OPINION — “Our [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] job is to present and my job with the Joint Chiefs and others is to present the range of [military] options that this President or any President should consider with all of the secondary and tertiary considerations that go into those options, so that a President can make whatever decision he wants to make — and then we deliver.”

That was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine early in a 30-minute “fireside chat” with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan before an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 6, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California.

I want to analyze Caine’s remarks, because they received almost no public coverage, and as Joint Chiefs Chairman, his stated views are worth recording – as were his predecessors’ during the first Trump administration.

Caine, who is extremely cautious in his public remarks, was originally asked by CNBC’s Brennan early in the chat, “How are you advising the President on Venezuela?” His first answer was, “Carefully,” which drew a laugh, but then he went on with the serious answer above.

I picked that opening quote because most senior military officers would have answered just that they gave options, but in my experience few would have added the part about “all of the secondary and tertiary considerations that go into those options.” In short, I believe what Caine said in giving military options to President Trump, was that he gave both the upsides and downsides of what could happen with each option.

In giving the above answer, Caine went on to say, “I wouldn’t want to share any particular advice or options that we’re giving, but we present a lot of them.”

Again I would point out that Caine carefully noted he would not spell out any “advice or option” he has given Trump, but the fact that so far the President has not yet followed through on his threat to attack ground targets in Venezuela may be because of the “secondary or tertiary considerations” Caine said would be the outcome associated with undertaking such overt actions.

The public reactions to the 25 narco-boat attacks with their 95 associated deaths has been bad enough. But they also raise questions about where Caine stood on that issue.

In fact, CNBC’s Brennan started the conversation with Caine asking his views about “these Caribbean strikes and the reporting around them.”

Caine diverted from the question saying he was struck by the “sort of loss of confidence in the American military by the American people and that’s deeply concerning to me.” He then said he wanted to add one detail to what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had earlier told the Reagan Forum about the boat strikes.

That detail, Caine said, was that it was his idea along with Adm. Frank (Mitch) Bradley, the operational commander who ordered the so-called second strike on September 2, “to go up and

share the information that we could share with the Congress.” The two gave classified briefings to leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, as well as military appropriators, on December 4, according to The New York Times.

Caine told the Reagan Forum they had done it “so that we could continue to sustain and scale that trust that we must earn every day from the American people through the Congress.”

Throughout the 30-minute conversation, Caine avoided talking about Trump administration policy, just two days after Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) had been released.

For example, when CNBC’s Brennan asked, “How do you see the alliance with Europe evolving?” – a controversial subject in the Trump NSS, Caine responded, “We don’t do policy in the Joint Force. We execute those policies.”

Caine did recognize the NSS’s new policy emphasis on the Western Hemisphere.

“Protecting the homeland is not just a term that we say anymore. It’s a real thing and homeland security is national security,” Caine said. “I won’t get into the operational matters, but there’s plenty of visible examples…on where we are going to protect our neighborhood and do that pursuant to the things that we’re able to do to make sure America is a safe and secure country.”

Caine then added, “We have not, if you look back over the arc of our deployment history over the last few years, we haven’t had a lot of American combat power in our own neighborhood. I suspect that’s probably going to change. We’ll see what we’re ordered to do and of course we follow that guidance.”

But Caine did focus on traditional threats saying, “From a military perspective, military alone, our relationships are good in Europe, and I’ll let my bosses talk about the policy there.”

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Caine was more open when it came to NATO. “Allies and partners are key and critical to us as we fight together,” Caine told the Reagan Forum. “NATO remains a key important ally for us. They are, I think, going to own European security both through NATO and bilaterally and individually. The military leaders that I talked to are encouraged by the defense spending that’s happening inside their countries. I would say, and have said to them, the same narrative around their defense and national industrial bases as we try to scale European defense so Europe can own Europe.”

Caine added, “The SACEUR [Supreme Allied Commander Europe] over there, [U.S.] General [Alexus G.] Grynkewich, is carrying the same message through his EUCOM [U.S. European Command] hat. But that said, allies and partners remain a key part as laid out in the national security strategy.”

When it came to the fighting in Europe, Caine told the Reagan Forum, “I want to be pretty cautious about commenting on Ukraine because of the ongoing negotiations. And I’m mindful that anything that I say could get spun one way or the other. I think, for me, I believe that we always want to be striving for peace and what’s happened in Europe there is a tragedy out on the Ukrainian front lines. So I’m going to be pretty cautious given the meetings that are going on.”

He did say, “What the Ukraine industrial base has done to create tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of drones is extraordinary. Those are the kinds of entrepreneurial lessons that we want to take from that fight.”

Caine also talked of a military lesson from Ukraine.

“It’s another case study in the importance of the ability to put air power over a battlefield,” he said. “And when you look at the fixed and frozen lines that we’ve seen out in Ukraine, it’s an opportunity for us to learn about the importance of protecting the force on the ground. And having been one of those guys on the ground earlier in my life, I value greatly the ability to have an air force or some kind of capability that can come in there and put an adversary in a particular place of pain. We haven’t seen that out there in Ukraine.”

Caine said, “One of the lessons out of Ukraine is going to be mass. And there’s a lot of exchanges going on. And when I think about war fighting in the future, I see a lot of exchanges, both in the kinetic and non-kinetic space, that is probably unprecedented. So we’re going to need a high-low mix that we’ve not seen before…but we are also going to need significantly more attritable [loseable] things that can create multiple simultaneous dilemmas for the commanders on another side of a fight than for us.”

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While the Trump NSS hardly mentioned China, Caine did.

“When we look at the rise of the Chinese military,” Caine said, “what our goal in the Joint Force is to create multiple simultaneous dilemmas for all of the adversaries around the world, so that they are very cautious and concerned about doing something that would bring any sense of threat to the American people.”

Caine went on, “I think China’s competing on the global scale. I know that from the U.S. perspective we’ve got an economic relationship now that is looking positive and trending fine. We see China still creating a lot of combat capability and capacity at scale, and as the National Security Strategy says, we owe it to the nation to deliver a free Indo-Pacific and a free and safe and prosperous Indo-Pacific. So when I think about actions in the Pacific, mindful of the President’s guidance, that’s how we think about it.”

As for the Middle East, Caine called it still “critical,” and said, “It’s still I think undecided. I carefully watch through the CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) commander what’s happening in Gaza. I remain as always concerned about what Iran’s intentions are down there. These are conflicts that have been going on for a long, long, time. I’m hopeful for peace but need to be prepared for any number of eventualities there.”

As for here at home, Caine told the Reagan Forum, “What the American system, as it’s been running for a long time now, is really good at is buying behind the technology development curve [emphasis added]. And what we need to do is get in front of the technology development curve. And that’s going to require the best of the military, the best of the Congress, the best of the private sector, and the best of not just the defense industrial base, but the national industrial base.

Caine explained, “Back in my life, I ran a small mom and pop machine shop in Denton, Texas, that made parts for America’s aerospace and defense industry. And I’ll tell you that everybody needs to up their game here.”

He went on, “We have to change the culture inside the [Defense] Department. We have to change the culture inside companies. And I’ve been in both. So I can see both of these things. We have to create and sustain and maintain competitive forces out there in the market where we are driving innovation in our corporate structures and systems that are going to give better combat capability to the Joint Force.”

In addition, Caine said, “The military and the government need to be better buyers and we have to write better contracts. I am still on step one of my 12-step recovery process from selling to the government when I was a part-timer in the military. I think we have to find a way to share risk between us and the private sector.”

Caine was an unusual choice by President Trump, who had first met Caine back in December 2018 in Iraq. The President claimed during a 2019 political speech he had met an Army officer, “Razin Caine,” who had worn a MAGA hat, said he’d “kill for Trump,” and claimed in Iraq he could defeat the ISIS terrorist group in Syria “in less than four weeks,” three Trump statements Caine later denied in interviews and during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing.

When I first wrote about Caine last March, I was drawn to the facts that beginning August 2005 he served a year as a White House Fellow at the Agriculture Department and later, from October 2006 to January 2008, was Policy Director for Counterterrorism and Strategy for President George W. Bush’s White House Homeland Security Council. Caine’s last military post before resigning from the Air Force in 2024 was three years as Associate Director for Military Affairs at the CIA.

However, at the Reagan Forum, Caine confessed, “I actually served at the Agency [CIA] twice. One is in my bio, one is not in my bio.” What’s that all about?

Caine clearly is a person the public needs to follow more closely.

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