Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, President Donald Trump’s choice to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is set to appear in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday for his confirmation hearing.
Caine retired last year as a three-star lieutenant general from the Air Force. His last assignment was as associate director for military affairs at the CIA. He was an unconventional pick to be the president’s top military adviser, partly because he didn’t meet the legal requirements for the role and thus required a presidential waiver and had already retired.
Trump announced his decision to fire former Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown on Feb. 21 and sent Caine’s nomination to the Senate on March 10.
A number of topics will likely come up during his confirmation hearing, including his relationship with the president, current and pending cuts to the Pentagon, possible combatant command reorganization, and his overall military philosophy.
Trump and Caine
The president has multiple times told a story about a conversation with Caine several years ago. In his retelling, the military leader may have violated military regulations by wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during their talk, signaling his support for the president.
The military is meant to be apolitical, and the chairman’s position is also.
As Trump tells it, he met with Caine in December 2018. The then-deputy commanding general over the Special Operations Joint Task Force in Iraq told the president that it would only take a matter of weeks to defeat ISIS, while the president’s advisers had reportedly said it would take years.
Trump referenced the conversation during last year’s Conservative Political Action Committee conference, recalling the general telling him, “I’ll kill for you, sir,” and the president added, “Then he puts on a Make America Great Again hat.”
Caine has not commented publicly on the president’s retelling.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said shortly after Trump announced Caine’s nomination, “He will give straightforward advice, as he did to President Trump, on the defeat of ISIS. No one else said it could be done in a matter of weeks. Razin Caine said it could. And guess what? It happened.”
The president’s propensity to seek loyalty in his closest advisers, even if the disputed story didn’t happen, could be a topic Democrats focus on.
Caine will have to “explain what happened,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the committee’s top Democrat, said last month. “If it happened the way the president said, well, that’s completely unprofessional. And that, I think, would question his ability to stand up to the president.”
Four-star experience
Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is required to be a four-star general or admiral who previously served in either the vice chairman position, as the chief of one of the service branches, or one of the Combatant Commands.
The law, however, also includes a workaround: the president has the latitude to “waive” the requirements “if the president determines such action is necessary in the national interest.”
Caine does not meet those requirements, and Trump will waive them, but he has held several other military roles. With his confirmation, he will become a four-star general.
During his decorated career, he had over 100 flying hours in combat and served in several positions, including Policy Director for Counterterrorism on the White House Homeland Security Council, Assistant to the Special Operations Command Vice Commander and Assistant Commanding General, and more recently, the Director of Special Programs at the Pentagon’s Special Access Programs Office, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.
After retiring last year, he joined Shield Capital, a cybersecurity firm.
“Chairman Wicker intends to highlight Lt. General Caine’s wide-ranging experiences and expertise that will prepare him to give sound and effective military advice to President Trump,” A senate republican aide told the Washington Examiner. “He will also emphasize how important it is to maintain a strong working relationship with the commander in chief and adhere to the responsibilities of the position.”
Pentagon restructuring
The Pentagon is working through a significant reduction in its civilian workforce. Hegseth has ordered a 5-8% reduction in the approximately 900,000-member workforce — between 50,000 and 60,000 employees.
The three ways the Department of Defense is trying to reduce the workforce are the voluntary employee resignation program, a hiring freeze, and firing some probationary employees, though the last effort is tied up in a legal battle after it tried to fire 5,400 probationary employees.
The cuts align with the administration’s whole-of-government restructuring to reduce spending, waste, and fraud.
CNN reported earlier this month that the Pentagon is considering merging European Command and Africa Command into a single combatant command and doing the same for U.S. Northern and Southern Command.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and his House counterpart, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), released a joint statement expressing concern for the proposal.
“U.S. combatant commands are the tip of the American warfighting spear. Therefore, we are very concerned about reports that claim DoD is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress,” the statement said.
The Trump administration is also debating whether to give up the United States-held role of having a four-star U.S. general oversee all NATO military operations in Europe, known as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NBC News reported.
“We support President Trump’s efforts to ensure our allies and partners increase their contributions to strengthen our alliance structure, and we support continuing America’s leadership abroad,” Wicker and Rogers continued. “As such, we will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”
Signal group chat controversy
It’s been about one week since the Atlantic reported that its editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a group chat on the Signal platform in which senior U.S. leaders discussed a possible and then ongoing military operation.
Both Reed and Wicker have requested the interim Pentagon inspector general to investigate the debacle and whether any classified information was inappropriately, or even illegally, shared in the chat regarding the U.S. military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.
There were more than a dozen senior members in the chat, including Hegseth, but the acting chairman, Vice Chairman of the Joint Staff Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, was notably absent.
Hegseth has maintained that he didn’t share military “war plans” in the group, but he did share what weapons systems would be involved and when U.S. airstrikes would begin.
Caine may be asked whether he believes Signal is an appropriate forum for that discussion and what his military advice to senior leaders will be regarding the Houthis.
US spot on the world stage
Senators on the committee will have an opportunity to hear directly from Caine about his positions on several international conflicts.
Trump and Hegseth have prioritized shutting down the U.S. southern border and have devoted significant resources to the mission that have had clear effects on crossings so far. The military has begun holding migrants awaiting deportation from the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, while the Navy has deployed two guided missile destroyers to the waters near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The military had largely been involved in the mission at the southern border in a limited, assistive capacity under previous administrations.
The Pentagon is not overly involved in the administration’s efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukraine-Russia war, but Caine could offer his perspective on the battlefield developments, as well as those between Israel and Hamas.
Hegseth recently returned from his first trip to the Asia-Pacific, where he sought to strengthen the U.S.’s ties with Japan and the Philippines in light of China’s increased aggression, which Caine may be asked about as well.
US DEPLOYING MORE ADVANCED MILITARY CAPABILITIES TO PHILIPPINES
The Trump administration has also told European leaders to increase their defense spending and plan to rely less on the U.S. for security and defense.
Simultaneously, the president also threatened a military campaign against Iran over its refusal to negotiate directly with the U.S. regarding its nuclear program. The president said over the weekend, “There will be bombing, and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”
