Joseph Francis Dunford, Jr.
Chairman from Oct. 1, 2015 - Sept. 30, 2019
Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 23 December 1955. His father had served with the storied 5th Marine Regiment during the Korean War, service that inspired Dunford. Upon graduation from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont on 29 May 1977, he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and a commission in the Marine Corps Reserve.
At the conclusion of his first tour, Lieutenant Dunford had considered resigning his commission. His Marines convinced him to remain on active duty, however, and in 1980 he reported to Okinawa, Japan to serve as aide to Lieutenant General Stephen G. Olmstead. Olmstead’s sense of professionalism and concern for the welfare of his Marines that inspired Dunford to pursue a lifelong military career.
Duty at Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC) in Arlington, Virginia, came a year later, followed by formal schooling. Assigned afterward to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, he assumed command of Company L, 3d Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. A follow-on assignment at Camp Lejeune in 1987 involved duties as the 2d Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company’s Plans and Training Officer. During the same period, he completed the US Army’s Airborne and Jumpmaster Schools.
Dunford departed during 1988 for independent duty at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. There he served as Marine Officer Instructor for the college’s Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit for three years.
After graduation in 1992 from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts., Dunford returned to HQMC, first as a member of the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Staff Group and later as General Carl E. Mundy’s senior aide-de-camp.
In 1995, Dunford rejoined 6th Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, serving as the regiment’s executive officer for a year before taking command of 2d Battalion. After attending the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Dunford then proceeded to the Pentagon to serve as Executive Assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then later as chief of the Global and Multilateral Affairs Division of the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J-5).
Colonel Dunford subsequently assumed command of the 5th Marine Regiment at Camp Pendleton in 2001. On 20 March 2003, as part of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, he led Regimental Combat Team 5 as it spearheaded 1st Marine Division’s three-week drive from Kuwait to the outskirts of Baghdad, where it again led the division’s attack into the city.
Later, as chief of staff for 1st Marine Division, Colonel Dunford coordinated the staff sections while stability operations continued in Iraq over the summer, followed by the unit’s retrograde and reconstitution at Camp Pendleton. With selection for promotion to brigadier general, he rose to become the division’s assistant commander in 2004.
In 2005, Brigadier General Dunford began the first in a series of three Washington, DC, staff assignments at HQMC. Two years later, he returned to the Joint Staff as vice director of the Operations Directorate (J-3). On 29 April 2008, the Senate confirmed Dunford’s nominations to both major general and lieutenant general. On 8 August, he received his third star and returned to HQMC as Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies, and Operations.
Lieutenant General Dunford took command of I Marine Expeditionary Force and US Marine Corps Forces Central Command in 2009 and led those forces during the escalation of operations in Afghanistan.
In October 2010, General Dunford was promoted to general and became the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. In February 2013, General Dunford assumed concurrent command of US Forces Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force, led by the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).
Following that assignment, Dunford became the thirty-sixth Commandant of the Marine Corps on 17 October 2014. Not quite a year later, on 1 October 2015, General Dunford became the nineteenth chairman of the JCS.
In that position, Dunford guided efforts to revitalize joint military strategy and structure to confront a suite of strategic challenges around the globe. The “4+1” problem set included Russian and Chinese adventurism, nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, and violent extremism in places like Afghanistan and Syria. To contain Russian aggression, General Dunford supported the alliance’s 2016 decision to adopt an Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic states and Black Sea.
The ongoing buildup of China’s air and maritime capacity and militarization of the South China Sea similarly reflected that nation’s desire to control the Indo-Pacific region and achieve global preeminence. This burgeoning threat led America to itself abandon the 1987 INF accord with Russia because it precluded the development of a new class of conventional nuclear weapons to counter China’s aggression.
North Korea continued to jeopardize stability by conducting two nuclear and a variety of other missile tests in 2016 and 2017, one of which entailed its first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental United States. Tensions eased in the wake of President Donald J. Trump’s June 2018 Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
In the Middle East, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, sponsorship of terrorism, and quest for regional hegemony similarly undermined stability. General Dunford agreed with Trump administration officials that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did little to curtail the regime’s malign activities. As a consequence, President Trump chose to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
The continuing fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also preoccupied the chairman. His first overseas visit was to the American-led coalition then engaged in Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, the campaign to drive the Islamic State (ISIL) from Iraq, Syria, and later Libya. He concurred with the use of aerial interdiction to dismantle the enemy’s infrastructure and warfighting capability, and to advise, equip, and train regional partners to liberate the occupied territories.
Russia further complicated matters throughout the area by supporting the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. General Dunford met with his Russian military counterpart to deconflict combat operations, yet tensions mounted after Syrian government forces launched chemical attacks against civilians in 2017 and 2018.
In Afghanistan, the United States continued to lead NATO’s RESOLUTE SUPPORT mission to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorist operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. After the 2016 US presidential election, a new conditions-based approach to enabling the Afghans to take the fight to the enemy involved enhancing command authorities, expanding advisory efforts at the tactical level, and increasing the amount of combat support provided to the Afghan forces.
General Dunford recognized that to keep pace with the character of war in the twenty-first century, the joint force must be able to coordinate military capabilities in a transregional, multidomain, and multifunctional fight. To achieve that end, the chairman introduced Global Integration, a broad initiative to implement mission command at the strategic level, with the Joint Staff taking the lead role in synchronizing joint operations worldwide. Congress subsequently wrote Global Integration into the chairman’s functions enumerated in law.
General Dunford also supported President Trump’s initiative to reestablish US Space Command, with its own Space Force as a sixth branch of the military. These, he said, “will allow us to develop and maintain a singular focus on developing the people, capabilities, and doctrine and the culture we’ll need to maintain our competitive advantage in space.”
General Dunford departed as chairman on 30 September 2019. A month later, after more than forty-two years of commissioned service, he retired during a ceremony on board the historic USS Constitution, moored in Boston Harbor.