Guess What? The Left Wing May Have a Chance to Drastically Change Military Leadership Before the Next Election!

Turnover in military brass expected Forwarded to RiteOn by MA Guest Editor AM  By John Donnelly By the end of this year, the U.S. military's slate of senior leaders will be wiped almost clean, giving President Obama a chance, if he wants it, to change the tone and direction of defense policy from that of his predecessor. The extent of the turnover is unusual. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates , like the others a holdover from the Bush administration, leads the list, followed by four of the six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On the way out are the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen , and the vice chairman, Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, although he is a leading candidate to replace Mullen. [Request a free trial to CQ Weekly.] Also departing this year are the Army's chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Gary Roughead. The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, is scheduled to leave a bit later, in August 2012. The only chief who will be around for a while is the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James F. Amos, whose tenure lasts until 2014. That's not all. Some key battlefield commanders will also step down soon. They include the U.S. Special Operations Command boss, Adm. Eric Olson, and the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, Army Gen. Walter "Skip" Sharp. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has been rumored to be leaving that post this year, although Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says Petraeus' exit "will not occur anytime soon." "It is highly unusual to have turnover of this magnitude at the senior levels of the services and the Pentagon," says John Ullyot, a former senior aide for the Senate Armed Services Committee. The turnover will give Obama an opportunity to put his mark on the leadership in a short space of time. Before Gates leaves office, he will no doubt recommend officers for those jobs, although no names have been mentioned. The only prospective member of the chiefs who has been nominated is Gen. Martin Dempsey, now the leader of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, who in recent months has plunged into studying the lessons the Army should learn from a decade of war. The biggest open question, of course, is who will replace Gates. Among the more intriguing possibilities is that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would move from Foggy Bottom to the Pentagon. Several current and soon-to-be-former senators, such as Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, are also on the list of potential candidates being discussed. A big question on the joint chiefs is whether whomever Obama chooses will be assertive enough behind closed doors when standing up to a Defense secretary or even the president when necessary. During the tenure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in particular, and to some degree since then, the service chiefs have played diminished roles. "The question is," Ullyot says, "by the president's appointments, how much is he going to signal a return to relative autonomy for the service chiefs and to name forceful leaders who are able to set the agenda for their services in an era of significant challenges?" Charles Stevenson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says both the president and the Senate will be looking for "really good people who will be honest with them." Assertiveness and amicability may both be needed in the years ahead, as many of the expenses - such as training costs - that have been tucked into war spending bills over the past decade will not have to be paid for in smaller, regular budgets. "They're going to have to work together - hopefully as collegially as the group of chiefs I've been privileged to work with - as the money gets tight," says the Army's Casey. "That brings out the worst in folks." The years ahead are bound to be a time of transition for reasons other than fiscal ones. Each of the armed services - indeed the military as a whole - is struggling to define its identity. They have spent a decade embroiled in counterinsurgency and nation-building. And they don't know what the future holds, Dempsey said at his March 3 confirmation hearing. The world, he said, is "a far more dangerous place today than it's ever been. And we owe the nation an agile force that can adapt to the future, whatever it finds in that future." John M. Donnelly writes for CQ.