If his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, he would become the second African American, after Colin Powell in the 1990s, to serve as the senior officer in the world’s most powerful military.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 2023-05-25 at 1:03 AM, Updated at 2023-05-25 at 3:42 AM
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General Charles Brown currently commands the US Air Force. Arnd Wiegmann / Portal
US President Joe Biden will on Thursday, May 25 announce his intention to appoint General Charles Brown, who currently commands the Air Force, to head the US military hierarchy, according to his official program released by the White House. He would succeed Mark Milley, the current Chief of Staff, who has been in office since October 1, 2019 and whose term is coming to an end.
CQ Brown, if his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, would become the second African American to serve as the senior officer in the world’s most powerful army, after Colin Powell in the 1990s. an equally black secretary of defense: Lloyd Austin. The current chief of the US Air Force is a seasoned ex-pilot with 3,000 flight hours, including 130 combat hours. As a brigade commander, he was then commander of the American air forces in the Middle East and the Pacific.
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The general was noticed in the summer of 2020 in the midst of the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations against racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The high-ranking officer had released a video in which he spoke about the discrimination he himself had suffered in the army. In the Air Force, “I was often the only African American in my squadron and, as a senior officer, the only African American in the room,” he said at the time. “I think of the pressure I had to keep a clean sheet, especially from my bosses, who I think expected less of me as an African American.” He also said he “worked twice as hard” to “to.” show that their expectations and perceptions of African Americans were unfounded.”
200 military appointments blocked in Senate
But before the soldier assumes command of the entire American army, he must see the election of the President confirmed by the Senate. A procedure that is by no means a formality: Tommy Tuberville, Senator from Alabama, has been deliberately blocking almost 200 outstanding appointments to the military for several weeks. In doing so, the Republican shows that he opposes the Pentagon’s decision to allow military wives to voluntarily discharge the pregnancy (IVG). Upon confirmation, he would replace General Mark Milley.
Along with Secretary Lloyd Austin, Mark Milley directed US military assistance to Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. His march through was also marked by the American debacle in Kabul, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan and its capital in August 2021, at the end of a twenty-year war that Mark Milley himself described as a “strategic failure”.
We have to keep the army out of politics, we have to keep it apolitical and non-partisan.”
Mark Milley, current US Army Chief of Staff
He also found himself in the spotlight at the end of the Trump era, when a book reported that he had repeatedly contacted his Chinese counterpart to convince him of the American position. And that’s without notifying Donald Trump, the current president he was worried about. General Milley had also expressed regret at being with Donald Trump when the President broke up a Black Lives Matter demonstration outside the White House to pose for a picture outside a church , Bible at hand.
Secretary Austin and the general have been the target of Republicans who have criticized them for their progressive or “bright” attitude toward military change — prompting violent backlash from the military. “We have to keep the army out of politics, we have to keep it apolitical and non-partisan,” he told parliamentarians.
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