President-elect Joe Biden will nominate retired four-star Army general Lloyd J. Austin to be secretary of defense, according to four people familiar with the decision. If confirmed by the Senate, Austin would be the first Black leader of the Pentagon.
Some 43 percent of active-duty troops are people of color. But the people making crucial decisions are almost entirely white and male.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, said Monday: “It’s a good choice that I think many in the civil rights community would support. It’s the first time we have seen a person of color in that position. That means something, in a global view, especially after such an antagonistic relationship we had with the previous administration.” Sharpton, who is set to be in the meeting with Biden on Tuesday, called the choice “a step in the right direction but not the end of the walk.”
Of the 41 most senior commanders in the military — those with four-star rank in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard — only two are black: Gen. Michael X. Garrett, who leads the Army’s Forces Command, and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr, the commander of Pacific Air Forces.
The armed forces were not fully integrated until after World War II, a legacy that has left African-Americans without the same history of generations of family service shared by so many white enlistees.
The elite service academies that feed the officer class — the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs — have increased their enrollment of minority recruits in recent years but remain largely white. The African-Americans who do become officers are often steered to specialize in logistics and transportation rather than the marquee combat arms specialties that lead to the top jobs.
Austin is likely to face opposition from some in Congress and in the defense establishment who believe in drawing a clear line between civilian and military leadership of the Pentagon. Austin would need to obtain a congressional waiver to serve as defense secretary. General Austin’s lower profile may match with Mr. Biden’s hopes for a more muted Defense Department.
Despite overseeing the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq after a bloody war, General Austin showed little interest in the public-facing parts of the job. He avoided speaking publicly or with members of the news media, allowing others to take the lead in the messaging as the war came to an end.
Biden has known Austin at least since the general’s years leading U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq while Biden was vice president. Austin was commander in Baghdad of the Multinational Corps-Iraq in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president, and he returned to lead U.S. troops from 2010 through 2011.
He puts a premium on alliances and partnerships. He respects the need for robust and healthy civil-military relations. And he leads inclusively, calmly and confidently.
Austin has a reputation for strong leadership, integrity and a sharp intellect. He would not be a prototypical defense secretary, not just because of his 41-year military career but also because he has shied from the public eye. It would be an understatement to say he was a quiet general; although he testified before Congress, he gave few interviews and preferred not to speak publicly about military operations.
He earned the admiration of the Obama administration for his work in Iraq and at Central Command, although he disagreed with Obama’s decision to pull out of Iraq entirely in December 2011. Austin was involved in the Iraq War from start to finish.
Like many retired generals, Austin has served on corporate boards. He is a member of the board of directors of Raytheon Technologies.
Word of Austin’s selection broke a day before a meeting between Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and civil rights groups, many of whom had pushed the president-elect to pick more Black Cabinet members.
General Austin is known as a battlefield commander. But he is less known for his political instincts — and has sometimes stumbled in congressional hearings, including a session in 2015 when he acknowledged, under testy questioning, that the Defense Department’s $500 million program to raise an army of Syrian fighters had gone nowhere.
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Source: AP, New York Times
