Secretary of State John F. Kerry, left, confers with Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel during testimony on U.S. military intervention in Syria before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Credit: public domain

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 25 2014 (IPS)

Signalling a somewhat more modest global U.S. military posture, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel Monday called for sharp reductions in the size of the U.S. Army, the service that has borne the brunt of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan over the past dozen years.

At the same time, however, he urged an increase in the size of the Special Operations Forces (SOF), the elite military personnel charged with training foreign counterparts and carrying out often-secret missions, including assassinations and raids such as the one that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.The cuts not only reflected the end of U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the aversion to the prolonged commitment of ground troops in foreign countries.

Speaking a week before President Barack Obama is due to unveil his 2015 budget request, Hagel said he will also ask Congress to phase out key weapons systems, including the fabled Cold War-era U-2 spy plane, which will be replaced by drone aircraft, and A-10 “Warthog” jets that have been used for several decades to provide close-air support for ground forces.

“This is a time for reality,” Hagel said told reporters during a press briefing in which he asked Congress to approve 496 billion dollars in military spending for the next fiscal year.

That does not include an additional 26 billion dollars approved for the Pentagon by Congress as part of an “Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative” budget deal late last year.

“This is a budget that recognises the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges, the dangerous world we live in, and American military’s unique and indispensable role in the security of this country and in today’s volatile world.”

The proposed cuts to the Army captured the national media headlines. Under Hagel’s proposal, which has been endorsed by the chiefs of the four major services, the active-duty Army would be cut from the current 522,000 troops to between 440,000 and 450,000. That would bring the Army to its smallest size since the eve of Washington’s entry into World War II.

The implications of such a cut were not lost on observers who noted that they not only reflected the end of U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the aversion, apparently shared by the Obama administration and the general public alike, to the prolonged commitment of ground troops in foreign countries.

Washington withdrew all of its forces from Iraq in 2011 and plans to withdraw all but a few thousand from Afghanistan by the end of this year.

Just three weeks ago, a Pew Research Centre poll found that, for the first time, majorities (52 percent) of U.S. respondents have concluded that Washington had “mostly failed” to achieve its goals in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Fewer than four in 10 agreed with the notion that the U.S. had “mostly succeeded” in both countries.

“Since we are no longer sizing the force for prolonged stability operations,” Hagel, who served in the Army in the Vietnam War, said Wednesday, “an Army of (the current) size is larger than required to meet the demands of our defence strategy.…As we end our combat mission in Afghanistan, this will be the first budget to fully reflect the transition [the Defence Department] is making after 13 years of war – the longest conflict in our nation’s history.”

“In saying that, he was essentially acknowledging the fact that the American public won’t stand for that kind of intervention any time soon,” William Hartung, a veteran defence analyst at the dovish Centre for International Policy (CIP). “A majority of them understand that spending trillions of dollars and losing thousands of lives in those wars have not made anyone safer.”

“The real question is whether we can roll back the ‘go anywhere, fight any battle’ mentality of the Pentagon,” Hartung added in an email exchange. “Whether it’s drones, Special Forces, or precision bombs, war is war, and it’s time to take the United States off of a perpetual war footing and craft a truly defensive military force.”

Indeed, in his remarks, Hagel stressed that Washington’s SOF will continue to grow – from roughly 66,000 today to just shy of 70,000 in 2015 – an increase of almost 300 percent compared to just a decade ago.

Each of the military services and each of the regional commands (SouthCom for Latin America, Africom for Africa, CentCom for the Near East and parts of South and Central Asia, and PaCom for the Asia-Pacific) – have their own elite SOF units.

In addition, a North Carolina-based Special Operations Command (SOCOM), presided over by Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the bin Laden raid, can dispatch troops to virtually anywhere in the world. He also commands the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in carrying out highly classified operations against specific targets.

McRaven, whose efforts at easing human-rights restrictions on training foreign militaries and circumventing State Department oversight of some aid programmes have proved controversial, has nonetheless been effective in building his “empire” in major part  because of its compatibility with Obama’s desire to lighten the U.S. military’s “footprint” in conflicted regions without reducing its effectiveness and lethality.

“In his State of the Union address, the President declared that our nation must move off a permanent war footing, and Secretary Hagel’s speech today took one major step in that direction.” noted Miriam Pemberton, another defence analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies here. “But, while long-term occupations are off the table now, the expansion of Special Forces means that under-the-radar invasion are not.”

Ironically, Hagel’s budget proposal reflects in many ways the strategic vision of former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who strongly favoured the development of high-tech combat systems, heavy reliance on air power, and small, nimble ground forces who could strike from so-called “lily pads” (or temporary bases) anywhere on the globe within a short period of time. His so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs,” or RMA, however, was side-tracked enormous costs of the Iraq occupation.

The Obama administration has revived that vision, without explicitly admitting it, with the priority it has accorded to cyber-warfare capabilities, SOF, ever-more sophisticated drone technology, its intended retention of all 13 aircraft carriers, and its ongoing efforts to negotiate access agreements to foreign military facilities, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, East African, and Sahelian regions.

Hagel’s proposal will now be taken up by Congress, which is certain to resist a number of its components, including proposed base closures and the phase-out of weapons systems that provide jobs in key legislative districts around the country.

Hagel’s proposal also ignored the across-the-board budget-slashing cuts mandated by law under the so-called “sequester” that took effect in 2013 and continues in force pending further legislative action. They would require the Pentagon to cut an additional 115 billion dollars from its budget over the next five years.

At the height of the Iraq war in 2006, Washington accounted for about half of global military spending. Its budget has since fallen to just over 40 percent, according to Peter Singer of the Brooking Institution. Under the sequester’s limits, it would decline to about 38 percent.

If it remains in effect, the Pentagon would be forced to mothball one aircraft carrier, further reduce the Army’s size to 420,000, and cut into the Marine force as well, among other cost-saving measures.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel. Credit: DoD photo by Glenn Fawcett

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 15 2013 (IPS)

The U.S. secretary of defence has unveiled a series of new directives aimed at cracking down on an epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces, an issue that has seized the very top levels of the military brass in recent months.

According to the Pentagon’s most recent estimates, some 26,000 sexual assaults took place within the military ranks last year. That number represented a 35-percent increase over similar estimates for 2010, and fuelled a growing sense of outrage that some say could result in legislative action in coming months.“Small-scale military sexual assault solutions will not stem the cultural tide created by years of victim-blaming and retaliation." -- Former Marine Corps captain Anu Bhagwati

On Thursday, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel described the elimination of sexual assault among the armed forces as one of his agency’s “top priorities”, requiring “absolute and sustained commitment”.

Building on a series of actions announced in May, Hagel has now ordered the Defence Department to create a victim’s advocacy programme. Critically, such units would ensure that those alleging assault are given their own legally trained representation, long a key demand by some lawmakers and advocates.

The directives will also move oversight for investigations up the chain of command and outside of victims’ own military units, strengthen prohibitions on “inappropriate relations” involving trainers or recruiters, and allow for those accused of assault (rather than victims) to be reassigned to other units.

The announcement received immediate response, despite the fact that both Congress and the president are currently out of Washington on summer breaks. While most lauded the actions as moving in the right direction, there was broad agreement that they did not go far enough.

“The initiatives announced today are substantial, but only a step along a path toward eliminating this crime from our military ranks,” a White House press secretary said Thursday on behalf of President Barack Obama, who in May sharply directed the Defence Department to take extraordinary steps to curb military sexual abuse.

“The president expects this level of effort to be sustained not only in the coming weeks and months, but as far into the future as necessary.”

Advocates reacted even more strongly, referring to most of the new mandates as mere tweaks.

“Small-scale military sexual assault solutions will not stem the cultural tide created by years of victim-blaming and retaliation,” Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain and currently executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy group, told IPS in a statement.

“The solutions announced today demonstrate that the U.S. Department of Defence is still only wading in the shallow end on these issues, unable to create the deeper, large-scale solutions our service members and veterans need.”

Chilling effect

At issue for many is a decision that Defence Secretary Hagel, who took over his current position in February, has already indicated he would not willingly take: moving the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults outside of the military command structure altogether.

“The [Defence Department] order falls short of reform that would protect victims from the outset – by keeping the decision to prosecute within the chain of command,” Taryn Meeks, a former U.S. Navy lawyer and now executive director of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group, said Thursday in response.

“Prosecutors – and not commanders – must be given the authority to decide whether to proceed to trial … The new policies leave commanders, who are not legal experts, and may have inherent biases and conflicts of interest, with the authority to decide whether to go to trial, pick juries and reduce sentences. This is not a solution.”

While several pieces of legislation are currently pending in the U.S. Congress to address various parts of the assault crisis, just one would take the step of requiring completely independent prosecution.

The sponsor of that bill, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, stated Thursday that the Pentagon’s actions were “positive steps” but not the “leap forward” required.

“As we have heard over and over again from the victims, and the top military leadership themselves, there is a lack of trust in the system that has a chilling effect on reporting,” she said.

“Three hundred and two prosecutions out of an estimated 26,000 cases just isn’t good enough under any metric. It is time for Congress to seize the opportunity.”

According to Protect Our Defenders’ Meeks, 46 senators have publicly supported Gillibrand’s amendment.

“[W]e are very close to this fundamental reform of the system,” Meeks says. “We are at a historic moment and we hope that all lawmakers will see this as the tipping point.”

Restoring trust

For years, critics have lambasted the military for allowing commanding officers the final say in assault cases. Indeed, the current flurry of action on this issue was in large part sparked off by a sexual assault case in which a commanding officer overturned a guilty verdict.

More broadly, such an environment has been widely seen as coercive, resulting in toxic situations for those who file cases and, as Gillibrand notes, intimidating countless other victims into silence.

Of those who did report an assault last year, nearly two-thirds said they experienced retaliation, according to an official report. A quarter of military assault victims identified their offender as within their chain of command, the report found, while half of victims said they decided not to report the attack because they believed there would be no response.

On Thursday, Pentagon officials admitted that the new measures were necessary in order to restore the trust of service members.

“Frankly, we want increased unrestricted reporting and we can only get that if we can work with the trust of the victim,” Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, director of the Joint Staff, told reporters.

Yet he also noted that his office has been and will continue working “very closely” with Senator Gillibrand and other lawmakers, and suggested that additional changes could be on the horizon.

“We believe there’s merit in many of the legislative issues,” Scaparrotti said. “So we’re going to look at this and, frankly, if we believe we can make a difference in this problem set, we’ll look strongly at enacting other initiatives that perhaps aren’t in this group here today.”

Members of Congress, meanwhile, are clear that they will continue legislative pushes regardless of Pentagon actions.

“Today’s announcement has little bearing on the fact that Congress will soon mandate a host of historic reforms,” Senator Claire McCaskill, the sponsor of currently pending legislation on military assault, told IPS in a statement, “but it’s evidence that the Defence Department is now treating this problem with the seriousness that we expect, and that survivors deserve.”

The U.S. Department of Defence is announcing that reported cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military last year rose again to 3,374, a six percent increase over 2011 and a record high.

Yet the figure that is causing widespread anger here is the estimated number of unreported cases – some 26,000 incidents of rape or assault. That’s a significant rise even over last year’s estimated figure of 19,000, an astonishingly high number that constituted the first time that the U.S. military had released estimates for unreported incidents.“Unless Congress removes the institutional bias from the military judicial system, sexual predators will continue to wreak havoc on our Armed Forces." -- Former Marine Corps Captain Anu Bhagwati

In a new annual report released Tuesday, the Pentagon says some 70 sexual assaults may be taking place within the U.S. military every day, affecting more than six percent of all women in active service and around 1.2 percent of men over the past year. Other official figures suggest that one in five servicewomen could be experiencing such assaults.

“Sexual assault is a crime that undermines trust within military units and is an affront to the basic values our Service members defend,” the report, available here and here, states. “While the Department has taken a multifaceted approach to fundamentally change the way the Department confronts sexual assault, there is still much work to do.”

Such figures constitute an increase of more than a third during just the past half-decade, and have clearly exasperated the top military leadership.

“[S]exual assault is an outrage; it is a crime … And if it’s happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they’re wearing,” President Barack Obama told reporters Tuesday.

“So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programmes or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable – prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonourably discharged. Period.”

The Pentagon’s new report was given an inadvertent curtain-raiser on Monday, when the Air Force’s head officer in charge of sexual assault prevention was himself arrested on charges of sexual assault.

On Tuesday, President Obama noted that he had spoken with Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel earlier in the day and told him to “exponentially step up our game”. He also said that he wanted military members who have experienced sexual assault “to hear directly from their commander-in-chief that I’ve got their backs.”

Hours later, Secretary Hagel unveiled a new “prevention and response” plan aimed at increasing accountability, stepping up punishment and, ultimately, trying to end military sexual assault outright. The strategy includes the formation of a new nine-person panel, appointed by both the Pentagon and Congress, tasked with coming up with concrete recommendations within a year.

“This department may be nearing a stage where the frequency of this crime and the perception that there is tolerance of it could very well undermine our ability to effectively carry out the mission and to recruit and retain the good people we need,” Hagel told reporters Tuesday.

“We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”

62 percent retaliation

While the new Pentagon panel will be tasked with making recommendations on the full gamut of military sexual assault, one element that probably won’t be included is the possibility of removing responsibility for related investigation and punishment from the military structure itself.

This despite Secretary’s Hagel’s own contention on Tuesday that much of the problem has to do with the military’s “culture”. And despite critics’ contentions that assault victims are far less likely to report their experiences if they have to do so to a commanding officer.

Indeed, according to U.S. Senator Patty Murray, co-author of new legislation on the issue, some 62 percent of military personnel who have reported sexual abuse have experienced some form of retaliation.

“Every American should be outraged by the disturbing numbers from this year’s Defense Department sexual assault report, but no one should surprised,” Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps Captain and the executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy group, told IPS in an e-mail.

“Today we still have a military justice system in which commanding officers are granted the authority over the entire criminal justice process – instead of trained, impartial attorneys and judges.”

Although last month Hagel received plaudits for putting forth a policy recommendation that would weaken or do away with commanding officers’ abilities to overturn courts-martial decisions in cases of sexual assault, on Tuesday he nonetheless stated that he did not believe that the panel should look into taking this power outside of the military chain of command.

“It is my strong belief … that the ultimate authority has to remain within the command structure,” Hagel said. “We do have to go back and review every aspect of that chain of command, of that accountability … [but] taking the ultimate responsibility away from the military – I think that would just weaken the system.”

Yet according to SWAN’s Bhagwati, more may need to be done to regularise investigation and accountability procedures.

“Unless Congress removes the institutional bias from the military judicial system,” she says, “sexual predators will continue to wreak havoc on our Armed Forces, and our troops will continue to face a well-founded fear of reporting, institutional retaliation, and career jeopardy.”

In recent weeks, the U.S. Congress has focused increasingly on military sexual assault, and on Tuesday senators put forward a bill aimed at combating the issue. According to a release, the 380,000 members of the Military Officers Association of America have already “strongly endorsed” the bill, which is slated to be introduced in the House in coming weeks.

Among other elements, the legislation “would create a new category of legal advocates, called Special Victims’ Counsels, who would be responsible for advocating on behalf of the interests of the victim,” Senator Murray, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“These SVCs would also advise the victim on the range of legal issues they may face. For example, when a young Private First Class is intimidated into not reporting a sexual assault by threatening her with unrelated legal charges – like underage drinking – this new advocate would be there to protect her and tell her the truth.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Credit: DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

The new U.S. secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, pushed Monday for reforms of the armed forces’ judicial code that would roll back an archaic provision allowing high-ranking commanders to overturn military court verdicts, a move that would particularly impact on cases involving sexual assaults.

The move comes in direct response to a major recent scandal. Last month, a three-star lieutenant-general overturned the November conviction of a lieutenant-colonel for aggravated sexual assault involving a civilian employee at a NATO air base in Italy.There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable.

The general, Craig Franklin, had not participated in the trial and gave no explanation for his decision to overturn the conviction and one-year sentence. Thereafter, the accused, Lieutenant-Colonel James Wilkerson, was reportedly released from prison and put back on active duty.

The case enraged Pentagon officials, politicians and the public alike, but effectively highlighted the decision’s legality under current military law. Not only does Article 60 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) allow high-ranking officers to lessen or eliminate punishment following court-martial decisions, but it also precludes the possibility of any appeal.

Though the Department of Defence says that guilty verdicts are overturned in only around one percent of cases, sentences are reportedly modified far more often.

Shortly after he took over as secretary of defence, Hagel ordered an inquiry into the issue. On Monday, he announced that he would be forwarding proposed legislation to the U.S. Congress that would make two changes to Article 60.

“First, eliminating the discretion for a [commander] to change the findings of a court-martial, except for certain minor offenses,” Hagel explained, admitting that the proposal would not completely do away with these powers.

“Second, requiring the [commander] to explain in writing any changes made to court-martial sentences … to justify – in an open, transparent and recorded manner – any decision to modify a court-martial sentence.”

Hagel noted that the proposed changes have the “full support” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of each of the major arms of the U.S. military.

“This is the beginning of a long process to ensure that victims of military sexual assault – whether they are women or men – get justice,” Barbara Boxer, a senator from California, said following Hagel’s announcement. Several legislative proposals to tweak Article 60 are already underway.

While the new regulations, if passed by Congress, would affect all types of major infractions, both the timing and the content of Hagel’s remarks make clear that the focus is on a current spate of assaults within the armed forces. The U.S. military is in the midst of what has been widely described as a sexual assault epidemic, reeling from what was estimated in 2012 by top Pentagon officials to be some 19,000 cases per year.

Relatively few of those are actually reported. However, even of those that are reported, recent studies have found that less than 10 percent of the accused are actually held accountable.

“[I]t is clear the Department [of Defence] still has much more work to do to fully address the problem of sexual assault in the ranks – this crime is damaging this institution,” Hagel said Monday.

“There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable. The current situation should offend every single service member and civilian.”

Systemic bias

The UCMJ was created around the same time as the founding of the United States, and part of the rationale for Article 60 was both to encourage plea bargains and to allow for an appeals process that otherwise did not exist. Yet a senior defence official here on Monday told reporters that “the world had changed”.

Indeed, while the U.S. system was originally based on the United Kingdom’s, the latter’s was changed in the mid-1990s after the European Court of Human Rights found it gave too much power to top commanders. Canada, Israel and New Zealand have reportedly made similar decisions.

Advocates and campaigners are applauding Hagel’s move. Yet many are also stepping up calls for the Pentagon to make more substantive changes, particularly to deal with what some have called systemic bias within the military against victims of sexual assault.

“Defence Secretary Hagel’s move toward disallowing generals to overturn convictions within the military is a step in the right direction, but only one step,” Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University and the author of “The Lonely Soldier”, on the experiences of U.S. women soldiers in Iraq, told IPS.

“He still needs to end the inherent conflict of interest built into the military criminal justice system by taking the decisions to investigate and prosecute those accused of sexual assault out of military hands altogether.”

A group working on the issue of military rape, the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), commended the proposed changes, noting the proposal is encouraging in the aftermath of the “travesty of justice” surrounding the Wilkerson case.

“However, post-trial review is only one component of the command-driven system that currently governs how military crimes are handled,” Anu Bhagwati, SWAN executive director and a former Marine Corps captain, said in a statement sent to IPS.

“Unless pre-trial decision-making around investigation and prosecution of offenses is also removed from the hands of commanders and given to impartial prosecutors, military criminal justice will remain a lesser form of justice, both for victims and defendants.”

Hagel appears to be aware that additional reform measures will be necessary, noting Monday that he will soon announce new actions to strengthen the Pentagon’s “prevention and response efforts”.

He also unveiled the formation of several new independent panels that will be tasked with reviewing “the systems used to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate crimes involving sexual assault, and judicial proceedings of sexual assault cases.”

Senator Charles T. Hagel smiles with Senator John Warner, retired, (left) and Senator Sam Nunn, retired, (right). Credit: DoD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 2013 (IPS)

Ending a long and controversial battle, the U.S. Senate Tuesday voted 58-41 to confirm former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama’s new secretary of defence.

The confirmation, which followed a more-lopsided 71-27 vote to end a Republican-led filibuster against the decorated Vietnam War veteran, broke mainly along party lines, with four Republican senators joining the 52 Democrats and two independents in the chambre in voting to approve the nomination.

The vote marked a major defeat for hard-line neo-conservatives, notably the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and its chairman, Republican operative Bill Kristol, whose “Weekly Standard” magazine and website published a constant stream of charges against the former Nebraska senator, ranging from anti-Semitism to deep hostility toward Israel, since word that Hagel was Obama’s preferred candidate for the post in mid-December.

It was an unprecedented, multi-million-dollar effort to defeat a cabinet nominee that included expensive, full-page, 11th-hour ads in the Wall Street Journal – whose editorial page also featured a series of attacks on Hagel – and other publications, as well as anti-Hagel TV spots in key states.

ECI and several other well-funded “astro-turf” groups tried first to pre-empt the nomination, which came in January, and then to derail it by promoting a filibuster by Republicans and persuading – albeit unsuccessfully — key Democratic senators considered susceptible to pressure by more-mainstream Israel lobby groups to defect.

In grueling eight-hour testimony late last month, as well as one-on-one meetings with senators, however, Hagel, who served in the Senate from 1997 to 2009, reassured doubters that he was both a strong supporter of Israel’s security and, despite a number of previous public statements suggesting that military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be grave mistake, he would indeed recommend such a course of action if all diplomatic efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear programme fell short.

In a statement issued after the vote, Kristol in insisted that ECI was “proud” of its role during the confirmation battle, adding that, “We are heartened that that the overwhelming majority of senators from one of the major parties voted against confirming Mr. Hagel.

“We take some comfort in Mr. Hagel’s confirmation conversions on the issues of Israel and Iran, and do believe that, as a result of this battle, Mr. Hagel will be less free to pursue dangerous policies at the Defense Department and less inclined to advocate them within the administration,” he added.

Hagel will now join his fellow-Vietnam War veteran, Secretary of State John Kerry, as one of the three top national-security officials in the cabinet, along with Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, White House Chief of Staff and former deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, Vice President Joe Biden, as well as U.N. Amb. Susan Rice, as the president’s key foreign-policy advisers.

Yet to be confirmed is Obama’s choice for director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Brennan, the top counter-terrorism official in the White House during most of Obama’s first term.

While Hagel is the only Republican among the top national-security officials, he is widely seen as generally sharing their worldview on key foreign-policy and defence issues – notably, the desirability of maintaining a “light military footprint”, especially in the Middle East; “engaging” actual and potential geo-political foes through diplomacy; using military power only as a last resort; and relying more on multilateral institutions, such as the U.N. and NATO, and regional actors, to address key crisis situations, sometimes derisively referred to by neo-conservatives and other hawks as “leading from behind”.

One basic tenet of their beliefs was expressed by former Pentagon chief Robert Gates two years ago when he told Army cadets: “Any future defence secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as Gen. (Douglas) MacCarthur so delicately put it.”

As Vietnam veterans who came to believe that the war in Indochina was a major strategic error – as well as a waste of U.S. blood and treasure – Hagel and Kerry are regarded as particularly sceptical of the effectiveness of military action and of “nation-building” and counter-insurgency strategy – a scepticism also shared by Biden, whose influence on foreign policy is seen as having risen over the past two years.

Biden’s top foreign-policy aide for many years, Tony Blinken, has now taken McDonough’s place as deputy national security adviser.

Indeed, in a column published over the weekend, foreign-policy insider par excellence, David Ignatius, warned that Obama’s second-term team is so unified in their general foreign-policy outlook that Obama “is perilously close to groupthink”.

While both Kerry, who hails from the liberal-international wing of the Democratic Party, and Hagel, who is close to the rapidly disappearing “realist” wing of the Republican Party (of which Gates was also a part), both voted in 2002 to give George W. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, they did so with considerable reservations at the time and, within a year of the invasion, began criticising what Obama himself called a “dumb” war.

Hagel’s criticism of the Iraq war – as well as his neutrality in the 2008 race between Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain – has been cited as a major reason why most Republicans opposed his nomination, although not to the extent of supporting an indefinite filibuster against it.

But most political analysts here believe most Republican senators would have gone along with the nomination – as is customary for most presidential cabinet appointees – had the neo-conservatives and their funders, as well as elements of the more-mainstream Israel lobby, not mounted such a vigorous and expensive effort to defeat him.

Unlike most members of Congress, for whom the influence of the Israel lobby looms very large, Hagel spoke out publicly about what he believed were Israel’s poor treatment of Palestinians, the urgent necessity of a two-state solution, the importance of engaging Hamas in a peace process, and the potentially catastrophic dangers of an Israeli or U.S. military attack on Iran.

In at least one interview, he also spoke out against the “intimidate(ing)” influence of what he called the “Jewish lobby” – a phrase for which he was later accused of anti-semitism, and for which he subsequently apologised. (A major component of the Israel lobby consists of evangelical Christians, a core Republican constituency.)

Indeed, during his grueling and less-than-impressive eight-hour confirmation hearing, Republicans focused their questioning almost exclusively on his views regarding Israel and Iran.

Indeed, “Israel” was mentioned 179 times (Iran 171) – more often than Iraq (30), Afghanistan (27), Russia (23), Palestine or Palestinian (22), Syria (18), North Korea (11), Pakistan (10), Egypt (9), China (5), NATO (5), Libya (2), Bahrain (2), Somalia (2), Al-Qaeda (2), and Mali, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea (once each) combined.

The questioning was so Israel-centred that the popular satirical weekly television programme, Saturday Night Live, even devoted a skit broadcast over the web depicting Hagel’s Republican inquisitors competing to avow their devotion to the Jewish state.

But whether Hagel will indeed play a key role in determining U.S. policy toward Israel remains to be seen. For now, the much bigger challenge he faces is the implications of the so-called budget sequestration that appears certain to take effect Mar. 1 and as a result of which the Pentagon could face as much as 600 billion dollars in cuts to its budget over the next 10 years in addition to the almost-500 billion dollars in cuts that have already been mandated.

Ironically, the impact of the sequestration on the Pentagon’s budget is also seen as potentially disastrous to the neo-conservatives who opposed Hagel.

Given their strong conviction that Israeli security and global stability rests primarily on U.S. military power, they have spoken out strongly against growing Republican complacency about the effects of sequestration on the Pentagon, fearing that it heralds a resurgence of isolationist sentiment in the party. But instead of focusing primarily on rallying Republicans to compromise with Obama on the budget, they spent significantly more time and resources on defeating Hagel.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Senator Charles T. Hagel answers a question at his Jan. 31, 2013 confirmation hearing. If confirmed, Hagel will become the 24th Secretary of Defense. DoD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Despite an appeal Thursday by 15 right-wing Republican senators for President Barack Obama to withdraw the nomination of Chuck Hagel as his next defence secretary, the former Republican senator from Nebraska appears virtually certain to be confirmed as Pentagon chief by the full Senate next week.

The fact that his arch-foes – almost all of them from staunchly “red” U.S. states in the South and Rocky Mountain West – were able to get only 15 out of the 40 Republicans who used a filibuster threat to prevent a confirmation vote last week suggested that the anti-Hagel campaign, launched with a bang of anti-semitism accusations more than two months ago, is ending with more of a whimper.

Indeed, Thursday’s announcement by Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, a senior member of the crucial defence appropriations subcommittee, that he will vote to confirm Hagel delivered a major blow to his foes.

With two other Republican senators already pledged to vote “aye” and more than half a dozen other Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, who have promised not to delay a final vote any longer, it appears all but certain that Hagel will be confirmed with a healthy majority of as least 58 votes in the 100-seat chamber.

Hagel’s enemies, led by hard-line neo-conservatives whose political views are close to those of Israel’s Likud Party, had hoped that the 11-day hiatus between last week’s threatened filibuster and the scheduled vote next Tuesday would bring to light new evidence – specifically, that he was insufficiently hostile to Iran or overly critical of Israel — that, in their eyes, would disqualify him from running the U.S. military.

That effort, however, has so far come up short. Apart from a fraudulent rumour that he had once spoken before a non-existent “Friends of Hamas” organisation, the only “new” evidence they were able to find was that Hagel had once warned Israel risked becoming an “apartheid state” – something that at least two Israeli prime ministers have also recently warned about — if it did not settle with the Palestinians.

They also found that he may once have complained that the State Department sometimes acts as if it were an “adjunct of the Israeli foreign ministry”, an assessment shared by several former senior U.S. diplomats who have worked on the Israel-Palestinian issue.

While both statements were cited by neo-conservatives as proof that Hagel hated Israel, and even a couple of mainstream Jewish organisations – the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League – suggested such remarks bore further scrutiny, they didn’t get much traction.

In any event, they don’t appear to have had had their intended effect: to peel off one or two key pro-Israel – preferably Jewish — Democrats who have so far stuck with Obama’s choice despite their discomfort with Hagel’s Republican affiliation and his view that U.S. and Israeli interests are not always one and the same.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer has been a particular target of the neo-conservative campaign, but he re-affirmed his support for the decorated Vietnam veteran Wednesday, much to the disgust of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, Commentary magazine’s Contentions blog, and Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, all of whom have played key roles in trying to rally opposition to the nomination.

In their letter to Obama, the 15 senators, who included the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, James Inhofe, as well as a senior party foreign-policy spokesman, Lindsay Graham, and rising stars Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (whose McCarthyesque interrogation of Hagel during his confirmation hearing drew rebukes from party elders, including McCain), argued that the likelihood that Hagel will only get a handful of Republican votes should disqualify him.

“It would be unprecedented for a Secretary of Defense to take office without the broad base of bipartisan support and confidence needed to serve effectively in this critical position,” they wrote. “…(I)n the history of this position, none has ever been confirmed with more than 11 opposing votes. The occupant of this critical office should be someone whose candidacy is neither controversial nor divisive.”

On more substantive issues, they complained that Hagel has “proclaimed the legitimacy of the current regime in Tehran, which has violently repressed its own citizens, rigged recent elections, provided material support for terrorism, and denied the Holocaust.

“Any sound strategy on Iran must be underpinned by the highly credible threat of U.S. military force (to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities),” they argued. “If Senator Hagel becomes Secretary of Defense, the military option will have near zero credibility. This sends a dangerous message to the regime in Tehran, as it seeks to obtain the means necessary to harm both the United States and Israel.”

The letter’s focus on both Israel and the alleged threat posed to it by Iran – the same issues that overwhelmingly dominated Hagel’s confirmation hearing last month – reflected the degree to which defence of the Jewish state has become a litmus test for core Republican constituencies in the Rocky Mountain states and the so-called “Bible Belt” that stretches from Texas and Oklahoma to the southeastern Atlantic seaboard.

Christian Zionists, who play an out-sized role in Republican primary campaigns, are especially strong and politically engaged in these states.

Indeed, Rubio, who gave the official Republican reply to Obama’s State of the Union address last week, departed immediately afterward for a visit to Israel.

“Any Republican candidate wants to plant his flag in Israel, not just in Iowa and New Hampshire (early primary election states),” Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, told the Washington Times. “Christian conservatives are a big chunk of (Republican) primary voters in a large majority of states, and they care about Israel as much as Jewish Americans do.”

Indeed, Lindsay Graham, normally seen as a relative moderate in the party, has been particularly harsh in attacking Hagel, due reportedly in important part to pre-empt a challenge next year by a more right-wing candidate in his state of South Carolina.

Israel’s centrality for the red-state Republicans in the debate over Hagel is particularly remarkable given the extraordinarily strong support his nomination has received from virtually every veteran’s group in the country.

In a highly unusual statement last month, the traditionally hawkish, but officially non-partisan Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) called Hagel “uniquely qualified to lead the Department of Defense”. Veterans groups have historically been a key Republican constituency, especially in the South.

Former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, who was himself badly wounded in World War II and has long been a favourite of the VFW and other veterans’ groups, used similar language in endorsing Hagel’s nomination here Thursday.

According to some analysts, the senators who have been most outspoken in opposing Hagel, especially those from Texas, Oklahoma, and other states with a disproportionate number of big military bases and defence-manufacturing facilities, may yet regret their stance, particularly in light of the anticipated defence cuts caused by the so-called sequestration.

“While Hagel had to play defense during the (confirmation) hearing, that will change when he gets to the Pentagon,” noted former senior Ronald Reagan defence official Lawrence Korb and Lauren Linde in an article on foreignpolicy.com this week.

“Based upon his past experiences in business, the non-profit world, and the Senate, he will be a take-charge leader, and one of his challenges will be reducing defense spending. And his choices could hurt the constituents of the very officials who have done the most to hurt him.”

Indeed, that may help to explain Shelby’s decision to vote for Hagel’s nomination, according to Joel Rubin, a Capitol Hill veteran at the Ploughshares Fund.

“Shelby seems to be making a very pragmatic choice about wanting to have a relationship with the new defense secretary in this era of tightening budgets – budgets that could also potentially affect projects back at home.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Senator Chuck Hagel at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee Jan. 31, 2013. Credit: DoD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2013 (IPS)

If former Defence Secretary-designate Sen. Chuck Hagel’s lacklustre performance at his confirmation hearing Thursday heartened neo-conservatives and other hawks opposed to his nomination, those who argued that the Israel lobby has been exerting too great an influence on U.S. foreign policy were ecstatic.

Indeed, Stephen Walt, the Harvard international relations professor who co-authored the “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, issued a special thanks to the Senate Armed Services Committee that held the hearing on his foreignpolicy.com blog Friday, suggesting that controversial 2007 book should sell like hotcakes after what he called “the Hagel circus”.

“I want to thank the Emergency Committee for Israel, Sheldon Adelson, and the Senate Armed Services Committee for providing such a compelling vindication of our views,” wrote Walt, who, among other things, has been accused of anti-Semitism for writing a book that criticised the allegedly excessive influence the Israel lobby wields over U.S. foreign policy and the public debate that surrounds it.

As evidence, Walt cited the number of mentions of Israel and its most powerful regional foe, Iran, received in the course of Hagel’s eight-hour ordeal – 166 and 144, respectively, according to a compilation by the Internet publication, Buzzfeed.

By comparison, he noted, the epidemic of suicides among U.S. troops – a necessary concern for any incoming Pentagon chief – was addressed only twice.

In fact, the degree to which Israel and the threat posed to it by Iran dominated the hearing was somewhat understated by Buzzfeed. The full transcript revealed that Israel was brought up no less than 178 times, followed closely by Iran with 171 mentions.

Those numbers compared with a grand total of five mentions of China, the central focus of the Obama administration’s much ballyhooed “pivot” from the Middle East to the Asia/Pacific; one mention (by Hagel himself) of Japan, Washington’s closest Asian ally whose territorial dispute with China has recently escalated to dangerous levels; and one mention of South Korea, Washington’s other major treaty ally in Northeast Asia.

Similarly, NATO, Washington’s historically most important military alliance – and one with which it fought a successful air war in Libya last year and is currently fighting its 12th year in Afghanistan – warranted a total of five mentions.

“It is extraordinary that, in an eight-hour hearing, as little attention was devoted as it was to issues such as China and NATO, which ought to be near the top of the concerns for any secretary of defence of the United States,” said Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“The emphasis on Israel and Iran – which, in American politics, has become for the most part an Israel issue – demonstrates that the senators were far less concerned with the strategic questions that the secretary of defence should be focused on and much more interested in trying to defeat a nominee who has strayed from political orthodoxy, especially on issues related to Israel,” he told IPS.

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator from Nebraska, has come under sustained attack from neo-conservatives – who still exercise a preponderant influence on the Republican Party’s foreign policy views despite the general unpopularity of the Iraq war which they championed – since he was first rumoured to be Obama’s top choice to succeed Leon Panetta as Pentagon chief in mid-December.

The anti-Hagel attacks have been carried out by a number of groups, such as the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), that have refused to disclose the identity of their donors.

The New York Times reported Sunday that billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the single biggest contributor to the Republican presidential campaign last year and a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was involved in the campaign, by far the most expensive and organised ever mounted against a cabinet nominee.

Initially joined in their attacks by some leaders of the more-mainstream and bipartisan Israel lobby, they charged, among other things, that Hagel was anti-Semitic (in part because he had used the phrase “Jewish lobby” on one occasion) and hostile to Israel.

Conversely, they complained, he has been too sympathetic toward Palestinians, too eager to engage Iran and other Israeli foes diplomatically, and too averse to using military force, particularly against Iran if negotiations over its nuclear programme fail.

On these issues, they argued in a mantra subsequently adopted by half a dozen Republican senators, Hagel was “out of the mainstream” or even “far to the left of” Obama himself.

In fact, Hagel’s views on the Middle East and the use of military force, in particular, not only largely reflect those of the administration and, according to public-opinion polls, of a war-weary electorate, but also of most of the foreign-policy elite. Dozens of retired top-ranked diplomatic, intelligence, and military officials, as well as former Cabinet officers from both Republican and Democratic administration have rallied to Hagel’s defence in recent weeks.

But those “mainstream” views are not reflected in Congress, where the Israel lobby has long wielded its greatest influence.

While its main institutions, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), declared their neutrality on the nominee after his formal nomination by Obama earlier this month, they worked with sympathetic senators from both parties and their staffers to ensure that particular questions would be asked that would elicit reassuring answers with respect to both supporting Israel and preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear bomb by any means necessary.

The effort – which was supplemented by angry prosecutorial performances by several senators, notably John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Ted Cruz, closely associated with neo-conservatives – largely worked, as Hagel recanted or softened some of his more-provocative previous statements to the disappointment of many of his supporters.

But, in some respects, the effort, as suggested by Walt, succeeded too well, simply because it demonstrated quite dramatically to the interested public how completely Israel dominates the foreign-policy agenda, at least on Capitol Hill.

After all, the U.S. remains the world’s one superpower with interests in every country. Its defence budget – at well over half a trillion dollars this year — is greater than the combined budgets of the 10 next-most powerful militaries.

Yet Israel was mentioned more often in the hearing, according to IPS’s tally, than the following countries or entities combined: Iraq (30), Afghanistan (27), Russia (23), Palestine or Palestinian (22), Syria (18), North Korea (11), Pakistan (10), Egypt (9), China (5), NATO (5), Libya (2), Bahrain (2), Somalia (2), Al-Qaeda (2), and Mali, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea (once each).

Several key regional powers with which Washington has been trying hard to build or already enjoys strong defence relationships – notably India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia – were not mentioned even a single time. Vietnam was mentioned 41 times but exclusively in relation to Hagel’s wartime service there or his work as a senior official in the Veterans Administration.

“They were not asking questions that had any relevance to the tasks facing the secretary of defence, in terms of either the military or budgetary challenges we face,” noted Amb. Chas. Freeman (ret.), whose appointment early in the Obama administration to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) provoked such a furious campaign by neo-conservatives and key Israel lobby figures that he felt compelled to withdraw his name from consideration.

“So there was no serious discussion of defence or larger strategic issues,” he told IPS. “What was there was a lot of grandstanding about whether or not the nominee was politically correct.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

President Barack Obama has selected Senator John Kerry as his next Secretary of State. Above, Senator Kerry in 2009. Credit: Ralph Alswang for Center for American Progress Action Fund/ CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him “the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead”.

But Obama offered no hints as to whom he will pick for the rest of his national security team, including replacements for Pentagon chief Leon Panetta and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director General David Petraeus (retired), who resigned abruptly last month in the wake of reports of an affair.

The White House reportedly intended to announce its picks for all three posts Friday but backed off, primarily in response to an intense campaign led by prominent neo-conservatives and leaders of the Israel lobby against the possibility of former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as head of the Pentagon.

Hagel, who currently serves as co-chair of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and like Kerry is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has come under heavy fire for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 27 years and chaired it since 2009.

In that post, he has defended the Obama administration’s policies and has occasionally carried out specific diplomatic missions on the its behalf. Where he has differed from Obama on foreign policy, he has done so privately.

In his new role, he is expected to be very much a “team player” who will faithfully carry out orders from the White House where national security adviser Tom Donilon and his deputy, Denis McDonough, are likely to continue dominating policy-making in Obama’s second term.

His nomination has been a foregone conclusion here since United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice took herself out of consideration earlier this month after Republicans accused her of misleading the public about the circumstances surrounding the attacks on the American embassy in Benghazi, in which Washington’s ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other embassy officers were killed.

Rice and Kerry were reportedly the only two people being considered to succeed Clinton, whose tenure was marked by seemingly unrelenting overseas travel and a strong – if very low-profile – emphasis on building transnational partnerships on global issues, notably women’s empowerment, climate change, education, health and engagement with civil society.

Clinton is also credited with restoring the State Department’s status, in part by prioritising “smart power” over the “hard power” favoured by the Bush administration.

Kerry first burst into the public spotlight as an articulate spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Unlike most children of patrician families who evaded the military draft in the 1960’s, Kerry enlisted in the Navy and served on so-called “Swift Boats” that patrolled the Mekong Delta in what was then South Vietnam.

He was elected to the Senate in 1984. During the 1990s he worked with Senator John McCain to help establish diplomatic ties with Hanoi, a benchmark formally achieved under the Bill Clinton administration in 1995.

Kerry acted as a loyal supporter of that administration’s foreign policy, supporting Washington’s controversial interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, albeit with some reservations. 

Under the Bush administration, Kerry voted for the resolution that gave the president the authority to invade Iraq, although like Hagel he quickly became a critic of the war. Republicans have criticised this flip but Kerry is still unlikely to encounter serious opposition from Republican senators to his confirmation next month.

His general foreign policy views largely echo Obama’s. “If there is such a thing as a Kerry Doctrine, it is a clear-eyed willingness to pursue engagement and test the intentions of other countries, even present and former enemies or difficult partners on the world stage,” wrote his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, on the foreignpolicy.com website Friday.

“Kerry – patient but quick to see opportunities – has a negotiator’s mindset,” he noted, adding that, in addition to his expertise on Southeast Asia, he has “amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle East” and “was the first senator to call for President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down”.

In 2009, Kerry travelled to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, suggesting on his return that Assad was a “reformer” who could be weaned from his alliance with Iran. He has since called for Assad to step down and supported the administration’s measures to achieve that goal.

On Iran, which is likely to hover around the top of the administration’s foreign policy agenda for the next year or longer, Kerry has strongly supported diplomatic engagement, as well as tightening economic sanctions against Tehran as pressure to curb its nuclear programme.

In introducing Kerry at the White House, Obama stressed the senator’s views about U.S. military power. “Having served with valour in Vietnam,” Obama said, “he understands that we have a responsibility to use American power wisely, especially our military power.”

That understanding could be critical with regard to both Syria and Iran in the coming months, but how much more influence Kerry will exert on the administration’s decisions than he has as the Foreign Relations Committee chair is unclear.

Whoever is chosen to head the Pentagon, however, is likely to wield more influence on decisions of war and peace. As a result, Panetta’s succession is considered particularly critical, particularly to neo-conservatives and the Israel lobby.

Hagel, a personal friend of Kerry, hails from the Republican realist tradition of former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush, and could be expected to strongly reinforce opposition to any further U.S. military intervention in the greater Middle East.

As more of a liberal internationalist, on the other hand, Kerry may be somewhat more inclined to use military force to achieve a “greater good”, such as an end to the increasingly bloody civil war in Syria or preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

If Obama decides that nominating Hagel will exact too high a political price, he is likely to turn either to the current deputy defence secretary, Ashton Carter, or the former undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy.