The Senate confirmed on Friday the lieutenant-general Dan Caine, the former national goalkeeper and fighter pilot, to be president of the joint staff chiefs.
General Caine replaces another Air Force fighter pilot, General Charles Brown, known as CQ, that President Trump suddenly dismissed in February.
The unbalanced approval of General Caine’s Senate, which is retired, was expected. While the Democrats had expressed concerns about the eruption of dismissals in the Pentagon in the second term of Mr. Trump, General Caine obtained little opposition because the majority of them seemed to be considered as perhaps the best possible option, taking into account the circumstances.
In his new role, as the main military advisor to Mr. Trump and the defense secretary Pete Hegseth, General Caine will take over a joint personnel who has been somewhat isolated from the decision -making of national security in the past two months.
The first challenge he faces will be whether he will be able to exert an influence. Mr. Trump’s national security team has embarked on a series of early movements, in particular by expanding a bombing campaign intended to curb Houthi activists supported by Iran in Yemen and to determine if, and how the United States will continue military assistance to Ukraine for war with Russia.
General Caine’s confirmation came with any of the drama that accompanied that of Mr. Hegseth, who, in the midst of a wave of questions on his qualifications, needed the vice-president JD Vance to vote.
Throughout General Caine’s hearing before the Senate Committee for Armed Services on April 1, the Democrats seemed to be torn apart. They wanted him to say that he would reject some of Mr. Hegseth’s initiatives targeting ethnic minorities, women and other groups. But they did not want to push so hard that they irreparably harmed his relations with Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Trump before he even took office.
“I expect you to always make your best military advice to the President and the Secretary of Defense,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee classification democrat. “Even if this advice is not what they would like to hear.”
General Caine, for his part, promised that he would give the president and Mr. Hegseth his best military councils and undertake to “tell the truth in power”.
On Wednesday, Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi republican who chairs the armed services committee, called on the Senate to stay in session as long as necessary to approve General Caine.
“The Chinese Communist Party continues a vast military accumulation, and our opponents continue to regroup against the United States,” Wicker said in a statement. “It is essential that the Senate confirms the lieutenant-general Caine as president of the chiefs of staff joints this week.”
Eric Schmitt Contributed reports.
