Nominee Praised as Firm, Compassionate : Joint Chiefs: A refugee who worked his way up the ranks of the U.S. military, Shalikashvili is said to have a ‘sense of the larger world.’

Gen. John M. Shalikashvili has been a veteran of war since he was 8 years old.

A refugee from Poland who came to the United States at the age of 16, the man known affectionately to his troops as “Gen. Shali” is no stranger either to the human dimensions or the high-stakes politics of combat.

The 57-year-old Army general is the son of a Georgian military officer who fled Poland at the start of World War II. He has commanded combat divisions and led humanitarian missions, including the one that protected Iraq’s Kurds from the vengeful wrath of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 1991. He has coaxed former Soviet generals to bow to new civilian masters and he has fought pitched budget battles during three tours at the Pentagon.

But Shalikashvili (pronounced Shah-lee-kash-VEE-lee) has also seen the U.S. military from the bottom, as a confused and foot-weary buck private in the U.S. Army who was drafted in 1958. And he has seen his profession through the eyes of a refugee from war--one who fled with his family in a boxcar when he was 8 years old.

“He has a sense of the larger world that’s in a way a product of his refugee experience as a boy,” said Paul Wolfowitz, a senior Pentagon official in the George Bush Administration who worked closely with Shalikashvili. “He has a quality of judgment that’s really kind of special and a real feeling of service to his country, since it’s his country by choice.”

Shalikashvili’s English--one of several languages that he speaks fluently--retains the slight accent of an immigrant. His voice, seldom raised but always heard by subordinates, betrays what one officer called “his basic humility and humanity.”

But do not mistake Shalikashvili’s apparent diffidence for irresolution, say those who have worked with him.

“He was always polite, considerate and concerned about my position and my concerns,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, who was the Pentagon’s senior operations officer during Shalikashvili ‘ s last stint there. “But you could feel a bit of steel beneath the surface. If he had to be firm to get things done, he was quite capable of doing it.”

Shalikashvili’s firmness and much-praised compassion will be tested as he takes hold of a military struggling to shrink its ranks and shift its vision to a world in which the distinctions between friends and adversaries--and war and peace--are not so clear as during 45 years of the Cold War.

In nominating Shalikashvili, President Clinton described him as “the heir of a family caught in a cross-fire of the kinds of ethnic and national rivalries that now trouble so much of our world.”

As a 16-year-old refugee settled in Peoria, Ill., Shalikashvili learned his English by watching John Wayne movies. But while he may have learned his steady stare and his lingual parsimony from the movie star, Shalikashvili clearly did not adopt Wayne’s swagger, colleagues say.

Shalikashvili’s rise through the military’s ranks may indeed be, as Clinton declared it, “a great American story.” But it is a story that many officers who have watched his career believed would end somewhat short of the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs.

Trained as an artillery officer and decorated during a stint as a military adviser in Vietnam, Shalikashvili’s thorough staff work and cool demeanor quickly marked him for the Army’s senior ranks. But a persistent habit of giving subordinates credit and shunning the attentions of higher-ups appeared certain to clip his trajectory somewhere short of a general’s stars, several Army colleagues said.

When Shalikashvili left the Pentagon in 1987 to take command of the 9th Infantry Division in Ft. Lewis, Wash., the promotion was widely considered a “terminal assignment.” Shalikashvili, admitting to colleagues that this would probably be the terminus of his career, happily sold his house outside Washington and returned to a world of soldiering. According to several officers interviewed, that was always his first love.

But Shalikashvili then got tapped for another job seen as the graceful end of a general’s career. As deputy commander in chief of U.S. Army forces in Europe, Shalikashvili played a supporting role to the more flamboyant commanders of the Persian Gulf War.

When the war ended, the world’s eyes turned to the plight of Iraq’s Kurds, desperately seeking protection from Hussein’s angry military machine. Shalikashvili was put in charge, and his easy manner with allies and evident compassion for refugees won admiration throughout the military’s ranks.

Since becoming supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and the leader of all U.S. forces in Europe in June, 1992, Shalikashvili has continued to oversee missions that are difficult and unpopular with the U.S. military. He has presided over an unprecedented drawdown of U.S. troops from Europe and tried to coordinate a military response for Washington and its allies to the mounting bloodshed in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“He hasn’t nailed any coonskins on the wall in that job,” said one Army officer. “And it’s been one bucket of worms after another.”

Indeed, in a contest for the chairmanship that frequently broke into public view, Shalikashvili’s carefully nurtured low profile may have been an asset. While several other candidates jockeyed for the military’s top spot, Shalikashvili has quietly gone about the work of reshaping the military and its mission.

He also has recognized the limits of his own power to persuade and cajole his political masters, a quality that Clinton may welcome after the tenure of the powerful and prestigious Gen. Colin L. Powell. Standing in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, Shalikashvili displayed the humility for which he is admired.

Asked whether he would seek to bring former Soviet republics into the NATO alliance, Shalikashvili looked nonplussed for a moment. “I have just been nominated for the position of chairman, not President of the United States,” he said to laughter and applause, and the evident delight of Clinton and Powell.