[Originally a Twitter thread.]

I always enjoy reading Joel Wuthnow’s analysis. This full article is the piece to read on the new CMC. It sparked a couple scattered thoughts as I read:

On He Weidong skipping a grade: after reconfiguration of CMC in 2017, there are very few command-track officers available for promotion to Vice Chair without skipping a grade. Only the Chief of Joint Staff Department is eligible. Theoretically the Defense Minister is too, but they’d have spent the past 5 years languishing in a non-operational role.

Lack of a commissar as Vice Chair is a reminder of how the former General Political Department’s wings have been clipped. The presence of the discipline inspection secretary on CMC also constrains their turf.

Narrowness of Chief of Joint Staff Liu Zhenli’s career is very striking. It puts a heavy bureaucratic and intellectual burden on his deputies, who will be worth watching. One of my pet theories is that it’s extremely unlikely theater commanders ever get added to CMC (outside of wartime), because this would create a politically dangerous concentration of power and hinder Joint Staff’s ability to coordinate.

As Joel says, it’s a mistake to think of the CMC as an operational command. But the new CMC provides a good opportunity to reassess the nature of operational command relationships, especially given the lack of Navy, Air, Rocket representation. The key question to me is: what is the real nature of the triangular relationship between joint staff, service headquarters, and theater commands? I’ve always found it to be a difficult but intriguing question!