Day One: Next Prez Must Be Ready For Crisis

WASHINGTON: Whoever is elected the next president of the United States must stand ready for crisis to strike “at 12:01 on January 20th,” the Secretary of the Navy warned today, lest America’s adversaries see a window of opportunity. What Ray Mabus and his fellow service secretaries didn’t say, at least out loud, speaks volumes. With Russia meddling in what’s already the most contentious presidential election since the “hanging chad” fiasco of fall 2000, a smooth transition may be harder than ever.

Mabus, the senior service secretary with an unprecedented eight years in office, spoke this morning at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel alongside Air Force SecretaryDeborah Lee James (three years) and Army Secretary Eric Fanning (six months with the Army but other senior service since 2009) — an extraordinary trifecta of luminaries. Hosting them was Center for a New American Security co-founder Michèle Flournoy, whose name remains the most bruited-about for Hilary Clinton’s Defense Secretary.

Read the full article at Breaking Defense.