The Pentagon may be 800 miles to the north, but what happens inside the world’s largest low-rise office building has a huge effect on Tampa, where MacDill Air Force Base is the only installation in the United States with two major military commands. So when the President announces the Defense Secretary is stepping down, people here pay attention.
And have a vested interest in what happens next.
Monday morning, President Barack Obama announced that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will step down as soon as his replacement is confirmed by the Senate. Whoever replaces him will have to have President Barack Obama’s ear, say those with close ties to the commands at MacDill. And a more aggressive approach toward dealing with the plethora of woes facing the military, ranging from Islamic State to automatic budget cuts.
“The next Defense Secretary has to be somebody the President trusts enough to be in his inner circle,” said Stu Bradin, a recently retired Army colonel who ran the Global Special Operations Forces operational planning team at U.S. Special Operations Command and now runs the Global SOF Foundation, a Tampa think-tank focusing on commando issues. “If not, it does not bode well for the nation, simply because of the situation. We have a lot going on in the world.”
As the first enlisted combat veteran to become Secretary of Defense, and a man who still carries around shrapnel from being wounded in Vietnam, Hagel has great stature among the troops. But with the Pentagon facing more budget cuts while dealing with a challenging adversary in Islamic State, a longer commitment than anticipated in Afghanistan, Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere and China flexing its muscles in the Pacific among other issues, stature wasn’t enough, say Bradin and others who have planned and fought the nation’s military actions.
“You need someone with vision and courage and the ability to get stuff done,” said William Fallon, a retired admiral who ran U.S. Central Command from March, 2007 to March, 2008. “Given the way politics work, they have to be able to work with the White House and the national security team. I suspect that has been the problem with Hagel. The guy has stature.”
To Scott Mann, a retired Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel who helped create the Village Stability Operations program in Afghanistan and now runs the Tampa-based Stability Institute, Hagel’s departure, was “just a reflection of the administration coming to the slow realization what they are up against with ISIS and other global threats.”
Like Fallon, Mann says Hagel’s gravitas among troops did not reverberate in Washington.
“He did not garner the confidence of the military or administration,” said Mann.
“Obama is trying to posture himself as doing something about ISIS and had to DX Hagel,” said Mann, using military slang for exchanging damaged goods for something new.
“Under the circumstances, I think they probably made the right call,” said Mann. “If the Obama administration is going to get serious about ISIS, then changing Hagel midstream is the right move if they do the right thing. If the administration maintains the status quo and is just making Hagel the fall guy, then it’s just disruption.”
A defense secretary “can only move as far as the administration allows,” said Greg Celestan, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who organized and led the Centcom international Coalition Intelligence Coordination Center in Qatar during the Iraq war and was Team Chief of the Unconventional Targeting Cell during the Afghanistan war, responsible for developing actionable intelligence against high-value Al-Qaida and Taliban targets
“I don’t know what message it would send to have a more hawkish Secretary of Defense,” said Celestan, now chief executive officer of the Celestar Corp. and past president of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. “With all the things going on right now, the Republicans are saying that those things are the result of the failed policy of the current administration. That ISIS is the direct result of pulling out of Iraq too soon and some say that could happen in Afghanistan, which is why you see the administration has modified its stance and allowed extended operations into 2015.”
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee which will ultimately hold confirmation hearings on Hagel’s replacement, said he is disappointed at the news.
“Chuck Hagel is a great patriot,” said Nelson. “And I believe he has been a very good secretary of defense. I’m saddened that the White House was unable to keep him.”
Hagel’s departure is no panacea, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
“I have many concerns with President Obama’s national security policies and it is not clear to me that all of this administration’s failings fall at Secretary Hagel’s feet,” he said in a statement. “I hope that this is just the beginning of a shakeup of the President’s national security team to bring fresh perspectives to the unprecedented challenges we as a nation face.”
Rubio said Hagel’s replacement should be “a bold leader who will speak frankly to the White House and Congress about the need to end sequestration and get the department back on track. We also need someone capable of developing a strategy to defeat ISIL and consolidate the gains our men and women in uniform have made in Afghanistan. Instead of basing military strategy solely on politics, our next secretary of defense needs to be willing to tell the President and the American people the tough truth about what will be required to succeed in those conflicts.”
Regardless of who is nominated, one person relishing the chance to grill Obama’s choice is Sen John McCain (R-AZ), incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Global SOF Foundation’s Bradin.
“McCain is laying awake, just dreaming about this,” Bradin said.
PHOTO: President Barack Obama, shakes hands with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, during Hagel’s resignation announcement in an event in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington. Hagel is stepping down under pressure from Obama’s Cabinet, senior administration officials said Monday, following a tenure in which he has struggled to break through the White House’s insular foreign policy team. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS