Monday, March 20, 2017

President Trump Is Shifting More Authority Over Military Operations To The Pentagon

President Trump with Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his new national security adviser, last month. General McMaster is shifting the National Security Council’s focus from military operations and tactics to strategic issues. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

New York Times: Trump Shifting Authority Over Military Operations Back to Pentagon

WASHINGTON — President Trump is shifting more authority over military operations to the Pentagon, according to White House officials, reversing what his aides and some generals say was a tendency by the Obama White House to micromanage issues better left to military commanders.

The change is at the heart of a re-engineering of the National Security Council’s role under its new leader, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and reflects Mr. Trump’s belief that the N.S.C. should focus less on military operations and tactics and more on strategic issues. A guiding precept for the president and his team is that the balance of power in the world has shifted against American interests, and that General McMaster should focus on developing foreign and economic policy options in concert with the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies to respond to that challenge.

The new approach to managing military operations was evident this month when a Marine artillery battery and a team of Army Rangers — some 400 troops in all — arrived in northern Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed off on the deployments and notified the White House. But General McMaster neither convened a meeting at the White House to discuss whether to send the forces nor presented the Pentagon with questions about where, precisely, the troops would operate or what risks they might confront.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: As the New York Times explains at the end of the article .... in defense of the Obama administration they did give the Pentagon what they always wanted. I expect the same with the Trump administration .... but maybe .... and this is a big maybe .... a little faster.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Obama, the liberal Messiah, did not give The Pentagon what it wanted.

Case in point the Afghanistan surge

He gave ~ 1/2 the troops request and dawdled several months

Tempo of operation means something, but Obama, the schumer, would not know that. He never studied military science.

Obama did study rabble rousing, community organizing. He knows when to send out the great liberal praetor Creamer, husband of Congresswoman Shakowski, to cause trouble.