The speculation about
why Chuck Hagel is out as secretary
of defense has been ably documented in all
the usual places. (He
will remain in his post until there’s a new SECDEF.)
The NYT story – as
usual, faithfully relaying Obama administration themes –
says unexpansively that “the threat from the militant
group Islamic State will require different skills from
those that Mr. Hagel…was brought in to employ.” The implication is
that Hagel is not an active and articulate enough
secretary for this multifaceted military problem.
This rings false to
me, however, because it is abundantly clear that the Obama
White House itself has no intention of being active and
articulate about the ISIS threat.
I just heard Ed Henry,
Fox’s White House correspondent, reporting something
closer to my take, which is that Hagel has never been
included in Obama’s inner policy circle, and his own sense
of futility in the job was probably as much a factor as
dissatisfaction with him in the Oval Office. The Washington Post’s
David Ignatius reported nearly
three weeks ago that “administration officials” were
speculating on a near-term departure by Hagel. Statements
(including Obama’s) that Hagel and the White House were in
discussions over his resignation from early November
accord with that report.
Hagel’s frustrations
were expressed in an interview with Charlie Rose last
week, from which PJM’s Bryan Preston has reproduced this excerpt:
Rose
asked Hagel to elaborate on comments that he made in a
speech at the Reagan Library last weekend. In that speech,
Hagel said that America’s military capability, while still
the best in the world, is being threatened.
Hagel
re-iterated that to Rose, but also left viewers to wonder
about the direction that President Obama is taking the
military.
“I am
worried about it, I am concerned about it, Chairman
Dempsey is, the chiefs are, every leader of this
institution,” Hagel said, including Pentagon leadership
but leaving both President Obama and Vice President Joe
Biden’s names out of his list of officials who are worried
about the U.S. military’s declining capability. Hagel said
that the Congress and the American people need to know
what while the U.S. military remains the strongest, best
trained and most motivated in the world, its lead is being
threatened because of policies being implemented now.
Hagel
went on to note that a good leader prepares their
institution for future success, saying that “the main
responsibility of any leader is to prepare your
institution for the future. If you don’t do that, you’ve
failed. I don’t care how good you are, how smart you are,
any part of your job. If you don’t prepare your
institution, you’ve failed.”
These concerns from
Hagel cap a string of months in which he has publicly
disagreed with the White House on the kind of threat ISIS
poses, the proper scope of the interventions in Iraq and
Syria, and the impact of cuts to the defense budget, from
both routine budgeting and the sequestration process.
Factor in the very
real, and unusually vocal, backlash from the senior ranks
of the military against the White House’s
micromanagement of operations in Iraq and
Syria, and you have a good picture of what’s not working
for either Hagel or Obama.
I don’t think Hagel is
being scapegoated, nor do I think he’s being squeezed out
for incompetence. Competence
aside, I think he’s being squeezed out – with his tacit
acquiescence – because he’s been acting as an advocate for
the military point of view on military matters, rather
than keeping the Pentagon quiet while Obama handles
military activities the way his top advisors want to. The military is
objecting to bad management from the White House, if
quietly and obliquely, and Hagel isn’t keeping the brass
in order. Instead,
he’s taking up the military’s cause.
No high-profile
politician will want the SECDEF job at this point. Obama will
presumably tap a career defense bureaucrat (Michele
Flournoy’s name has come up repeatedly), someone with a
low professional profile and a good bureaucratic
reputation on Capitol Hill – but no constituency there.
I wouldn’t be that person for the world, because the
Obama inner circle’s approach to using the military isn’t
going to change. In getting rid of Hagel, Obama is
preparing for a final run of badly conceived
micromanagement. (In that light, Flournoy’s lack of
military expertise – documented by LU’s Michael Dorstewitz –
counts as a feature, not a bug.)
Obama’s advisors want to tell the joint chiefs and
commanders how their operations should be militarily defined
and scoped – and everything the Obama inner circle wants is
unrealistic. Hagel, whatever his other strengths and
weaknesses, is just a guy with the common sense to agree
with the generals and admirals on that. Now he’ll be no
more than a placeholder for a while, until Obama can appoint
another one.
J. E. Dyer is a retired US Naval
intelligence officer who served around the world, afloat and
ashore, from 1983 to 2004J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer
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