A Man to Match the Job

President Bush has chosen well in nominating a new man for a new mission as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From the day he takes office, keeping the country ready for a major superpower confrontation will be just one of Army Gen. Colin L. Powell’s many missions, perhaps not even the most important. Powell will of course have to keep a soldier’s eye on Moscow to make certain that it does not double back on efforts to erase the threat of major conflict between the superpowers. But he must also devote much of his energy to the awesome task of changing the mix of America’s defense forces, which now are focused almost entirely on an all-out superpower war, to cope with more imminent threats--acts of terrorism and wars the size of brush fires. He will have to accommodate to a reduced emphasis on military spending that will make it possible for the United States to invest in meeting economic threats that at least for the immediate future may be more real than military threats.

The retiring chairman, Adm. William J. Crowe, performed with splendid aplomb during four years of sudden change in which the United States and the Soviet Union began trying to stop the Cold War. The admiral made history by hosting his Soviet counterpart, Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, in a 1987 meeting at the Pentagon and later taking him on a tour of American bases. It was a mark of his intellectual scope that he was as comfortable with his friendship with Akhromeyev as with his mission, that of keeping his forces ready to whip the marshal’s forces. As a result, Crowe will leave a detailed map of both shoals and deep water on which Powell sets sail.

Powell seems admirably suited to the new mission. Born in 1937 of immigrant parents from Jamaica, he will be both the first black to serve as chairman and the first officer to fill the nation’s top military job who was not in uniform during World War II. He is a veteran of two tours in Vietnam, where he was wounded in action, and of several years of duty in Washington’s paper wars. But the aspects of the 52-year-old four-star general’s career with real bearing on the job ahead started in 1972 with a year as a White House Fellow and ended last year with a tour as the White House National Security adviser. During his Washington career, he has built a reputation for making steady advances through the thickets of bureaucracy toward whatever his target without taking or making enemies. Powell’s record, along with his habit of command, give a comforting ring to his brief remarks on Thursday: “Mr. President, I am ready to go to it and I look forward to the challenges ahead.”