Admiral set to take charge of U.S. Southern Command

Miami Herald
Posted: Oct 15, 2006

When Adm. James Stavridis takes charge of U.S. military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean in a change-of-command ceremony on Thursday, he becomes the first naval officer ever to run the Pentagon's Southern Command headquarters.

Ever since Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders charged San Juan Hill, operations south of the border have been mostly the domain of ground forces.

Currently, Rear Adm. Harry Harris runs the Guantánamo Bay prison operation for terrorist suspects after a succession of commanders from the Army, which has traditionally handled prisoner-of-war-style operations. And a naval officer now conducts the only ongoing talks with the Cuban military.

Stavridis arrives in Miami and Southcom's headquarters in Doral as a four-star admiral in an ascension that analysts say reflects 21st century military trends -- from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resolve to shake up traditional Pentagon thinking to new challenges at Southcom since it moved to Miami from Panama a decade ago.

Peripherally, the trend also reflects a stretched Army that is focused on other military theaters, specifically in the Muslim world.

Stavridis will take over a Southcom with a diverse mission -- planning for potential instability in Cuba after Fidel Castro dies, overseeing Guantánamo's role in the war on terrorism and its related controversies and poised to renew exchanges with the military establishments of many Latin American nations, minus Cuba, at a time of increasing anti-Americanism across the region.

''You don't have to read The Miami Herald or The Economist to realize that relations between the U.S. and many Latin American countries are not very good right now,'' said Thomas Bruneau of the Center for Civil Military Relations in Monterey, Calif., a U.S. Navy postgraduate school. ``The sense now is gosh, there are some issues. What are we going to be doing about it?''

Enter Stavridis, 52, a 1978 Naval Academy graduate who has been Rumsfeld's senior military assistant for two years. He's replacing Army Gen. Bantz Craddock, the current Southcom chief who is now bound for Europe and a NATO command.

A Persian Gulf veteran with a Ph.D. in international relations, Stavridis is expected to bring a more flexible, innovative approach to the humanitarian, diplomatic and operational missions in a region that has sometimes played second fiddle to military operations in Europe and the Middle East.

''Coming from Rumsfeld's own staff, being an aide to the secretary of defense or some senior muckety-muck is always a good way to get a position,'' says Max Boot, a national security scholar at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

But Boot also sees the appointment of an admiral -- a sailor rather than a soldier -- as an example of Rumsfeld's ongoing transformation of the military, which has upended many Pentagon traditions, even as U.S. forces are stretched across the globe in the war on terrorism.

''He likes shaking things up. It's important to him,'' says Boot, who notes that for the first time, a Marine is in charge of the U.S. Strategic Command, a long-range planning operation led by an officer from a service that emphasizes short-term, rapid reaction operations.

Under this thinking, several analysts predict an Army four-star could someday lead the Pacific Command, the so-far exclusively Navy billet based at the Nimitz-MacArthur Pacific Command Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

''The Navy would sink some of its ships at dockside!'' cracks retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, 63, a Vietnam War veteran who led both the European and Southern Commands.

He agrees that Stavridis got Southcom under Rumsfeld's rethinking of traditional job assignments, but says the Army lost its Latin American and Caribbean leadership franchise in 1997 when Marine Gen. Charles Wilhelm took over at Southcom -- and inaugurated its move to Miami from Panama.

McCaffrey noted that a Navy admiral took command of detention operations at Guantánamo Bay and sailors -- not soldiers -- guard terrorism suspects because the Army and other ground forces are stretched elsewhere.

But the shift from Army to Navy leadership at Southcom, McCaffrey said in an interview, likely reflects Stavridis' credentials -- a young four-star with extensive Pentagon experience as well as a background in blended military operations like Southcom's, whose staff is drawn from all the services.

''He's probably the best guy,'' says McCaffrey, noting that Southcom's 15.6 million square-mile turf spanning 32 countries is not ``just a landmass.

``Remember it's a huge piece of ocean, the Caribbean, the approaches to the Yucatán, there's the annual naval marine exercises, anti-drug, and there's a huge air-land-sea component to this.''

McCaffrey, who has met Stavridis, says Latin American officers will not see the admiral as a Navy envoy but as a key Pentagon insider with Rumsfeld's ear.

He also will arrive with fresh congressional approval for military-to-military contacts with Latin American nations that have joined the International Criminal Court, but refused to give immunity to any U.S. citizens there who might be sought for war crimes prosecution.

With the new legislation, Southcom can now offer training to an estimated 750 Latin American military personnel from Brazil to Mexico to Peru, where rivals like China and other powers were filling their training needs.

U.S. military contacts with Cuban officers, however, are still taboo, limited to a monthly meeting along the minefield that separates the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo from Cuba proper.

Successive commanders have described the U.S.-Cuba frontier relationship as so far benign, but it could emerge as a major concern for Stavridis.

''The next big problem that the Southcom commander will handle is the death of Castro -- some time between next week and three years from now,'' says McCaffrey, who predicts an uneasy transition.

He envisions ''huge tension,'' hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees at sea, a U.S. military role in a potential humanitarian crisis -- all at a time when, McCaffrey predicts, the United States will need to ``reassure the Cuban military that we're not there to invade the island but there to help.''

For years, the major focus of Southcom commanders had been the Colombian drug war and related insurgency, a wide-ranging multi-agency effort called Plan Colombia.

Now, it's run out of U.S. Army South headquarters in Fort Sam Houston, Texas, a Southcom subsidiary, says Gabriel Marcella, a Latin American scholar at the U.S. Army War College.

And that means from his helm at Southcom Stavridis can survey the big picture.

''I think there is something to be said for the Navy culture versus the Army versus the Air Force culture,'' Marcella said.

But, ``in the long run, what really counts is experience, knowledge, sensitivity, diplomatic skills and a willingness to learn about the area. When you get to the level of four-star, generally those are the attributes these guys have anyway. That's why they become four stars.''