In his final weeks as president, Mr. Trump faces a series of decisions that could shape his legacy in national security. He must decide whether to leave Iran with far more nuclear material than it possessed when he entered office, a direct result of his decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal that Mr. Biden has said he would seek to rejoin. Similarly, Mr. Trump confronts the likelihood that he will leave his successor with a North Korea armed with more nuclear weapons than it had before multiple summit meetings with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and a China that is more expansionist, and more dismissive of legal constraints, than ever before.

Iran could also test the departing president. But if there are provocations, Mr. Miller, the new acting defense secretary, best knows one response: counterterrorism strikes. Mr. Miller, a career Army Special Forces officer who held counterterrorism staff jobs on the National Security Council and at the Pentagon this year before Mr. Trump tapped him to lead the National Counterterrorism Center in August, is facing a daunting challenge in assuming the helm of the Pentagon for which he has little training or experience at such a tumultuous moment.
ImageChristopher C. Miller, the new acting defense secretary, is facing a daunting challenge in assuming the helm of the Pentagon for which he has little training or experience at such a tumultuous moment.
Christopher C. Miller, the new acting defense secretary, is facing a daunting challenge in assuming the helm of the Pentagon for which he has little training or experience at such a tumultuous moment.Credit…Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Friends and colleagues say Mr. Miller is not an ideologue, but rather a career soldier and creative, unconventional thinker who impressed Mr. Trump and top White House officials with his deft handling of a portfolio at the National Security Council that centered on counterterrorism and hostage issues. On Mr. Miller’s watch at the council, a U.S. commando raid in October 2019 in northwestern Syria killed the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After a brief afternoon at the Pentagon following his appointment on Monday, Mr. Miller spent Tuesday in meetings, including a weekly coronavirus update teleconference with the military’s combatant commanders around the globe. He also met with service secretaries and received several briefings. On Wednesday, Veterans Day, Mr. Miller gave his first speech as acting secretary at the opening of a new Army museum.

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Pentagon officials point to one source of continuity, saying that, for now, General Milley’s job as chairman seems secure, despite his public apology after joining Mr. Trump in walking across Lafayette Square in June during the protests in Washington.

Aides have told Mr. Trump that he would face stiff resistance from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to firing General Milley, who is in the middle of a four-year term as the military’s top officer. After the dismissal of Mark T. Esper as defense secretary on Monday, General Milley convened the Joint Chiefs and gave them a steady-as-she goes message. He did the same on a conference call later with the combatant commanders.

It is not impossible that the shake-up of Pentagon personnel could presage some volatile and dangerous period, to include even overt or covert operations against adversaries like Iran. But the push for any attack against Iran, for instance, would seem to need the heft of much more seasoned cabinet officers, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It is possible, however, that Israel could see the next 70 days as a window to conduct significant attacks to set back Iran’s nuclear program. It is widely believed to have been responsible for an explosion in July at an advanced centrifuge facility.

Any more significant strikes would presumably require a provocation, though the news that Iran now has enough material to produce about two weapons might be enough.

Rocket attacks by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq against bases where U.S. troops are situated have quieted in recent weeks, partly as Iraqi officials crack down in response to Mr. Pompeo’s threat to close the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and partly because some power brokers in Iran want to give negotiations with the new Biden administration a chance.

“I’d be astonished if the D.O.D. firings were laying the predicate for military action, because there just isn’t time remaining in his term to get U.S. personnel out of theater,” Ms. Schake said. “And there’s the formidable bulwark of the American military, which would have concerns and surely consult the other civilian control, the Congress.”

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John Gans, a former chief Pentagon speechwriter and author of “White House Warriors,” a history of the National Security Council, said Mr. Patel, Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis were all veterans of what he called the Trump’s administration’s “war on government.”

The Pentagon, more than other departments, has resisted Mr. Trump’s directives, slowing the withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, a breach that led to the resignation of Jim Mattis as defense secretary.

“The three men have risen, in good measure because they were successful at pushing back against the bureaucracy” Mr. Gans said. “These are the people who go in and do whatever they think is required to achieve his agenda,” he said. “They are true soldiers in the war on government, the war on what Trump calls the deep state.”
The New York Times