The dismissal of Gen. Charles Q. Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was startling, if not unexpected, at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump had appointed Brown to lead the Air Force in 2020, and in 2023, former President Joe Biden elevated him to the chairmanship. Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had signaled that Brown’s ouster was a key part of their overhaul of the Department of Defense, one of several firings of senior officials associated with the Biden administration.
To replace Brown, Trump has nominated Dan Caine, a retired Air Force general. The abrupt firing of a respected incumbent in favor of a replacement within Trump’s orbit has triggered concerns about politicizing the military.
The controversy has brought attention to the vital, yet not widely understood, role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What exactly does the chairman do? What powers does he or she have? How has the job changed over time? And what makes someone effective in the role?
The president’s principal military adviser
The chairman is the United States’ highest-ranking military officer. A four-star general or admiral who reports directly to the president, the chairman presides over the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a council comprised of senior members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force and the National Guard.
The chairman’s job is to distill the collective wisdom of the council and then advise the president on the best use of the nation’s military force.
While outranking all other military personnel, the chairman possesses no command authority. An adviser rather than a decision-maker, the chairman helps the president understand the armed forces’ options and capabilities during military crises. Operating outside the chain of command, which runs from the president to the defense secretary to combatant commanders, the chairman’s power stems not from leading troops in battle, but from having the ear of the leader of the free world.
Created in 1949, the chairman position was designed to solve a quintessentially American problem. In a nation where civilian control over the military is a first principle, what is the best way for presidents to receive the considered wisdom of the military forces they command?
Since George Washington’s time, this problem has vexed Congress, the branch of government the Constitution designates “to make rules for … land and naval forces.”
If military officials have too much sway in the White House, the president can veer toward authoritarianism, seeing troops and tanks as the answer to matters better solved politically.
But if the officer corps’ voice is too weak, complex battlefield operations – and the strategic planning that precedes it – are likely to be botched, as happened in Vietnam.
Tension with the service secretaries
In its original form, the chairman position was little more than a first among equals. Devoid of a staff, the position’s day-to-day power was outstripped by the civilian secretaries heading each military branch, more firmly entrenched leaders who were heavily invested in the existing divisions.
From what had become a centuries-old bureaucratic turf war, the Army and Navy secretaries knew how to “divvy things up,” as a 1985 Senate report put it. Relentless infighting undermined the chairman’s ability to get all the players on the same page and could lead to a disaster like the the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut by militants.
In an interview about the failures in the aftermath of the Beirut attack, Adm. William Crowe, the chairman at the time, said: “I could only operate through the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine component commanders, who stood between me and the forces in the field. Component commanders reported to their own service chiefs … and could use this channel to outflank the unified commander.”
The Goldwater-Nichols Act, passed in 1986, strengthened the chairman’s position significantly. The law said it aimed “to improve the military advice provided to the President” and more efficiently use military resources. The chairman received the coveted responsibility of personally advising the president and defense secretary on military matters. In practical terms, the chairman became the third-most important military figure, behind only the two officials he advised.
For their part, the service secretaries were relegated to the less prestigious role of training and equipping their respective troops. Their determination to preserve an antiquated model of military administration made them less relevant in an era of “jointness” and unified commands.
The qualities of an effective chairman
Immense in scale and scope, the chairman position by law must be held by a four-star officer with a significant amount of prior seasoning, including experience in one or more of the senior-most positions of the military. This requirement can be waived when it is in the “national interest” to do so, a provision Trump invoked when nominating Caine.
Broad experience helps chairmen identify counterproductive gamesmanship. In the buildup to the Gulf War, the Air Force chief of staff publicly bragged about the superior effectiveness of air power. Army Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman at the time, responded by advising Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to immediately fire the Air Force chief. Keen to such maneuvers, Powell wanted to send a message that the days of inter-service rivalries and airing of grievances were over: Only a unified mindset would be tolerated.
Frank, apolitical guidance is also important. The chairman’s four-year term is intentionally staggered against the president’s term so that a single chairman advises two presidents. Adm. Mike Mullen was appointed by President George W. Bush and then worked under President Barack Obama for nearly three years. Gen. Joseph Dunford, an Obama appointee, counseled Trump at the start of his first term.
Trump broke from this tradition by dismissing Brown less than two years into the term to which President Joe Biden appointed him. He selected Caine, a general whom Trump said told him the Islamic State group could be “totally finished in one week.”
The new chairman’s challenge will be to balance his independent judgment against telling the president what he wants to hear.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
