‘Paper Tiger’ at the Pentagon

Since he became President Obama’s secretary of defense earlier this year, Chuck Hagel, the ruthlessly candid and occasionally contrarian former Republican senator from Nebraska, has mostly kept his inner maverick in check. He’s been so much of an enigma in nine muted months at the Pentagon that one frequent critic, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), was heard to ask aloud, “What’s with this guy?” as she emerged from a low-energy meeting with the heavy-lidded defense secretary, according to one fellow senator. So White House officials were stunned when Hagel abruptly spit the bit over the summer.

By August, the first round of across-the-board cuts mandated by the congressionally imposed process known as budget sequestration had forced the Pentagon to slash its massive personnel costs. Obama’s White House team was controlling the talking points, and these defense cuts were an especially powerful part of their political message: Republicans, they claimed, were willing to endanger national security to appease their anti-government Tea Party wing. So it came as unwelcome news when Hagel declared—without getting West Wing approval—that he was exercising his authority to reinstate five of 11 furlough days for the department’s civilian employees, according to several current and former administration officials. White House aides called Hagel’s team to complain. The secretary didn’t care. He was growing increasingly concerned that the administration was ignoring the Pentagon’s budget and readiness crises, and he directed his staff to give a mid-level agency bureaucrat a one-hour head’s up before he went public. “Hagel didn’t want to slow the process down,” a former defense official told me. “So he just decided to do it, and he did it… Message sent.”

It’s too early to tell if Hagel’s sotto voce declaration of independence was a genuine pivot point. But it’s clear the 67-year-old Vietnam War hero is entering the make-or-break phase of his Pentagon stewardship, according to about a dozen current and former West Wing and Pentagon officials I spoke with. Up until recently, they say, Hagel appeared shaky, a career legislator struggling with his first big command—and under constant fire. “How would I describe him right now? He’s a paper tiger,” says a longtime Obama campaign and White House adviser. “He’s a great guy and a war hero. The regular troops love him. … It’s not quite buyer’s remorse, but he needs to show us more.”

Obama’s people may yet get their wish, if perhaps in ways they hadn’t quite anticipated. In recent days, Secretary of State John Kerry has hogged the spotlight with his headlong-into-the-breach diplomacy with Iran. But it is Hagel who might face the potentially greater career-defining moment: Over the next six weeks, he’ll have to battle Congress, and perhaps some on Obama’s West Wing team, to forestall unprecedented new defense cuts that, when added to the first round of sequester cuts, could slash as much as $100 billion a year (according to Obama administration estimates) from a Pentagon accustomed to Bush-era annual budgets of $700 billion. It’s the sort of bloodletting that could force commanders to choose between modern weapons systems, funding benefits programs or paying to retain enough troops to meet new threats. In effect, what has followed the low-key secretary (self-effacing to a fault—he has described defense as “the fourth” most powerful gig in Obama’s Cabinet) to his memento-crammed office on the third floor of the Pentagon is a fight that could now determine the ambition of the military in the post-Afghanistan and Iraq era.

“How would I describe him right now? He’s a paper tiger,” says a longtime White House advisor. “He’s a great guy and a war hero. The regular troops love him … but he needs to show us more.”

READ MORE

There’s no doubt that Hagel shares Obama’s philosophy of a leaner and more efficient military, and he voiced only perfunctory objections to the $50 billion-a-year hit the Pentagon took in the 2012 budget deal—and toes the administration line that all sequester cuts, to military and domestic programs, need to be restores in full. He also embraced a long-term Obama budget proposal that would backload billions of dollars more in cuts over the next decade. But the additional $20 billion to $50 billion in yearly cuts due to take effect next month if congressional negotiators can’t avert a second sequester are too much for Hagel. Obama opposes the cuts too, but Hagel is pressing to de-link the Pentagon’s budget from the non-defense budget, a stance that puts him in conflict with the White House bargaining position at a crucial moment: If Republicans want to avoid the defense cuts, Obama is trying to make the case that they will also have to spare the ax for an array of social welfare and infrastructure programs. “If you just to start to carve out certain popular items from the sequester you don’t solve the problem,” a person close to Obama told me when asked about Hagel’s position. “Chuck is just doing his job. … He wants to exempt the military from the sequester, and that’s understandable. But we’re looking to get rid of the sequester across the board.”

Hagel has directed most of his public comments at GOP budget-cutters but he’s also made it clear he’s dissatisfied with some in the administration, especially Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell who, in the words of one Hagel confidant, “just doesn’t get the urgency” of the threat. “This is an irresponsible way to govern, and it forces the department into a very bad set of choices," Hagel said earlier this month of the sequester, speaking to an audience at the Reagan Library.

John Kerry has hogged the spotlight with his headlong-into-the-breach diplomacy on Iran. But it is Hagel, with his upcoming battle with Congress and maybe even the White House to forestall proposed defense cuts, who may face the greater career-defining moment. | Reuters

But here’s where the months of lackluster leadership at the Pentagon might pose a key problem for Hagel, a former infantry squad leader in Vietnam now entering a big bureaucratic fight well below full battle strength. His top deputy, the highly regarded Ashton Carter—himself a candidate for defense secretary and a man who has been running the place day to day for two years—is leaving this month. Several top-level former defense officials, including the department’s one-time No. 3, Michèle Flournoy, another also-ran for the secretaryship when Hagel got the job, have rebuffed entreaties to join the team, say people close to the situation.

Hagel’s grasp of granular budget and manpower issues have improved greatly over the last few months, and people close to him say he has even booted out staffers from briefings if they don’t have the information he needs at the ready. But he’s still a relative neophyte, and having a first-class deputy remains a necessity. “I sure hope it's a strong pick,” says Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “And I sure hope it's somebody with experience in the Pentagon.”