Ashton Carter, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, isn’t expected to have much trouble convincing members of the Senate Armed Services Committee to support him at his confirmation hearing Wednesday.
The president’s policies, not Carter, will be what’s on trial.
Republicans on the committee have been waiting for the opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the administration’s national security policies, particularly what they see as excessive White House micromanagement of the Pentagon. That perception has been reinforced by former defense secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta in their memoirs.
Micromanagement also reportedly was an issue in Obama’s break with outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who who was forced out in November after devastating Democratic losses in midterm elections in which the administration’s handling of national security was an issue.
In welcoming Carter’s nomination in December, the panel’s chairman, John McCain, R-Ariz., said the hearing would be “a valuable opportunity to fully ventilate all of [the] issues around this administration’s feckless foreign policy, and its grave consequences for the safety and security of our nation.”
Carter is no stranger to the Pentagon, having served as deputy secretary from October 2011 until December 2013 and as undersecretary for acquisitions, technology and logistics for two years before that. In those jobs, he developed a reputation for candor that didn’t always toe the line with administration policy.
But Carter also played a major role in developing many of the administration’s key policies, including its global military strategy, the blueprint for a shrinking defense budget and the revamped process by which the Pentagon buys weapons.
In 91 pages of responses to 328 written questions from the committee obtained by the Washington Examiner, Carter largely toed the administration line on controversial issues such as sequestration and the strategy to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, with a couple of notable exceptions.
When asked if he would consider revisiting the administration’s withdrawal plan for Afghanistan if conditions there deteriorate, he answered “yes.”
“I am mindful of the new and dynamic global threat environment, and you can be assured that if there are instructive lessons from Iraq or anywhere else that are relevant to Afghanistan, I will always take them into account in the advice I offer to the president,” he wrote.
He also suggested he would be more aggressive at pushing back against Iranian provocations than the administration has been in the past.
“Countering Iranian destabilizing activities must be an important priority. Regardless of the outcome of nuclear negotiations, I firmly believe that the United States must also counter these destabilizing regional activities, including Iran’s support to terrorists and militant groups,” Carter wrote.
“If confirmed, I would work to ensure the department is focused on these issues.”
On another controversial issue, the possibility that women might be included in a military draft, Carter said a review of the idea “would be prudent” given recent efforts to expand opportunities for women in the military, but added: “This is not solely a Defense issue, but rather part of a much broader national discussion.”
Carter also told the committee he “would direct my team to examine whether there is more DoD could do to support U.S. strategies to address the root causes of insecurity” in Latin America, a region that has largely been neglected by the administration as its attentions have been drawn elsewhere.
And he noted that he’s open to the idea of expanded defense relations with Cuba, as long as “any military-to-military engagement is nested within a larger, comprehensive U.S. government engagement strategy.”
