My frequent co-author, Frank Miller, and I have a new piece up in The Bulwark about Trump inviting Putin to the G20 Summit in December that I thought Shield subscribers might enjoy:
Vladimir Putin Doesn’t Belong in Florida
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I listened to the conversation with Mark Herling, Ben Parker, and Eliot Cohen on The Bulwark Command Post and I have questions.
This is entirely tangled up in the comments about "Generals can't quit, but they can be fired" Just how does that work in practice?
As a nuke Machinist's Mate on SSN's during the height of the Cold War, I was definitely not destined for a stint at the Navy's War College but I can say "Soldier's can't quit, but they CAN be fired" sounds like a War College Round Table Discussion topic. One of those discussions where the rules are spelled out in advance. One of those rules would have prevented a Donald J. Trump-like character, because it was outside the scope of what the "Good Guy's and Bad Guy's" have historically looked like, and continue to look like today. I like to read history too. The thick book kind.
Something I marvel at is how studiously everyone seems to avoid the possibility that General Dan Caine, Chairman of the JCS, is MAGA. Him being MAGA solves some questions.
Everything I read, see ,hear gets me to him being more likely than not he is MAGA. Maybe this is wrong but my understanding is Cain was retired, before Trump to the Oath of Office for the presidency and he was already lined up with a pretty good gig working for several PE/VC firms, one of which was run by Jared Kushner's little brother Joshua. The private equity/venture capital thing is another story for another day.
Are people familiar with the backstory of the current CNO, Admiral Caudle, the story about how he pitched himself as CNO when Admiral Franchetti was fired? It is important to understand that these "apolitical" flag officers are apolitical because the system of promotion has historically condoned/endorsed that behavior. Just because the behave apolitically does not come within a country mile of them being apolitical. It actually makes them skilled at navigating politicians they may vehemently disagree with. Which brings us back to General Caine and Admiral Caudle.
How does a RETIRED USAF 3-star general come to be pulled out of retirement and be appointed Chairman JCS? Especially as he was already a general when Trump 1.0 came about. He would have had felt Trump's deeds directly. Maybe he did a little back channel campaigning for the role like Caudle? I don't know and that is speculative on my part. But the flip side of that is that when he was OFFERED the job of Chairman, he could have reached out to General Jim Mattis or General John Kelly and asked a simple question. "You guys worked hand in glove with Trump, he has asked me to be Chairman JCS. What do you think about that?" I already know what those two would have said.
General Hertling has done a stellar job of getting me to understand how those top 3 and 4 star roles work, and how the work is important here also.
When Caine first took that job, like the first week or two I googled his name to see what his qualifications for that job were. Based on my understanding of the generic "job" of Chairman, is that it is a Congressionally mandated 4-star role. Caine retired as a 3-Star so he had to be promoted to 4-Star to meet the Congressional mandate.
He was not a 4-Star who took a lateral job. Generically if you look at the various 4-star slots in the the various service branches you can see what squared you need to get checked off. You need to do A, you need to do D, N is optional, you definitely need to do Q, R, S if you want to stay in the running. General Herting knew what he needed to do to get from Colonel to get that first star and right up the ladder. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You want ambitious people. But here is another problem for Caine. He did not get all his boxes checked off to get that 4th star and he subsequently retired because that is how it works at that level. "Up
or Out" definitely applies because the number of roles dwindles to there too many 3-stars for the available 4-star positions.
When I read Caine's military bio, he did not do some of the things a 2-star and then a 3-star needs to do to continue his career. Lots of USAF and USN pilots and aviators join the service to fly, when the flying is over, they are done and that is an active act on their part. With Caine, the bulk of his career appears to have been connected to Special Operations sand that is fine in and of itself but it does take you out of the running for the 4-star jobs. Not complicated. So Caine was a Special Operations specialist in the USAF writ large but was unqualified for 4-Star rank rank generally and because he didn't check the appropriate pre-qualifications he is not qualified to be Chairman.
I think that special operations focused career also ultimately bit him in the ass. The Maduro raid and capture is classic special operations so he was on solid footing there. Iran not so much.
He, Hegseth and Trump thought it would be just a very big but relatively simple speccial operations event. They guessed wrong. I think Iran could morph into something similar to Iraq except for two things. The entire population could be against us while China and Russia ship them weapons by the boat load.
The US has a long and not particularly praiseworthy long-term history with Iran