Martin Edward Dempsey
Chairman from Oct. 1, 2011 - Sept. 30, 2015
Martin E. Dempsey was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1952. Following graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1974, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. As a company grade officer, General Dempsey served with the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment in Europe and the 10th Cavalry at Fort Carson, Colorado. Following troop command, he earned a masters degree in English from Duke University and then served as an assistant professor at West Point.
As a field grade officer, General Dempsey deployed to Saudi Arabia with the 3d Armored Division in 1991 to support Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. He later commanded 4th Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment in Germany for two years and then served as Armor Branch Chief at US Army Personnel Command. In 1996 he took command of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment. Following that assignment as the Army’s “senior scout,” he served as an Assistant Deputy Director for Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5) on the Joint Staff, and as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry H. Shelton, USA. During this period of his career, he attended both the Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College, earning master’s degrees in military art and national strategic studies.
Promoted to brigadier general in August 2001, Dempsey first served in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia training and advising the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Then, in June 2003 he took command of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad and participated actively in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM for fourteen months. After completing his command tour, he returned to Iraq in August 2005, this time leading the Multi-National Security Transition Command and NATO Training Mission. Following that assignment, in August 2007 General Dempsey became the deputy and later acting commander of US Central Command, Tampa, Florida. He next took charge of US Army Training and Doctrine Command in December 2008, and then, on 11 April 2011, became the 37th chief of staff of the US Army. Five months later, on 1 October 2011, he took office as the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
America had by that time begun to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan and was only months away from ending its involvement in Iraq to focus more prominently upon growing concerns in the Asia-Pacific region. Congress had just enacted the Budget Control Act of 2011, which mandated dramatic reductions in government spending over the next decade. Amidst those and other changes occurring world-wide (climate change, demographic shifts, rapid technological change, and major shifts in the global economy), the new chairman sensed the approach of a “strategic inflection point,” whereby shifting circumstances would fundamentally alter the nature of America’s presence on the global stage. In response, Dempsey envisioned “globally postured forces” that could transcend “domains, echelons, geographic boundaries, and organizational affiliations” to rapidly and seamlessly “form, evolve, dissolve, and reform in different arrangements in time and space.”
Facing hundreds of billions of dollars in budget reductions due to sequestration, General Dempsey sought a strategic balance between capability and capacity. He solicited congressional support for reducing infrastructure, retiring weapons systems, and slowing the growth of compensation packages in an effort to recapture funds necessary for readiness and modernization. However, only 40 percent of the recommendations were accepted, and readiness suffered.
Popular uprisings in Syria during March 2011— part of the wider Arab Spring movement—had escalated into armed rebellion against the totalitarian regime of President Basher al-Assad by the time General Dempsey took office. Drawing from his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the chairman warned that American intervention could accelerate the conflict and possibly lead to an unstable state. President Barack H. Obama ultimately chose to pursue a political solution via diplomatic and economic means, but cautioned the Syrian government against employing weapons of mass destruction. In August 2013, the world learned of deadly chemical attacks near Damascus. While Secretary of State John F. Kerry appealed for military strikes to degrade Assad’s chemical capability, General Dempsey noted that military action should be considered as part of a broader coalition and whole-of-government campaign or it “could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.” Syria averted reprisal by agreeing to relinquish its chemical arsenal a month later, in an arrangement brokered though Russia and sanctioned by the UN.
Emergent crises during 2014 increased the uncertainty of global security. In late February, Russia surreptitiously mobilized its military to support separatist movements in southeastern Ukraine, and annexed Crimea following a dubious referendum to secede. In reaction, the United States demonstrated its continued commitment to collective European security through Operation ATLANTIC RESOLVE, and supported NATO’s “continuous air, land, and maritime presence and military activity in the eastern part of the alliance,” and enhancement of the organization’s Response Force.
When the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized vast territories in northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq that summer, General Dempsey supported a strategy to initially contain, then degrade, and ultimately defeat the former al-Qaeda affiliate. While stressing the need for a whole-of-government approach to get at the underlying issues that had created ISIL, he provided the administration with military options to place pressure on the growing and transregional threat. Further he advised that if US ground force were to be employed in a direct combat role it should be in support of state and substate regional partners, for discrete periods of time, and in offensive operations to achieve strategic effect.” During the first year of the subsequent Operation INHERENT RESOLVE, the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL halted the enemy’s advance and began to liberate population centers along the periphery of the contested areas.
At the same time, an Ebola outbreak in West Africa quickly reached epidemic proportions that threatened world health. General Dempsey anticipated the formation of an international medical relief effort and initiated planning to identify possible courses of action, which facilitated the launch of Operation UNITED ASSISTANCE in September. By adding speed and scale to the civilian-led intervention, the military expedited the buildup of medical capacity and capability in the troubled region. The military also constructed treatment centers, provided mobile laboratories, and trained hundreds of healthcare workers.
Other issues faced by the chairman on a continuing basis included cybersecurity, Chinese militarization and territorial expansion, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technologies in North Korea and Iran. In a realm where cyberattacks had become the norm and America now faced peer-competitors, he championed the buildup of military cyber capability and warned of weaknesses within the civilian infrastructure. With Congress he encouraged greater integration of national efforts and legislation to encourage sharing of information between the public and private sectors. General Dempsey also worked to strengthen military ties with China, but remained firm that the United States would honor its alliances and respond to threats in the Pacific. He likewise acknowledged that although a negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran was preferable to military strikes, he was cognizant of Iran’s other malign activities and would sustain military options in case they became necessary.
General Dempsey retired on 1 October 2015, after forty-one years in uniform.