Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
I think that you missed the point.
CJCS is going to offer a hawkish solution for the reasons you state, and institutionally that's because he comes from a military background and we can see in this thread that people in our profession lead to the "fuck Russia at every opportunity to keep the enemy down" stance. SECSTATE is going to be singing a different tune (he wants to improve diplomatic relations with Russia), and POTUS is concerned about spending undue political capital in Congress and among the public for an issue that, realistically, is not very important to U.S. national interests. And to the extent it is important, is it worth poking the Russian Bear to shoot his load in our general direction?
Remember Obama's quip to Romney that won him a debate - "the Cold War called and wants its foreign policy back."
And because we (meaning, the military as an instution) often fail to take into account other competing factors when crafting our advice, we get ignored. A trend that has existed since the Korean War.
It will take another decade to find out, but I do wonder if firing CJCS and CNO was more about their hawkish neo-con international relations views that aligned closely with President Biden rather than their race and gender.
Trump has also been very silent on relations with China. He may change our policy in a significant way.
Personally, I view Russia as a significantly larger threat to U.S. national security than China. I'm also tainted by military groupthink and my career experiences, and it wasn't the point of my comment. The point of my comment is the failure of our senior leadership to appropriately weigh all the concerns of our political leadership.
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