Is Trump hiring too many generals?
It could be particularly dangerous in an administration with a president who has no policy experience.
.. In addition, they warn, Trump’s administration could wind up seeing too much of its foreign and defense policy through a military lens, disregarding diplomacy and other levers of national power. And that could be particularly dangerous in an administration with a president who has no policy experience.
.. “Having a general as secretary of state and secretary of defense I think is not a good idea. I would certainly never recommend that. I’d rather see somebody who has more background in diplomacy and background in policy than another general in that position.”
.. “It isn’t about personalities,” said Gordon Adams, a former White House official who now teaches at American University. “The problem here is structural. A president who doesn’t know much about foreign policy and a vice president who doesn’t know much about foreign policy are surrounding themselves with people who served in uniform. It runs counter to the American tradition of civilian control.
.. “Just because they shed their uniforms, it doesn’t make them civilians,” he added. “They are still giving military advice. Mattis is a great battlefield commander, but he has never been a policymaker.”
.. “A very major part of the Anbar Awakening was not war, it was economics,” Woolsey said. “They did a great deal to get the local Sunnis back into a world of being able to be employed and making money. That is the reason things went so well.”