Chuck Hagel did not make the strongest case for himself at his January 2013 confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense. The former Nebraska Republican senator seemed at a loss to answer the easiest, most obvious questions he had to know would be thrown at him.
A well-prepared, knowledgeable nominee typically has an answer ready for his own previous controversial statements. Hagel did not. A well-prepared nominee for Secretary of Defense knows better than to discuss the policy of containment against a nuclear Iran, because in fact the policy, now as before, is to prevent that contingency, not to contain it. In Hagel’s case, someone actually had to pass him a note telling him that he’d gotten the policy wrong. He proceeded to botch it again when trying to correct himself.
Hagel, who as of a few weeks ago expected to serve out a full four-year term, has been forced out by President Obama, who announced his resignation Monday. He was brought in to oversee America’s drawdown of global involvement in the post-Iraq War era — the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the cutting of the defense budget. Although he had been a Republican as a politician, he shared many of Obama’s views about U.S. involvement in the world. He thus seemed the perfect instrument for diminishing and reshaping the nation’s war machine into something that better fit Obama’s vision. He was not the sort of “team of rivals” adviser from whom one might expect constructive pushback.
But events have rapidly made Obama’s plan as obsolete as a Cold War-era Pentagon super-weapon. Even so, this is not Hagel’s fault. Obama cannot justly blame Hagel for doing exactly what he wanted. Hagel was not the architect of the “unbelievably small” era of the American military, but its handmaiden.
Hagel cannot be blamed for the lack of diligence Obama showed when withdrawing from Iraq, which created the current Islamic State problem. Hagel’s predecessor, Leon Panetta, has credibly blamed Obama himself for that. Hagel did not squander the costly gains made by a decade of U.S. military involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Hagel did not get to make the final call on releasing Guantanamo detainees, including two United Nations war crime suspects, without following the law and giving Congress advance notice. Hagel did not draw a red line in the Syrian sand that he had no intention of enforcing.
Nor can Hagel be blamed for other foreign policy problems that Obama has created for himself, including the evident loss of respect for America by both enemies such as Russia and erstwhile allies such as Egypt, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Poland.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who had lustily criticized Hagel and grilled him at his confirmation, nonetheless pointed out in a radio interview Monday that his former Senate colleague had expressed deep frustrations with his job because currently there is “no strategy.”
The lack of direction comes from the top. No matter who replaces Hagel, as long as Obama is in office, Americans can expect a rudderless foreign policy that will lead to cascading national security failures.
