The Austin ‘problematique’
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated retired Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III to be his secretary of defense. Gen. Austin is a decorated officer whose remarkable 41-year career in uniform included service as the vice chief of staff of the Army and commander of Central Command. In addition, he is only the sixth African American general to earn a fourth star. Nevertheless, Gen. Austin is one of the worst choices Mr. Biden could have made for the person to lead the Pentagon.
All societies must manage what scholars refer to as the “civil-military problematique.” The prolematique is a paradox: Societies need militaries to provide defense, but those militaries can use their inherent power — directly or indirectly — to exert undue influence on society. Establishing and maintaining civilian control over the military is thus a difficult, never-ending task.
In the United States, one way we have worked to ensure civilian control is by enshrining in law that the secretary of defense be a civilian. To be eligible, retired military officers must be separated from the military for no less than seven years.
There are very good reasons for this legal prohibition. First, it is a key part of the structure created by the 1947 National Security Act to prevent consolidation of power in a single officer’s hands; in addition, the services each have their own chiefs and the Joint Chiefs of Staff is an advisory body with no command authority. Installing a recently retired officer as secretary runs counter to the spirit of preventing military-minded individuals from amassing too much authority over the nation’s armed forces.
Second, an officer like Gen. Austin will have spent decades cultivating a network of friends, contacts and advisers dominated by other uniformed service members. Crucially, without a “cooling-off period,” many of those service members will still be on active duty. A disproportionate amount of the information and advice provided to the secretary will accordingly come from individuals with vested interests in their service and the military, and friendships formed over decades can lead to parochialism and bias in decision-making. For the person meant to serve as the president’s means of control over the military, these networks invert the intended direction of influence in the civilmilitary relationship.
Third, the secretary’ job is fundamentally different from that of military officers, and is inherently more political. A commander of Central Command will have never run the equivalent of a 3-million-person corporation, decided how much money to allocate to, for example, military-run schools for service-member dependents, resolved interservice resource disputes or lobbied Congress for both additional funding and base closures. Military service provides relatively little of the experience a secretary needs.
Finally, and most problematically, if the secretary’s job comes to be seen as the final step on the promotion ladder for ambitious officers, then military elites are more likely to shade the advice they provide to the president so that it aligns more closely with his or her political preferences. Telling the president what he or she wants to hear is a good way to get promoted but draws the military into partisan politics and can be very dangerous for national security.
In 2017, recently retired Marine Gen. James Mattis was granted a waiver to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of defense because, with the incoming president having no military or government experience, Congress believed he could provide muchneeded expertise. Setting aside the fact that there are no such concerns about Mr. Biden, Gen Mattis’ tenure underscores the need for a civilian secretary.
Gen. Mattis populated the office with active-duty and recently retired officers, pushing out both civilian expertise and visibility into the daily goings-on at the Pentagon. Additionally, in a move consistent with the policy views of much of the military elite, he apparently slow-rolled White House requests for military options on problems like North Korea and Iran. Whether one agrees with the Trump administration’s policies or not, an unelected secretary does not have the right to behave in such ways.
Announcing his choice of Gen. Austin, Mr. Biden argued that both men believe “We need empowered civilians working with military leaders to shape DoD’s policies and ensure that our defense policies are accountable to the American people.” If true, then Gen. Austin should ask that his nomination be withdrawn. If he does not, Pennsylvania’s senators should vote against a waiver authorizing Gen. Austin to serve.
Sen. Bob Casey and Sen. Pat Toomey voted in favor of Gen. Mattis’ waiver; this is an opportunity to both correct that mistake and take a stand for re-establishing healthy civilmilitary relations. If they do not, and Gen. Austin is confirmed, the experience of two administrations in a row installing a recently retired officer as secretary of defense will make it very difficult for future administrations not to do the same, and an essential tool of civilian control over the military will be lost.