A look at Obama's new national security team

The main figures in President Barack Obama's national security shuffle:

LEON PANETTA, 72, has spent much of his life in public service at the state and federal level. Director of the CIA since February 2009, Panetta was a member of Congress, White House chief of staff and White House budget director after earlier years in the health and education department and federal civil rights office.

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, 58, was catapulted to fame as the most widely known general of his generation after President George W. Bush sent him to Baghdad four years ago to carry out a long-shot "surge" strategy that arguably rescued Iraq from collapse. He also served as head of U.S. Central Command before Obama sent him to head NATO forces in Afghanistan last year.

RYAN CROCKER, 61, is a retired career foreign service officer and five-time ambassador, including assignments in Iraq from 2007 to 2009 and Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. Crocker was one of the State Department's most experienced Arab specialists. He was sent to Kabul to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban.

MARINE CORPS LT. GEN. JOHN R. ALLEN, 57, has not served in Afghanistan. But he commanded troops in Iraq's Anbar Province, where Sunni tribes helped turn the tide of the conflict by rising up against the al-Qaida insurgency. He is a 1976 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has been deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command since July 2008.