General Charles Q Brown, head of the United States Air Force, is chosen by President Joe Biden to be the highest military command in the country. If confirmed by the Senate, the pilot will be the first black chief of the US General Staff since Colin Powell held that position three decades ago. The tandem of Brown and the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, would mean that for the first time in history the Pentagon will be led by an entirely African-American leadership.
The former pilot will take over from General Mark Milley, who will go to the reserve in September. The candidate for military leadership “has a unique knowledge of our operations and areas of operation, and a strategic vision to understand how to collaborate to guarantee the security of the American people,” Biden assured when presenting Brown at an event in the gardens of the White House.
The soldier, nicknamed “CQ” among his acquaintances, presents an impeccable service record. His extensive experience includes, before leading the Air Force General Staff, command of US air power in the Pacific, an area of great geostrategic interest for Washington and where the rivalry between the United States and China reaches its greatest intensity. He has also been stationed in Europe and the Middle East.
As the highest level military in the military hierarchy, Brown will have among his tasks to advise Biden on all kinds of defense issues, from the war in Ukraine to the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific region. His experience in that area, where he has seen firsthand the extensive modernization of Beijing’s military, is considered particularly valuable in the eyes of the White House.
“It is in managing, and responding to, China’s territorial and geopolitical aspirations that the appointment of General Brown can truly shape the future of US defense,” said Thom Shanker of the Atlantic Council think-tank. “In any complicated scenario involving the South China Sea or any attempt to wrest territory from Taiwan… General Brown brings a range of critical and widely practiced skills.”
Brown’s proposal is also intended to send a message in divided US national politics, in which representatives of the Republican Party accuse the commanders of the armed forces of excessive progressive leanings. A senator from that party, Tom Tuberville, from Alabama, has been blocking all nominations for military commanders proposed by the Biden Administration since February. The legislator considers that the army uses funds from its budget to improperly finance the travel of its female soldiers who need them to undergo an abortion.
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Where Milley has been an extroverted military man, a lover of History, who has never shied away from speaking in public or spared his time to explain the links between current situations and their relationship with past events -his wife has once asked him, after a extensive talk of his, if “he had used all the words he knew” – Brown defines himself as an introvert.
According to Thom, the selection of the African-American soldier for the command of the US forces “will be welcomed, rightly, as a milestone in shaping the image that our Armed Forces present to the world, and to themselves, in the years to come.” The expert recalls that, although close to 40% of active US soldiers are not white, “very often the most prestigious leadership positions have been awarded to whites.”
Despite his professed terseness, Brown himself has spoken eloquently about this situation and his personal experience. During the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, he narrated in a video the discrimination he had suffered throughout his life, even within the army. The video, posted while he was still awaiting confirmation of him leading the Air Force, went viral, especially among US troops.
“I think of the protests in my country (…), the equality expressed in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that I have sworn to support and defend throughout my adult life. I think of a history of racial problems and my own experiences, which were not always brimming with freedom and equality,” he explained in that video after a mass rage broke out after the death of George Floyd, an African-American citizen, suffocated by police officers in Minneapolis. .
In his own case, he “was the only African-American in my squadron and, as a superior officer, the only African-American in the room,” he recalled then. Brown also recalled how he had to “work twice as hard” as his white peers “to demonstrate that expectations and perceptions (by his superiors and his peers) about African Americans were unfounded.”
Brown is also an advocate of the need for change in the Air Force and, by extension, the entire US military to bolster its capabilities and respond to the modernization of its rivals. In 2020 he published a strategy memo titled “Accelerate Change or Lose,” in which he warned against complacency and the idea that US air superiority is guaranteed in the event of a conflict.
In the document, the general “underscores that America’s adversaries are actively developing their own capabilities to respond directly and to reverse supposed American strengths,” recalls Delharty Manson, also of the Atlantic Council. “He is always thinking about the theater of operations of the future.”
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