How Barack Obama took Pentagon’s power away

By Jonathan Allen & Mike Dorning
President Barack Obama pushed defence secretary Chuck Hagel out of his job on Monday after less than 21 months, with White House officials citing disagreements over Iraq and Syria policy.

Hagel, who had grown increasingly frustrated with tight White House management of policy, was ready to go anyway, a US defence official said. He resigned without a fight.

The Vietnam veteran’s departure spotlights how one of Washington’s most powerful jobs – overseeing the world’s strongest military and a budget of more than $600 billion – has faded in the Obama era. Under Obama, the strict White House control often has left Hagel and other Cabinet members with limited authority and autonomy.

Like his immediate predecessors at the Pentagon, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, Hagel chafed at the way a small cadre of Obama loyalists centralised power in the White House. When Obama backed off a threat to bomb Syria last year, he made the decision on a walk with his chief of staff, Denis McDonough. Hagel was informed of the decision later

Tension between Hagel and White House aides got so bad, the defence official said, that Hagel would often phone Obama after the meetings to make sure his voice was heard. Now, the challenge for the White House is finding a successor who’s willing to take a relatively weak throne and content to avoid dissent. That candidate will also have the task of changing the Pentagon even as career bureaucrats know there’s little time left under Obama to do so.

“Chuck was frustrated with aspects of the administration’s national security policy and decision-making process,” Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said in a statement on Monday. “His predecessors have spoken about the excessive micro-management they faced from the White House and how that made it more difficult to do their jobs successfully. Chuck’s situation was no different.”

The White House’s National Security Council staff, designed to coordinate policy among the various federal agencies, has grown substantially under Obama – to roughly 270 people from about 200 under President George W Bush, according to Reuters.

Its size and physical proximity to the White House, just across a small access road, have given it greater influence than Cabinet agencies in the development, and sometimes the implementation, of policy, according to a former defense official who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

POTENTIAL SUCCESSORS

Hagel’s possible successors include Flournoy and Ashton Carter, a former deputy defence secretary. Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and West Point graduate, took himself out of contention on Monday.