“Who Will Succeed Robert Gates as Defense Secretary?” |
| Who Will Succeed Robert Gates as Defense Secretary? Posted: 05 Jan 2011 01:53 AM PST Like Paul Bunyan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is going to do a lot of chopping as early as Thursday, when he's expected to detail $100 billion in new cuts to future Pentagon budgets. But some time after that, he's going to lay down his ax, leave his Pentagon E-ring office for the last time, and head west to his Washington state home overlooking Big Lake, some 50 miles north of Seattle. So just who's going to inherit his task of selling all that timber -- not to mention two wars -- to the White House, Congress and the American public? Pentagon and political handicappers are hearing the following names, listed in no particular order:  Hamre  Clinton  Reed  Flournoy  Danzig
John Hamre, who was second-in-command in the Clinton Pentagon, is widely viewed as the safest choice. Now running the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he's kept his hand in official Pentagon business by serving as head of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel that helps defense secretaries deal with thorny national-security issues. Before serving as the Pentagon's chief financial officer from 1993 to 1997, he spent a decade on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Hillary Clinton has forged a solid working relationship with Gates in her role as secretary of state, and she could be tapped to become the Pentagon's first female chief. Skeptics of her military bonafides were impressed during her Senate tenure on the armed services committee, where she asked cogent and tough questions of those in uniform -- just what she's have to do if she leaves Foggy Bottom to cross the Potomac to run the Defense Department. Jack Reed is a short senator from the nation's smallest state, but he casts a big shadow on defense matters. The Rhode Island Democrat is a West Point grad and one-time Army Ranger who served during the Vietnam war, but never deployed there. He could suffer from the Les Aspin syndrome -- the late Wisconsin congressman stumbled as President Clinton's first defense secretary because he lacked the managerial tools needed for the post; Reed has never managed anything bigger than his Senate staff. It may be moot, anyway: he has said that he prefers to remain a senator. Michelle Flournoy is the Pentagon policy chief, which makes her the third-ranking person in the building (and the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the Pentagon hierarchy). She gets good marks in her Pentagon role, which involves frequent meetings at the White House with other second-tier officials, and overseeing the Pentagon's every-four-year review of what the national security of the country demands and the best way to get it. Richard Danzig, Navy secretary under Clinton, was the point man on defense matters during Obama's presidential run and was widely expected to get the job if Gates hadn't been tapped to stay on. He has kept a low profile ever since, now serving as chairman of the board of the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was where Flournoy thought big thoughts before landing her current Pentagon post. Timing is important here. Gates has made it clear he wants to leave this year, but the upcoming review of the Afghan war and the annual budget drills on Capitol Hill could slow his departure. Yet the longer he hangs around, the less time the new secretary will have before Obama's first term ends, and that could deter some candidates from signing up. Gates, who has won plaudits in his four years running the Pentagon for two presidents of different parties, leaves more than ax marks in his wake. His low-key demeanor and Kansas twang hid a crafty but rational marshaling of facts that carried great weight with presidents Bush and Obama. While his predecessor, Don Rumsfeld, dismissed troops' concerns about "hillbilly armor," Gates rushed to buy $25 billion worth of Mine-Resistant Armor-Protected vehicles to better protect soldiers from roadside bombs. His legislative skills came to the fore as he turned Obama's campaign pledge to let gays serve openly in uniform into reality. He succeeded in restraining, if not cutting, military spending during his tenure, in part by lopping off weapons -- including the Air Force's F-22 fighter and a new class of Navy warships – that he felt the nation couldn't afford. New ones are likely to be killed -- the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle tops the hit list -- when Gates unveils his latest nips and tucks in coming days. Gates, some in the Pentagon say, had it easy because he succeeded the irascible Rumsfeld. But it's what he has accomplished -- not who came before him -- that is going to make filling his boots so challenging. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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