NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: …But [Defense Secretary Chuck] Hagel never recovered from his bruising Senate confirmation hearing in February 2013, in which he proved incapable of defending his views against vehement opponents. Once confirmed, he continued to have difficulty communicating the Obama administration’s views and was often eclipsed in explaining American military strategy by Secretary of State John Kerry and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A substantial part of the problem with Mr. Hagel’s performance is that the mission changed after his appointment. He was selected to oversee a shift to a peacetime military and reduced defense spending. To his credit, Mr. Hagel was committed to carrying out Mr. Obama’s policy of greater American military, diplomatic and economic engagement in Asia and spent considerable time focused on that priority.
But the United States is now back at war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, and Mr. Obama apparently decided that he could no longer depend on Mr. Hagel to lead these fights, which had provoked sharp debates within the administration. One factor may have been a memo Mr. Hagel sent to the White House in which he criticized the administration’s Syria policy for failing to connect the campaign against the Islamic State to a broader struggle against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria… (more)
EDITOR: When we grew up, Nazi German and militaristic Japan were the problems. Then came the Soviet Union and world wide Communism.
However, in recent years matters have become far more complicated. First Bashar al-Assad was the problem in Syria. Now we face ISIS. Whom should we combat? Should we fight both? (Of course not.)
Now multiply this by circumstances in Iraq (include the Kurds) and Afghanistan. Of course also problems with Iran over nuclear armaments. We have Vladimir Putin’s bellicosity and aggression in Ukraine. And we need to be able to restrain an ever more powerful China.
The complexity of foreign policy today is far worse and subject to shifts than ever before. It isn’t a question of being indecisive; it is a matter of having to cope with evolving events. We might add, not squandering our assets in the Middle East, thus rendering us a ‘paper tiger’ in Europe and Asia where we have even greater interests.
