Chuck Hagel was supposed to be the defense secretary who disentangled the U.S. from foreign wars and shrank the defense budget. Now, he’s poised to launch his first attack.
It’s a tricky position for the Vietnam combat veteran who once said he’d do everything he could “to avoid needless, senseless war.”
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As recently as December, before he was secretary of defense, Hagel questioned whether the U.S. or any nation could affect the civil war in Syria. But this week he said if President Barack Obama ordered the Navy to strike Damascus in punishment for last week’s chemical weapons attack, the Pentagon would be ready.
“I didn’t say — would never say — that no nation should ever go to war,” Hagel told reporters during one of his stops on his week-long trip through Southeast Asia. “If mankind has not learned that you don’t resolve differences among people by other ways other than going to war, then we haven’t learned very much.”
(PHOTOS: Chuck Hagel’s career)
But there are reasons for going to war, he added. “Obviously, when a nation is threatened, a nation has the option always to protect itself, the right of self-defense. And there are humanitarian issues.”
One senior defense official said that “Hagel has an extremely practical perspective on war: when it’s avoidable, avoid it. When you must use force, use it. When it’s a closer call, consider it.”
Despite his support of the president, however, Hagel so far has not been the Cabinet member most out front on Syria. That would be Secretary of State John Kerry, who appeared on all the Sunday talk shows and made an earlier speech detailing the case against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
As a Republican senator from Nebraska in 2002, Hagel endorsed the resolution to authorize military action in Iraq, but he quickly became an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s handling of the conflict.
“The Iraq experience showed that it’s one thing to overthrow a regime, it’s another thing to remake a society,” said Larry Korb, a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan administration who’s now with the Center for American Progress. “I think that also goes with his experience in Vietnam, where we were trying to deal with the internal problems there.”
(See POLITICO’s full Syria coverage)
Because of these experiences, Hagel is probably quite supportive of the “president’s wanting to just use cruise missiles to send a message about the chemical weapons and not to intervene in the conflict,” Korb said.
Hagel’s Army experience in Vietnam and his time in the Senate debating Iraq and Afghanistan certainly make him a valuable adviser to Obama, said former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), Hagel’s onetime colleague in the Senate who introduced Hagel at his confirmation hearing in January.
“He has a strong feeling about the utilization of force having experienced it himself in Vietnam and a great, deep and abiding conscience that the welfare of the men and women in the armed forces is his primary responsibility,” Warner said.
(PHOTOS: International response to Syria)
Still, with so much still in question about the consequences of a U.S. strike in Syria, Hagel is having to walk a fine line between his own beliefs and leaving the door open for Obama to use military force if he chooses to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Hagel deserves credit, Korb said.
“What I think is terrific about the way he’s handling this is, unlike some of his predecessors, he’s not trying to publicly influence the president. He’s said, ‘We’re prepared to do whatever the president wants.’ That’s probably why Obama wanted him.”
In his public comments this week, Hagel continued to stress that the U.S. would not act without international support or a legal justification, even though both of these seem increasingly difficult to achieve with each passing day.
(PHOTOS: Scenes from Syria)
“Whatever is done or not done, it should be in concert with the international community. It should subscribe to and fall within the boundaries of international law,” Hagel said in his interview with the BBC in Brunei.
Hagel has long stressed the importance of consensus-building for the United States as it flexes its might and over the last few days, he has worked hard to build that consensus and show that he’s doing so.
The Pentagon shared photos of Hagel on the phone with British Secretary of State for Defense Philip Hammond and French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian, talking about Syria. Then he spoke by phone with German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere, pledging to continue consultations with him on Syria.
Meanwhile, as a former senator who fought publicly with his own Republican Party over Iraq, Hagel knows all too well how important it is to involve Congress when deciding whether to go to war, and yet he is serving in an administration that so far does not seem interested in a full congressional debate.
(Also on POLITICO: White House emphasizes proof, not strategy, on Syria)
Warner and another colleague of Hagel’s from his time in the Senate — former Republican Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana — said that would not help sell the case to the public.
“These are very complex issues that are not going to be resolved through a teleconference,” Lugar said, noting the phone calls the White House used to brief members of Congress on Syria.
For Warner, congressional debate is crucial before making a decision this important.
He cited the days-long debate that took place in the Senate in 1991 over whether to use force in Iraq.
Unlike today’s situation with Syria, a United Nations resolution had been passed and the public was overwhelmingly supportive of U.S. action — and even then, the Senate had a “long and intensive debate,” before narrowly passing the resolution, Warner said.
With Syria, “we’re moving forward judiciously at this point and I hope we continue to as a country,” Warner said.
