Most top Pentagon jobs still empty as Trump insists on loyalty

[nitpicker]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article154052384.html

Most top Pentagon jobs still empty as Trump insists on loyalty

By Vera Bergengruen

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WASHINGTON —

Four months into his presidency, Donald Trump has filled only five of the 53 top jobs at the Pentagon – the slowest pace for nominations and confirmations in over half a century. Several of his high-profile picks, including Navy and Army secretary nominees, have had to withdraw because of their business entanglements. In other cases, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has clashed with the White House, which has blacklisted national security and defense leaders who publicly disagreed with Trump during the 2016 campaign, according to several current and former defense officials.

“In the vetting process there is a lot of scrutiny of social media accounts, Twitter . . . any hint of something negative about Trump as a candidate can be disqualifying, and a lot of people haven’t made it through that filter,” said Christine Wormuth, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official from 2014 to 2016, under former President Barack Obama’s administration.

The investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials is also scaring off people who had been on the fence about joining the administration. Even the opportunity to work under Mattis, who many of the potential picks know and respect, may not be enough.
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The problem isn’t that the Senate isn’t confirming Trump’s picks, but that dozens of national security posts still don’t have nominees. In the meantime, a skeleton crew of holdovers from the Obama administration and career civil servants are doing the day-to-day work at the Defense Department. “It’s not as if these jobs are in fact vacant, but it’s the equivalent of a substitute teacher,” said Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service. “Since they are not perceived as having long-term authority, they don’t view their role as addressing those long-term issues and this leads to important decisions being kicked down the road.”

The same issue is mirrored at the State Department, which has eight confirmed appointees out of 120 positions to fill. With the vacancies there and at the Pentagon, policy roles are in limbo at a time when the U.S. faces challenges on multiple fronts, from the Islamic State to Russia, North Korea and China. Trump has filled two of the 16 top jobs at the Department of Homeland Security.

Until early May, Mattis was the the only Pentagon appointee who had been confirmed. Since then, the Senate has confirmed four other appointees: former New Mexico Rep. Heather Wilson as secretary of the Air Force, David Norquist to be comptroller, Robert Story Karem as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and Kari Bingen as principal deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence.
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Trump’s loyalty snag is widely discussed within the national security community, but few defense and security experts will talk about it on the record. Privately, they say the White House is working with a much shorter list of candidates than usual, given that a large number of senior Republican national security officials signed the so-called “Never Trump” letters before the election. Dozens of experienced national security officials who would have been natural fits for leadership posts, many of them former cabinet members or top aides to Bush, signed a public letter last August saying they would not vote for Trump. “We are convinced that he would be a dangerous president and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being,” they wrote in the letter.

Between them and the more than 120 national security leaders who had signed another letter a few months earlier, there are roughly 150 top Republican national security and defense officials that the Trump administration won’t consider.
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This has resulted in several communications mishaps on the international stage. In one case cited by defense officials that could easily have been prevented by effective communication, Trump announced that the U.S. was sending a naval “armada” as a powerful deterrent to North Korea. Meanwhile, the USS Carl Vinson was actually on its way to participate in military exercises 3,500 miles in the opposite direction. In another, Mattis was taken by surprise when Gen. John Nicholson, the Army general commanding forces in Afghanistan, decided to drop the largest nonnuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal on Islamic State targets.

More seriously, the near-standstill in filling the empty positions is hampering the Pentagon’s ability to plan long-term policy. The National Defense Strategy review, which attempts a cohesive U.S. defense strategy and policy, would usually be led at the undersecretary or assistant secretary level. It’s a complicated process in the best of circumstances, and not having a full team in place will hinder Mattis’ ability to lay out strategic guidance early on.

[democratisphere]

1. kim jong-drumpf demands loyalty to himself and his authoritarian regime.

Good luck you short fingered despot.