeblood for four decades are rooted, land forces, in favor of maritime and air capabilities that are appropriate for the Asia-Pacific theater.
Asia watchers will be listening closely to Austin’s nomination hearing, Cooper suggested.
“I don’t think we really know where Lloyd Austin stands on these issues, and this is part of what made this a big surprise to many in the field,” he said. “He doesn’t have a particularly large record in the last few years on broader defense strategy.”
