The perceived onset of a “Civil War” within President-elect Donald Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) team between hardliners and technocrat Elon Musk over issues like highly skilled but legal immigration and bi-partisan budget deals may have a collateral impact on the tenure of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer in the United States and the principal military adviser to the President, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.
He “assists the President and the Secretary of Defense in providing for the strategic direction and planning of the Armed Forces; allocating resources to fulfill strategic plans; making recommendations for the assignment of responsibilities within the Armed Forces in accordance with and in support of those logistic and mobility plans; comparing the capabilities of American and allied Armed Forces with those of potential adversaries; preparing and reviewing contingency plans that conform to policy guidance from the President and the Secretary of Defense; and recommending assignment of logistic and mobility responsibilities to the Armed Forces to fulfill logistic and mobility plans.”
General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. is the 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Prior to becoming Chairman on October 1, 2023, General Brown served as the 22nd Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. Unless fired by Trump, he can serve in his present position till his four-year term expires in 2027.
It may be noted here that both Trump and the overwhelming majority supporting his MAGA goal, particularly Trump’s nominee for the post of defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, have been of the view that if America has not won many wars since 1945 (in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, for instance), it is because Americans have been emasculated and weakened by “wokeness” to lead the Pentagon. They have been dead-opposed to the present policy of “diversity-focussed” hiring in the military.
And it so happens that General Brown is a big advocate of “diversity” of gender, race, and sexual inclinations in the military. “The things I think about is not only having diverse, you know, slates of candidates for some key positions, but it’s also that you have to select some of those individuals into those key positions,” Brown was reported to have said in an interview.
“You can’t let it just be happenstance that brings in diversity, whether it be race, gender, ethnic background, sexual orientation or socio background,” he had said, explaining that the military should “identify diverse candidates and ensure that we are grooming them for opportunities.”
Incidentally, Brown is only the second Black man to hold the highest-ranking job in the armed forces after the late Colin Powell. And when he became the Air Force chief of staff in 2020, he was the first Black American service chief in the U.S. military (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the U.S. does not exercise military command over any combatant forces as the chain of command to these combatant commands runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense directly to the commander of the combatant command. However, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may transmit communications to the commanders of the combatant commands from the President and Secretary of Defense).
For MAGA hardliners, General Brown is too “woke” for the job, as he has favored diversity over excellence in the American military. Hegseth wants him fired. “First of all, you got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke— has got to go,” Hegseth has said in a recent ‘Shawn Ryan Show,’ a podcast, adding “people should be in the military for warfighting and that’s the only litmus test we care about.”
However, recent reports suggest that Trump may not mind continuing with General Brown following their “meaningful” meeting at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, where an Army-Navy football game was hosted last fortnight. Reportedly, Brown “congratulated Trump on his election and made it clear that he was ready to work with the President” and that “[Trump] liked that.” Afterward, Trump apparently told someone traveling with him that the conversation went well and that Brown was “doing a good job.”
And here, it is presumed that the Musk factor could have played a role. Because, one of the people who has been advocating for Trump not to fire Brown is said to be retired Air Force Gen. Terrence “TJ” O’Shaughnessy, who works closely with Elon Musk at SpaceX.
Incidentally, General Brown replaced O’Shaughnessy as commander of the Pacific Air Forces, known as PACAF, in 2020.
It is equally noteworthy that it was Trump, then the President of the U.S., who had nominated General Brown to be Air Force chief of staff in 2020, making him the first Black American service chief in the U.S. military. And this despite the fact that General Brown was quite vocal on the then nationwide protests over “Black Lives Matter” following the killing of George Floyd in Police custody in Minneapolis.
In a candid video, General Brown had then said how he and his wife were “thinking about our two sons and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds…I’m thinking about my Air Force career, where I was often the only African-American in my squadron or, as a senior officer, the only African-American in the room…..(but) I can’t fix centuries of racism in our country, nor can I fix decades of discrimination that may have impacted members of our Air Force.”
It is really noteworthy here that four days after this candid interview of General Brown, Trump had praised him in an online post, saying he is “excited to work even more closely with Gen. Brown, who is a Patriot and Great Leader!”
That General Brown later became President Joe Biden’s choice to succeed General Mark Milley in the military’s top job as the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, should not matter for Trump, supporters of the former, including some of the Republican lawmakers and retired Generals, point out.
For them, General Brown’s report card should please President Trump. Few points are made in this regard.
First, in his previous job as Air Force Chief of Staff (given by none other than Trump himself), Brown had promoted a major new initiative designed to strengthen deterrence against China, known as “agile combat employment.”
This concept has resulted in many achievements, including the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command gaining contingency access rights to about 10 more bases in the Pacific in recent years — most in the Philippines.
Secondly, in order to strengthen capabilities against China, General Brown, with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Congress, has been able to substantially increase purchases of anti-ship missiles and other precision ordnance over the last half-decade, which, as a policy, was initiated by the previous Trump Administration.
Thirdly, General Brown has consistently worked toward strengthening the new Space Force that President Trump created in 2019 as a stand-alone sixth branch of the U.S. military, making history. The General is said to have championed the overdue move to build more resilient and survivable satellite constellations with many more but smaller satellites than the U.S. usually deployed in the past.
Fourthly, President-elect Trump may appreciate that it is under the guidance of General Brown that over the last two years, the number of recruitments into the U.S. military and the retention of manpower has increased. In a sense, Brown has been attaching great importance to the national security priorities that Trump had in his first term and that he has promised to pursue in his second.
Finally, there is a political factor that Trump may take into account. And that is the fact that he proved to be the preferred choice of many minorities, including Blacks and Hispanics, in the last election.
Trump has accordingly sent the right signals by nominating Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the first Latino as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of State. As regards the Blacks, his only pick so far has been Scott Turner, a former professional football player and a former Texas House of Representatives member, where he served from 2013 to 2017.
Thus, by retaining General Brown, whom he had made the first-ever Black to command a force as the Air Force Chief of Staff, Trump could further please the Black community who voted for him.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- CONTACT: prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
