8 April 2025
US Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO's military committee, was fired over the weekend by the Trump administration, it was reported today. The removal of such a prominent US officer at NATO adds more tension to Washington’s increasingly shaky relationship with the alliance.
Although no reason was given, officials said it was apparently tied to comments she has made that supported diversity in the force. According to reports, Chatfield got a call from Adm. Christopher Grady, the acting chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was told the administration wanted to go in a different direction with the job.
The decision was reportedly made last week by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Chatfield is the third senior female officer to be fired since Trump took office. Hegseth announced in February that he was firing the chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti. And Trump fired Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan just a day after he was sworn in.
There has been a vigorous campaign to remove leaders who promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and to erase any DEI programmes and online content. Within the US military this has included the removal of war heroes and historic references from US Defense Department websites and social media pages.
Chatfield was on a list of senior military officers targeted as “woke” by the conservative American Accountability Foundation, which sent a letter to Hegseth saying that “purging the woke from the military is imperative”. The letter said Chatfield posted supportive comments on LinkedIn about a diversity summit and gave a speech in 2015 at Women's Equality Day. The group quoted her as saying that investing in empowering women can unlock human potential.
Chatfield, a navy helicopter pilot who deployed to the Pacific and the Persian Gulf, also commanded a joint reconstruction team in Afghanistan and was awarded a Bronze Star. She had been serving as one of the 32 representatives on NATO's military committee, which is the primary source of military advice to the North Atlantic Council and NATO's Nuclear Planning Group. It serves as the link between the political decision-makers and NATO's military structure. Chatfield had extensive NATO experience prior to her latest role. She held the deputy military representative job in Brussels (2015-17) and prior to that, she was a senior military aide at NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. She later served as the senior military assistant to the supreme allied commander Europe.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the firing. “Trump’s relentless attacks on our alliances and his careless dismissal of decorated military officials make us less safe and weaken our position across the world," Warner said in a post on X.