After Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his resignation in a White House ceremony Monday morning, many defense insiders said he was given little space to implement policy and his replacement will be in an equally impossible situation as part of the Obama administration.
During the ceremony, President Barack Obama praised Hagel for being a great supporter of the troops, noting Hagel is the first enlisted combat soldier to rise to the rank of defense secretary. The president’s speech portrayed a mutual decision for Hagel to step aside and a good bipartisan relationship between the two men, who sat across the aisle from each other in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee during Obama’s one term in the Senate. Obama said Hagel even accompanied him on a trip to Afghanistan when he was running for president, a show of bipartisanship that surprised and impressed him.
However, those who have been following the Pentagon describe a much different work environment.
“There have been enough books written by Hagel’s predecessors that we all know that this is a micromanaging White House and National Security Council, and Sec. Hagel did not succeed behind the scenes,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The timing of the job relative to the defense drawdown, paired with rising numbers of threats and politicians who cannot offer the [defense] department any long-term budget guidance means that anyone who had the job probably would have failed at this point in the president’s eyes.”
With officials being tightlipped about the reason for Hagel’s departure, other than Obama saying talks about the resignation began last month, the impact of Hagel leaving the Pentagon is unclear, said Eric Edelman, a former under secretary of defense for policy and a current distinguished fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“I have no idea what led up to this, but I must say I’m a little mystified,” he said. “He seems to have gotten crosswired with the White House staff somehow, but I’m not quite sure how and why. And I’m not quite sure what the offense was that either led them to say ‘he needs to go’ or led him to say ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ So I think we’ll have to see who the successor is. It surprises me a little that this was done without having a successor teed up as his replacement, so this has the earmarks of something done fairly hastily, so I think we just don’t know enough at this point to really speculate.”
As to whether industry should be optimistic or pessimistic about what’s ahead, Edelman said it depends who the successor is. If Obama nominates someone who wholeheartedly supports repealing sequestration and will work hard–even without administration support–to ensure higher toplines for the Defense Department, “there might be some champagne corks popping in industry. But if you get a SecDef who is going to be just a tool of the White House staff because even Chuck Hagel was too independent for them, I think you’re going to get a slightly more pessimistic view from industry.”
Edelman declined to discuss any potential nominees, but Washington was abuzz with possibilities – from former under secretary of defense for policy and current chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security Michele Flournoy, to former deputy defense secretary Ash Carter, to even Senate Armed Services Committee member Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
“We really need someone who can bridge the industry to government gap,” National Defense Industrial Association director of legislative policy Jimmy Thomas said. “From industry’s perspective, I don’t think [Hagel’s resignation] is a loss or a win…It’s tough to be a secretary of defense for a very non-defense-supportive administration.”
Given that the new secretary will inherit the problems of sequestration, a smaller and less ready military, a White House that fundamentally disagrees with Congress on military policy, as well as a Senate that recently shifted to Republican control–and less than two years before a new president is elected–Thomas said he wasn’t optimistic the next secretary would be able to leave much of a footprint either.
“it’s going to be very difficult to get anybody in there who can bridge the gap between House and Senate Republicans and what this administration wants,” he said. “Again, you’re talking about major international issues throughout the Pacific, China, you’re got Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Northern Africa, you name it. There’s not a place on this globe that’s not a hotbed for something. And [the Obama administration is] not as engaged as they should be: you’ve got a military that’s on the brink of being a truly hollowed out force, you have the smallest personnel at highest cost, the [operations and maintenance] accounts are going away, sequestration is just bad. And to fix it, it’s going to take a lot to do that. Right now, I just don’t think the politics are there.”
Thomas and Edelman both cited other senior Pentagon officials that would see the department through the transition: deputy secretary Bob Work and acquisition chief Frank Kendall.
“Frank Kendall is really the driving force from the Pentagon for these reforms,” including the acquisition reform effort in tandem with Congress and the Better Buying Power initiative. “As long as he’s there, you’re going to see action within the Pentagon. And I think too from Congress, [House Armed Services Committee incoming chairman Mac] Thornberry is dead set on taking action over his tenure as chairman, so as far as NDIA goes, this won’t change anything that we’ve been working on. We’re going to continue on this track. There might be an opportunity to maybe get some more of this through, especially if [Hagel’s replacement is] someone like Ash Carter, who had Kendall’s job before and is a really smart guy, or Michele Flournoy, she … has been out there talking about some of these issues. There actually might be an opportunity to move some of this forward more so than if Hagel’s there. But at the end of the day, the driving force is Kendall.”
For Edelman, seeing that Work was put in charge of the new offset strategy, a recently announced effort to improve the nuclear force, and several other major initiatives, “I don’t see any big disruptions” unless the incoming secretary brings a radically new agenda. “Bob Work is an incredibly capable guy and I think it’s very good for the nation that we have him there now.”
Obama noted in his speech that he asked Hagel to take over the Pentagon in a “significant period of transition.” At the time, defense budgets were coming down, troops were coming out of the Middle East, the Pentagon was looking to develop a new strategy that did not involve the big footprint of major ground operations, and the pivot to the Asia-Pacific was beginning. Now, troops are trickling back in the Middle East, China is provoking its neighbors, Russia annexed Ukrainian territory and continues to threaten its neighbors, tensions in Israel have been high since this summer’s war with Gaza, unrest in Northern Africa continues and the military is attempting to help the fight against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa–among other things.
Despite the unexpected circumstances Hagel has found himself in, Eaglen said “conservatives were pleasantly surprised with his performance.”
Messages of thanks and support poured out of Capitol Hill on Monday, with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top SASC Republican, saying “Over the last two years, Secretary Hagel did everything the President asked of him and now is being made a scapegoat for the Administration’s failed policies and relentless pursuit to disarm America…The dangerously insular West Wing pushes out those who question their disastrous policies, as Secretary Hagel had begun to do in recent months on sequestration and in a scathing memo to Susan Rice on the White House’s failing strategy in Syria and Iraq. Not surprisingly, the President seems determined to double down on his misguided policies for his last two years in office instead of changing course to deal with the growing security challenges that have festered on his watch.”
House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) similarly said, “Chuck Hagel was an excellent Defense Secretary, and a friend. He was given a thankless task of an underfunded Defense Department, growing threats, and intrusive White House micromanagement. Even with the cards stacked against him, he led the Department with efficiency and aplomb. I’m especially grateful for his close coordination with Congress, and his insistence on putting the troops first. The Obama administration is now in the market for their 4th Secretary of Defense. When the President goes through three Secretaries, he should ask ‘is it them, or is it me?'”