Army chief expected to win Joint Chiefs post

[July 26, 2011]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The reshuffling of key members of President Barack Obama's national security team is nearly finished, with Army Gen. Martin Dempsey facing his Senate confirmation as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing Navy Adm. Mike Mullen.

Dempsey is testifying Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee and is expected to easily win full Senate approval.

Mullen is retiring Oct. 1 after four years as senior military adviser to the president and to the secretary of defense. His departure follows the retirement of Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month and the pending move of Gen. David Petraeus from commander of international forces in Afghanistan to director of the CIA. Former CIA chief Leon Panetta has taken over for Gates at the Pentagon.

Next week, Marine Gen. James Cartwright will finish his term as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs and retire, to be succeeded by Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate shortly. Also awaiting Senate approval is the nomination of Gen. Ray Odierno to succeed Dempsey as Army chief.

The new lineup appears to offer the promise of stability in Obama's relations with the military as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down. The president will look to Dempsey and Panetta for advice on managing future defense spending cuts without undercutting military strength and morale.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command that runs from the president to the secretary of defense to commanders in the field.

Dempsey has taken an unusually twisted path to the military's top job. He has joked that he may go down in history as the shortest-serving Army secretary. He took that job April 11. Barely a month later Obama picked him to succeed Mullen, reflecting a presidential change of heart about Cartwright, who for months had been widely assumed to be a shoo-in for the prestigious post.

After two tours in Iraq -- first as commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad and later as commander of the organization charged with training and equipping Iraqi security forces -- Dempsey was serving behind the scenes as deputy to Adm. William J. Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, when Fallon resigned suddenly in 2008. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates installed Dempsey as interim commander, even though he had already been nominated and confirmed to become the top commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe.

After several months Petraeus took over at Central Command and Dempsey was given command of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va., where he developed the Army's thinking on how to prepare for future wars. There he preached "the gospel of adaptation" -- a conviction that in uncertain times, soldiers and their leaders must be versatile and open to new ways of doing things.

Dempsey, who grew up in New Jersey and New York, received a master's degree in English from Duke University in 1984 and then taught English at West Point. He also earned master's degrees from the Army's Command and General Staff College in 1987 and from the National War College in 1995.

[Associated Press; By ROBERT BURNS]

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP.

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