The change, ordered by Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll last month, was effective immediately. It’s the second time in a year that III Armored Corps has been moved to a different command. Late last year, the corps was reassigned to Army Europe and Africa after Army Forces Command was shuttered. 

An Army official confirmed the shift to Task & Purpose last week. The move is more administrative than anything else, and does not involve any Permanent Change of Station moves, the official said. The shift of commands does not impact III Armored Corps’ force posture.

Among other units, the Fort Hood-based III Armored Corps includes the 1st Armored Division, 1st Cavalry Division and 1st Infantry Division. 

III Corps was moved to Army Europe and Africa late last year, as the Army began restructuring how it divides its attention around the world. The Army shut down Forces Command in December, putting combat units under regional Army commands. Other similar changes included moving I Corps to Army Pacific. 

In FORSCOM’s place, the Army set up Western Hemisphere Command, a four-star level command. Last year, a spokesperson for the new command described the change as a move that would reduce overhead and modernize the Army’s structure. In recent months, the Army also shuttered Army North and Army South, folding them into Western Hemisphere Command.

The shift of III Armored Corps to Western Hemisphere Command is the latest shake-up to the corps and Army Europe and Africa. In late July, the Pentagon nominated III Armored Corps commander Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral to lead Army Europe and Africa. Lt. Gen. Admiral will replace Gen. Chris Donahue, who left the post in June. Meanwhile, multiple large and planned deployments of soldiers to Europe were canceled in May. The Pentagon meanwhile launched a new review of its force posture in Europe, which when complete could lead to changes in the U.S. military presence on the continent.

The post III Armored Corps moves to Western Hemisphere Command appeared first on Task & Purpose.

The pattern is by now all too familiar: with every power grab Trump tries – from a fraudulent speech about voter fraud to appeals to his supreme court to let him rig the midterms – a debate kicks off about whether these moves are signs of strength or of desperation. Maybe we keep getting caught in this debate because the question is badly posed. So much of what is distinctive about Trump’s governance during his second term can serve the consolidation of an autocratic regime and at the same time create particular vulnerabilities for the regime. We have to become better at identifying these weaknesses, as opposed to being shellshocked by Trump’s brazenness every single time.

Aspiring autocrats operate differently in the 21st century; in previous eras, they had little hesitation about unleashing violence and committing massive human rights violations. Today, they try to fool both domestic and international audiences into thinking that democracy and the rule of law still exist. The recently deposed Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was a master of this technique; he spent many years performing what he called “the peacock dance” to convince the European Commission (and Chancellor Angela Merkel) that he wasn’t creating a kleptocratic autocracy.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

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