This general is about to take on the military's worst 4-star assignment

It's no job for the fainthearted. As the next head of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, whom the Senate confirmed late Thursday, will assume oversight of the most vexing military problems in the world today.

The list of crises that will consume Votel's attention is long and laden with seemingly insurmountable challenges. He’ll oversee the multifaceted war against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. He’ll supervise the seemingly endless U.S. mission in Afghanistan. He'll also take over the rarely discussed operations backing Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen's civil war.

Votel will have to deal with Iran, which he has described as maybe the greatest "long-term threat” facing the United States. Many experts believe that Iran could develop an operational nuclear weapon within a few months if last year’s controversial nuclear deal falls apart.

And yet the biggest challenge facing the general may be Russia and the new threat it poses to the United States' historic dominance in the region.

“The first thing Votel has to figure out is whether he is facing an emerging Iran-Russian alliance whose goal is to push the U.S. out of the Middle East,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former ambassador to Iraq. "That is a dramatic change of an almost epochal scale."
Votel, who most recently served as the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, will direct operations across a region that includes more than 80,000 U.S. troops on the land and sea. CENTCOM's area of responsibility stretches from the eastern Mediterranean Sea all the way to Pakistan.

Slated for a three-year tour, Votel arrives as the region is embroiled in historic turmoil, perhaps more than any other time since the combatant command's inception in 1983. The United States' longstanding role in the region is uncertain. And many experts believe the Middle East's borders may be redrawn on Votel's watch. Indeed, Jeffrey said, he'll have to "get a grasp of the continuing disintegration of the state system in the region."

To make matters more complicated, Votel doesn't know who his commander in chief will be come January and how that individual will look to confront the various crises facing the U.S. Republican presidential candidates, citing conventional military threats posed by Russia and China, have vowed to regrow the military after years of rollbacks under President Obama. There's been little discussion of Afghanistan, however, and only mixed messages on how best to deal with the Islamic State. Some favor sending more American ground troops into Iraq and Syria, a move Obama has resisted, while one candidate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, made the unpopular suggestion that U.S. warplanes should begin carpet bombing ISIS.

The Democratic candidates have been less direct in how they view the military's role in addressing these issues.
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