Promoted to brigadier general in 1980, he served first as the chief of staff, Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF), then headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, and later as the assistant division commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

In October 1988 he was named commanding general, XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg.

[1] Stiner co-authored the 2002 book Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces with Tom Clancy.

[7] An approximately 10-mile (16 km) stretch of State Highway 63 between LaFollette and Speedwell, Tennessee, is named in honor of General Stiner.

[8] On 7 September 2002, an oil portrait in the likeness of General Carl Wade Stiner, by California Artist Sylvia Rogers-Barnes, was unveiled to a company of interested citizens, friends and relatives of General Stiner, at the proposed location of a new Veterans' Memorial Museum in Jacksboro, Tennessee.

In February 2015, the radio program This American Life featured General Stiner prominently for his role in creating The Soldier Safety Show at Fort Bragg, a mixture of serious videos and upbeat show-tunes that helped reduce the number of soldiers' deaths from dangerous behaviors off-duty.