716 Hillary campaigning as War Hawk "tough on Putin"

Hillary campaigning as War Hawk "tough on Putin"

Newsletter published on 28 November 2014

(1) Hillary endorses US Exceptionalism, right to intervene everywhere
(2) A Hawk Named Hillary - The Nation
(3) Hagel sacked as Defense secretary, as war fever takes hold in Washington
(4) Pentagon Generals force Hagel out

(1) Hillary endorses US Exceptionalism, right to intervene everywhere

Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 01:33:33 +0900
Subject: A.Lieven| Russia Insider/A Superb Article Introducing Hillary
Clinton
  the War Hawk and Her Neocon Views How Hillary Clinton is the consensus
  candidate for more war and confrontation Anatol Lieven
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>

http://russia-insider.com/en/export/1378

Anatol Lieven

We are publishing this long, thoughtful article by a renowned journalist
and commentator on Russian society and politics in full even though it
contains just one brief paragraph about Russia, not only because the
article is very good, but because it gives the reason why US-Russian
relations are now in crisis.

The article introduces Hillary Clinton, likely candidate for the
Democratic Party for the Presidency in 2016, and committed hardliner and
war hawk.

The great strength of this article is that it shows that Hillary
Clinton’s hard line, maximalist positions on foreign policy (including
Russia) simply represent what has now become the US foreign policy
consensus: that the US is an “exceptional country” and that this gives
the US a right to intervene constantly around the world and to confront
anyone and everyone who it judges poses any sort of challenge to the US.

Since the US thinks of itself as the “exceptional country” it cannot
accept other countries like China and Russia as “equals” even though the
interests of international stability and world peace require that it do so.

Nor will the US accept that other country such as China and Russia have
a right to interests in places such as eastern Europe or Central Asia or
the east Pacific where this is contrary to the policies or wishes of the US.

Nor is the US able to see that its own actions both abroad and to some
extent even at home (for example in relation to human rights policy)
have caused it to forfeit whatever claim it might once have had to moral
leadership.

As the article also shows, this belief in the US as “the exceptional
country” has caused one foreign policy disaster after the other. Neither
Hillary Clinton nor the part of the US establishment that holds these
views (which the article significantly identifies as an “oligarchy”) are
however capable of learning from these disasters because doing so would
challenge their belief that the US is an “exceptional country”.

The result is that they go on repeating the same mistakes again and
again, so that the Middle East is now in chaos, relations with Russia
are now in crisis and an a much greater and far more dangerous crisis
with China in the east Pacific is now only just below the horizon..

It is this approach to foreign policy which has brought about the crisis
in Ukraine. Instead of working with Russia to stabilise Ukraine and
overcome its divisions – the US has treated Ukraine as just another
piece on its chessboard of relations with Russia - a country in which
for obvious geographic, economic, cultural and historic reasons has a
vital interest in Ukraine.

The result is a collapse in the US’s relations with Russia and a war
inside Ukraine itself.

The one point we would make is that as the article itself says, the
policy that is based on the belief in the US as “the exceptional
country” – with all that that involves – is held by only a minority of
Americans (in our opinion a rapidly shrinking minority). Given the
enormous and growing costs of this policy, it is only a matter of time
before it is challenged within the US itself.

However, as this article also shows, Hillary Clinton as a paid-up
believer in the policy, is not going to be the one to do it.

This article first appeared in The Nation.

(2) A Hawk Named Hillary - The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/article/191521/hawk-named-hillary

A Hawk Named Hillary

As her record shows, Clinton has embraced destructive nationalist myths
about America’s role in the world.

Anatol Lieven

November 25, 2014   |    This article appeared in the December 15-22,
2014 edition of The Nation.

Hillary Clinton is running for president not only on her record as
secretary of state, but also by presenting herself as tougher than
Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably
plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as
“weak” in his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the
supposedly more hawkish instincts of much of the electorate.

It is therefore necessary to ask a number of related questions, the
answers to which are of crucial importance not just to the likely course
of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the future of the
United States in the world.

These questions concern her record as secretary of state and her
attitudes, as well as those of the US foreign-policy and
national-security elites as a whole.

They are also linked to an even deeper and more worrying question:
whether the country’s political elites are still capable of learning
from their mistakes and changing their policies accordingly. I was
brought up to believe that this is a key advantage of democracy over
other systems.

But it can’t happen without a public debate—and hence mass media—founded
on rational argument, a respect for facts, and an insistence that
officials take responsibility for evidently disastrous decisions.

The difficulties that a Democratic politician must overcome in designing
a foreign and security policy capable of meeting the needs of the age
are admittedly legion.

These include US foreign-policy and national-security institutions that
are bloated beyond measure and spend most of their time administering
themselves and quarreling with one another; the weakness of the cabinet
system, which encourages these institutions and means that decisions are
constantly thrown in the lap of the president and a White House staff
principally obsessed with the next election; an increasing political
dysfunction at home, partly as a result of the unrelenting American
electoral cycle; a Republican opposition that is positively feral in its
readiness to use any weapon against a Democratic White House; a
corporate media that, when not working for the Republicans directly, is
all too willing to help turn minor issues into perceived crises; and
problems in some parts of the world (notably the Middle East and
Afghanistan) that are indeed of a hideous complexity.

Even more important and difficult than any of these problems may be the
fact that designing a truly new and adequate strategy would require
breaking with some fundamental American myths—myths that have been
strengthened by many years of superpower status but that go back much
further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism.

These myths, above all, depict the United States as—in one of Clinton’s
favorite phrases—the “indispensable nation,” innately good (if sometimes
misguided), with the right and duty to lead humankind and therefore,
when necessary, to crush any opposition.

It is the strength and centrality of these nationalist myths that have
prevented our elites and the American public from learning or
remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave the way
for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which
are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire
record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has
made herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility
of escape. As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices:

“Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America
remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however,
that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every
generation.

And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that,
before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or
any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are
Americans, all with a personal stake in our country.”

It’s the same old nationalist solipsism: all we have to do is stick
together and talk more loudly to ourselves about how wonderful we are,
and the rest of the world will automatically accept our “leadership.”

This is not a case—as has sometimes appeared with Obama—of a naturally
cool and skeptical intellect forced to bow to the emotions of the
masses. To all appearances, Clinton’s nationalism is a matter of
profound conviction.

And let us be fair: this may help to get her elected president. Once she
is, however, it is likely to constrain drastically her ability to shape
a foreign policy appropriate to the new circumstances of the United
States and the world. Above all, perhaps, it hampers her ability to
learn from the past, and from her own and America’s mistakes—a defect
blazingly on display in her latest memoir.

Instead, even when (on very rare occasions) she does make the briefest
and most formal acknowledgment of a US crime or error, it is immediately
followed by the infamous statement that we must put this behind us and
“move on.” This phrase is dear not only to Clinton, but to the
foreign-policy establishment as a whole. It makes any serious analysis
of the past impossible.

Of course, one hardly looks for great honesty or candor in what is, in
effect, election propaganda—and one must always keep in mind the
presence of a Republican Party and media ready to tear into even the
slightest appearance of “apologizing for America.”

Nonetheless, a passage early in the book did give me hope that it would
contain at least some serious discussion of past US mistakes and their
lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton acknowledges as her
own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War:

“As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on
Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war
and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had
fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when
facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism,
and humility.”

Neither in her book nor in her policy is there even the slightest
evidence that she has, in fact, tried to learn from Iraq beyond the most
obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground invasions and
occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn.

For Clinton herself helped to launch US airpower to topple another
regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the results have been
anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist extremists
that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the
United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria.

Clinton tries to argue in the book that she took a long, hard look at
the Libyan opposition before reporting to the president her belief that
“there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible
partners”—but however long she looked, it is now obvious that she got it
wrong.

She has simply not understood the fragility of states—states, not
regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk that “humanitarian
intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the inadequacy of a
crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis for state
reconstruction.

It does not help that the US record on democracy promotion and the rule
of law – including Clinton’s own record – is so spotted that very few
people outside the country take it seriously anymore.

Her book manages simultaneously to repeat the claim that the United
States and its allies were only enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya and to
try to take personal credit for destroying the Libyan regime. And she
wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or America’s honesty!

There is also no recognition whatsoever in her book that those who
opposed US military action were in fact right and not “despicable,” to
use her phrase about Russian opposition to the US military intervention
in Syria.

Nor has her disastrous record on Iraq led her to take a more sensible
stance toward Iran. On the contrary, in her anxiety to appear more
hawkish than Obama, she has clearly aligned with those who would make a
nuclear deal with Iran impossible and therefore leave the United States
in the ridiculous and unsustainable position of trying to contain all
the major forces in the Middle East simultaneously.

This kind of nationalist faith in American strength and American
righteousness is no longer adequate to the challenges the country faces.
Above all, such a faith makes it impossible to deal with other nations
on a basis of equality—not only on global issues or those of great
interest to Washington, but on issues that other countries regard as
vital to their own interests.

This also makes it far more difficult for US officials to do what Hans
Morgenthau declared is both a practical and moral duty of statesmen:
through close study, to develop a capacity to put themselves in the
shoes of the representatives of other countries—not in order to agree
with them but to understand what is really important to them, the
interests on which they will be able to compromise and those for which
they will feel compelled to fight. Clinton displays not a shred of this
ability in her book.

The greatest future challenge in this respect is our relations with
China. The arrogance with which Washington treats other countries is at
least understandable given that none of them are or are likely to be
equals of the United States—though some, like Russia, can often compete
successfully in their own regions.

China is another matter. If, as now seems all but certain, its economy
soon surpasses that of the United States, then on issues of interest to
Beijing, it will indeed demand to be treated as an equal—and if
Washington fails to do so, it will propel the two sides toward
terrifying confrontations.

In terms of the day-to-day conduct of relations with Beijing, Clinton
had a generally good record as secretary of state—though in this, she
was following what has generally been a restrained policy by both
political parties. But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was pragmatic, her
long-term strategy may prove disastrous. This was the Obama
administration’s decision—in which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.”

As Clinton’s writings make clear, “pivot” means the containment of China
through the enhancement of existing military alliances in East Asia and
the development of new ones (especially with India).

This strategy is at present reasonably cautious and somewhat veiled, but
if Chinese power continues to grow, and if collisions between China and
some of its neighbors intensify, then a containment strategy will
inevitably become harsher—with potentially catastrophic consequences.

This is not simply a case of a knee-jerk US reaction to the rise of a
potential peer competitor.

Some of China’s policies have helped to provoke the new strategy and
also enabled it by driving China’s neighbors into America’s arms. This
is above all true of Beijing’s territorial claims to various groups of
uninhabited islands in the East and South China seas.

While some of its claims seem reasonably well founded, others have no
basis in international law and tradition; and by pushing all of them at
once, Beijing has frightened most of its neighbors and created real
fears that in East Asia, at least, its “peaceful rise” strategy has been
abandoned.

But if aspects of China’s strategy have been aggressive, that does not
necessarily make the US response to them wise—especially since Obama and
Clinton’s announcement of the pivot to Asia, at least in part, preceded
the new aggressiveness of Chinese policy.

In particular, Clinton appears to have forgotten that a key difference
between the Cold War with the USSR and the current relationship with
China is that during the Cold War, Washington was careful never to
involve itself in any claims by neighbors on Russian territory.

In consequence (as I can testify from my work as a British journalist in
the USSR during the years of its collapse), there was no successful
mobilization of Russian nationalism against the United States. That has
come later, when with monumental folly the United States (under the
Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations) involved itself in the quarrels
of the post-Soviet successor states.

As a senator, Clinton was entirely complicit in the disastrous strategy
of offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which led to the
Russo-Georgian war of 2008 (and a de facto US strategic defeat) and
helped set the scene for the Ukraine crisis of this year. This is not to
excuse Russia’s mistaken and criminal reactions to US policy; but to
judge by her book, Clinton never bothered to try to understand or
predict likely Russian reactions—let alone, once again, to acknowledge
or learn from her mistakes.

On the Georgia War, she simply repeats the lie (which, to be fair, she
may actually believe) that this was deliberately started by Putin and
not by Georgia’s president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili.

In her policy toward China, Clinton and the administration in which she
served have embroiled the United States in the islands disputes.
Formally, Washington has not taken sides concerning ownership of the
islands.

Informally, though, by emphasizing the US military alliance with Japan
and its extensive character, it has done so—at least in the case of the
Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. As a result, Clinton may have helped put her
country in a position where it will one day feel compelled to launch a
devastating war to defend Japanese claims to uninhabited rocks, and at a
time dictated by Tokyo.

As the Australian realist scholar Hugh White has suggested, underlying
the other disputes between the United States and China is Washington’s
refusal to accord legitimacy to China’s system of government, something
repeatedly demonstrated in Clinton’s book. White argues that such
recognition is essential if the two countries are to share power and
influence in East Asia and avoid conflict.

This is admittedly a very difficult moral and political issue, given
China’s human-rights abuses. Clinton made human-rights advocacy a
hallmark of her tenure at the State Department (without, it seems,
understanding the disastrous effects on this advocacy of the US
international record).

More substantial has been her contribution to raising global awareness
of women’s rights; and perhaps most praiseworthy of all (because it is
deeply unpopular with many Americans as well as others around the world)
is her staunch defense of gay rights.

It would be an immense help, however, if American representatives could
recognize the degree to which the US model at home and abroad is now
questioned by enemies as well as concerned friends—at home due to
political paralysis and the increasing and obvious inadequacy of an
eighteenth-century Constitution to deal with a twenty-first-century
world; abroad due to a series of criminal actions carried out in
defiance of the international community, as well as the catastrophic
failure of the US war and state-building effort in Iraq—and very likely
in Afghanistan, too. There is not the slightest indication of such a
recognition in Clinton’s book.

When it comes to the Obama administration’s dysfunctional policy toward
Afghanistan, Clinton herself cannot be held chiefly responsible. As her
work and books by others make clear (notably Vali Nasr’s The Dispensable
Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat), this was a policy driven
chiefly by the White House, and for domestic political reasons.
Nonetheless, she can hardly evade all responsibility, since on issues
that can in any way be presented as successes, she is so anxious to
claim responsibility.

At the core of the administration’s failure (leaving aside the horribly
intractable nature of the Afghan War itself) was the combination of a
military surge with the announcement of early US military withdrawal. As
far as hardline Taliban elements were concerned, this meant they only
had to wait. As far as actual or potential moderates were concerned,
Washington failed to accompany the surge with any serious attempt at a
peace settlement.

For this failure, opposition by the US military and Afghanistan’s
then-president, Hamid Karzai, was chiefly responsible, together with the
fear of a political backlash in the United States. But as Clinton makes
clear, there was no way that she would have supported any peace offer
that even the most moderate Taliban elements would have discussed. In
her words, “To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their
arms, reject al Qaeda and accept the Afghan Constitution.” In other
words, not a settlement but surrender.

Such an offer should indeed have been made by the Bush administration in
2002 and 2003; it probably would have been accepted by many Taliban
commanders, since at the time the Taliban appeared to have been
thoroughly defeated.

That opportunity was missed, and today—with the United States
withdrawing, the Afghan “constitution” deep in crisis, and the Taliban
conquering more and more of the east and south—it will not even be
looked at. And this syndrome, of either pretending or genuinely
believing that Washington is offering compromise when it is actually
demanding surrender, is a leitmotif of Clinton’s work. It is very
sensible to make such offers if you are winning, not so if you are
retreating.

This is not to say that, in Afghanistan or the Middle East, there are
easy answers that Clinton has somehow missed. In both cases, there are
no real “solutions,” only better or worse management of crises based on
a choice of lesser evils. Perhaps as president, Clinton would prove to
be a competent manager of these crises; but on the basis of her record
and writings so far, the verdict on this must at best be “unproven.” So
far, her actions and those of the United States have succeeded only in
making things worse.

Can the United States escape the trap created by its belief in its own
supreme morality and right to lead? To do this would require its leaders
to tell the American people a number of things that a majority of the
country’s political classes (which on foreign policy can generally
manage to impersonate the people) really do not want to hear:

about the relative decline of US power and the need to adjust both
policy and rhetoric to accommodate this development; about the
consequent need to seek compromises with a number of countries that
Americans have been taught to hate; about the insufficiency of the
American ideology as a universal path for the progress of humankind;
and, most important of all, about the long-term unsustainability of the
US economic model and the absolute need to take action against climate
change.

In an ideal world, an astute president with popular support should be
able to reach past the elites to appeal to the generally sensible and
generous instincts of the majority of Americans.

As recent polls have demonstrated, on the question of arming Syrian
rebels and of seeking a reasonable compromise with Iran, large
majorities have shown much more cautious and pragmatic instincts than
Clinton, let alone the Republicans. Only 8 percent of Americans want
Washington to attempt to lead the world unilaterally, compared with
overwhelming majorities in favor of seeking cooperation (and
cost-sharing) with other powers.

But as Peter Beinart has shown in a recent essay in The Atlantic, there
is a yawning gap on these issues between the American public and the
political and media elites—and, most crucial of all, the big donors on
whom candidates increasingly depend.

If, as many now believe, the United States is heading toward a de facto
oligarchy, then the views of that oligarchy on foreign-policy and
security issues are clear—and they’re close to those of Hillary Clinton.

There is certainly little basis for the belief that she would be
prepared to challenge the oligarchy on these issues. Thus, on the
crucial question of climate change, she has indeed taken a rhetorical
stand sharply different from the Republicans and a number of
conservative Democrats.

On the other hand, the chapter on it in Hard Choices begins with an
extended passage in which Clinton crows about a tactical victory over
China at the 2009 Copenhagen summit—a victory that did nothing to combat
climate change and only managed to alienate further the Chinese, Indians
and Brazilians. Clinton’s verbal commitment to this central issue is
impressive and commendable, her actual record much less so.

But again, the real question is whether any US statesman could do
better, given that most Republicans—who now dominate Congress and
control federal legislation on this issue—have managed to convince
themselves that the problem does not even exist. How is it possible to
implement rational policies if much of the political class has abandoned
respect for facts and evidence?

Given the US record of the past dozen years, there is a great deal to be
said in principle for a long period in which Washington simply pulls
back from involvement in international crises.

In practice, though, as several administrations have found,
international affairs will not leave a US president alone. Crises blow
up suddenly, and to craft an appropriate response requires a consistent
philosophy, deep local knowledge, a firm grip on the US foreign-policy
apparatus, and the ability to frame that response in ways that will gain
the necessary support from the policy establishment, media and population.

These are sufficiently great challenges in themselves. To expect in
addition that a statesman will display originality, moral courage and a
willingness to challenge national shibboleths is probably too much to
ask of anyone.

On the evidence to date, it is certainly too much to ask of Hillary
Rodham Clinton.

(3) Hagel sacked as Defense secretary, as war fever takes hold in Washington

http://www.thenation.com/article/191609/real-reason-defense-secretary-chuck-hagel-got-booted

The Real Reason Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Got Booted

His resignation has to be seen against the growing war fever in
Washington—which is now reflected in White House policy.

Michael T. Klare November 26, 2014

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s surprise resignation has largely been
ascribed to his lack of assertiveness on key issues and a frosty
relationship with President Obama, but it must be seen against a
backdrop of growing war fever in Washington. Although Obama has been
noticeably reluctant to become militarily involved in Iraq, Syria and
Ukraine, he is coming under increasing pressure from both Democrats and
Republicans to employ tougher measures in all three. Hagel is believed
to have supported such moves in private conversation with the president,
but he has not done so in public. By replacing him now, Obama appears to
be signaling his intention to adopt a more activist military posture
through the appointment of a more vigorous secretary.

Hagel, a former enlisted soldier who served in Vietnam, is well liked by
combat troops but was never fully welcomed by Obama’s inner circle.
Moreover, he had faced strong opposition from Senate Republicans during
his confirmation hearing—in part for remarks alleged to be anti-Semitic
or insufficiently supportive of Israel—and so entered the administration
with diminished political clout. As secretary, he has largely embraced
White House policy on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, but without
conspicuous ardor.

Until last spring, Hagel’s principal task was to oversee the drawdown of
American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in accordance with the
president’s stated desire to avoid entanglement in future regional
conflicts—a policy Obama described as “don’t do stupid stuff.” After
Russia seized Crimea and ISIS seized Mosul, however, the president’s
non-interventionist stance came under fierce attack from Republicans as
well as some Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. In an August
interview published in The Atlantic , Clinton lambasted Obama, saying,
“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’
is not an organizing principle.”

In fact, “don’t do stupid stuff” is a perfectly valid organizing
principle, placing the onus of persuasion on those who advocate
aggressive overseas actions (see Klare, “Why Hillary Clinton Is Wrong
About Obama’s Foreign Policy”). But it is not a particularly compelling
argument for winning public support in what appears to be an especially
threatening moment—and one in which irresponsible Republican
war-mongering fills the airwaves. The fact that the current chaos in
Iraq is largely a product of the misguided invasion undertaken by
President Bush in 2003 doesn’t seem to register in this hothouse atmosphere.

With public concern over ISIS and its brutal tactics (including the
beheading of two Americans) on the rise, and with few in Washington
willing to back his stance, Obama has upped the ante in Iraq, Syria and
Afghanistan. In September, he announced the onset of an extended air
campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, along with the deployment of
1,500 US military advisers to help rebuild the shattered Iraqi army; on
November 7, three days after the midterm election, he announced the
deployment of an additional 1,500 advisers. On November 21, moreover,
The  New York Times  revealed that Obama had approved an extended combat
mission for US forces in Afghanistan. And while the president has
repeatedly stated that he has no intention to deploy US combat forces in
Iraq—no “boots on the ground,” as it is put—senior military officials,
including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey,
have indicated that planning is under way for just such a move. “I’m not
predicting at this point that I would recommend that [Iraqi troops]
would need to be accompanied by US forces, but we’re certainly
considering it,” he told the House Armed Services Committee on November 13.

Whatever Obama’s hesitations, it is becoming increasingly evident that
he sees no recourse but to order ever more aggressive action in Iraq and
Syria—not only against ISIS, but also against the Assad regime. The
Republicans in Congress, soon to assume control of the Senate, are
already beating the war drums, calling for increasingly vigorous moves.
At an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum on November
22, Senator John McCain—soon expected to assume the chairmanship of the
Armed Services Committee—called for a larger military presence in Iraq,
more support for anti-Assad forces in Syria, a semi-permanent US
military presence in Afghanistan and expedited arms deliveries to the
Ukrainian military.

By all accounts, Hagel supports stronger action. But his retiring
demeanor and recent association with the Iraq and Afghanistan troop
drawdowns make him an unlikely leader of the newly galvanized military
establishment. Evidently, Obama has chosen to put a more vigorous,
authoritative figure at the Pentagon’s helm. Among those widely
discussed as a successor to Hagel is a senior Democratic policymaker
with a hawkish reputation: former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton
Carter. The selection of someone like Carter would provide Obama with a
fresh, reliable partner in managing the reassertion of American military
power. (Another hawk, former Under Secretary of Defense Michèle
Flournoy, was widely considered a top candidate until she took her name
out of the running.)

For six exhausting years, President Obama has sought to reduce
Washington’s reliance on military action to secure its major objectives
abroad. As recently as last May, he famously told graduating cadets at
West Point, “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that
every problem is a nail.” But now, with the resignation of Hagel and the
escalating US role in Iraq and Syria, it seems that he has chosen to
lift the hammer.

(4) Pentagon Generals force Hagel out

http://www.thenation.com/blog/191217/why-chuck-hagels-departure-really-matters

Why Chuck Hagel’s Departure Really Matters

George Zornick on November 24, 2014 - 12:18 PM ET

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s surprise resignation—reportedly at the
strong urging of the White House—will dominate Beltway news in the
coming days. But perhaps the much more significant foreign-policy news
came early Saturday morning.

The New York Times  reported that the United States will expand its
mission in Afghanistan in 2015, with US troops participating in direct
combat with the Taliban while American airpower backs Afghan forces from
above. The shift, leaked anonymously to reporters ahead of a holiday
week, is a big “oh, nevermind” to Obama’s very public announcement six
months ago in the Rose Garden that US troops in Afghanistan would be
shifting into a training and advisory role next year.

The president didn’t even make a glancing reference to the Afghanistan
reversal in his remarks announcing Hagel’s departure. The administration
would clearly prefer a limited public debate, and based on the media
coverage so far, it is getting its wish.

But it is against this new hawkish posture that Hagel’s departure should
be understood and discussed. It is possible that it was the subtext to
his resignation: Hagel came aboard to help manage a withdrawal from
Afghanistan and shrink the Pentagon budget, and an anonymous US official
told the Times  Monday that “the next couple of years will demand a
different kind of focus.”

The retrenchment in Afghanistan reportedly came after a “a lengthy and
heated debate” inside the White House that pitted military generals
against some administration officials:

Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks
with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of
some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should
not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban—and
that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al
Qaeda.

But the military pushed back, and generals both at the Pentagon and in
Afghanistan urged Mr. Obama to define the mission more broadly to allow
American troops to attack the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other
militants if intelligence revealed that the extremists were threatening
American forces in the country.

Was the historically dovish Hagel one of these officials? It is
certainly curious that his departure directly coincides with the new
aggressive plan for Afghanistan.

No reporting yet indicates that for certain, and Hagel is notoriously
guarded—one reason cited for his resignation was reportedly that he
remained quiet in meetings, supposedly to avoid leaks of his position.
It is certainly possible that ISIS’s rapid emergence and other
foreign-policy crises contributed to Hagel’s poor standing inside the
White House, along with his reported leadership problems.

Ultimately, that’s an academic question for the administration’s
biographers. What matters now is that the United States is changing
course toward a more aggressive foreign policy: it is recommitting to
the war in Afghanistan, which is by far the country’s longest and now
promises to span two two-term presidencies. The number of troops in Iraq
has doubled, and the administration will soon seek an authorization from
a Congress that is extremely unlikely to include a provision that
outlaws direct combat by US troops. Even supposed doves like Rand Paul
are switching their position on fighting ISIS, and the incoming class of
senators has distinct interventionist positions.

Hagel’s departure—and the confirmation of his successor—will hopefully
allow for some serious public debate about this new turn, even if the
administration prefers otherwise. The real story here is about the
policy, not the personnel.