The best defense

President Obama is nominating Ashton Carter as his fourth secretary of defense, and it’s fair to ask why the previous three burned out so quickly. Many news stories, including one in this week’s New York Times, blame it on the “resentment” bred by White House “micromanagement.” Others lament the short supply of great men and women for the vaunted position.

But such views are false or misleading—figments of ahistorical sentimentalism.

Harry Truman had four secretaries of defense; no one regards his White House as excessively insular. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton each had three. Jimmy Carter is among just two presidents who got through a single term with a single defense secretary (the other was George H.W. Bush). Does anyone recall the Carter years as a shining era for American defense policy?

Charles Stevenson, author of SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense, notes that more than one-third of those who have held the post since it was created 67 years ago—nine out of 24—have been fired or forced out of office. By contrast, just two secretaries of state have been ousted in the 225 years of that job’s existence.

So many Pentagon chiefs have been punted not because they were ineffective or inefficient (though some were, including, it seems, Chuck Hagel), but rather because they ran into conflicts with the president, the Congress, or the military.

Stevenson says that a defense secretary has four jobs in one: manager of the Pentagon and the military, adviser to the president, war planner (when there is a war, and there often is), and diplomat to allies and adversaries. He or she has to do two or three of these jobs really well; few people can.

Nor is it true, contrary to the widespread impression, that Hagel’s term at the Pentagon has been so brief. Ten other defense secretaries have had still shorter tenures. (They include James Forrestal, Louis Johnson, and Les Aspin—three of the nine who were dismissed.)

Still, it’s no secret that the bench of really good candidates for the job—among Democrats and Republicans—is remarkably small. In the past few decades, top-rated universities have handed graduate degrees to hundreds, maybe thousands, of smart students in departments of national-security studies. Many of these people have ably filled second- and third-tiered posts at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council. But their training doesn’t prepare them for the top executive slots.

In Cold War times, many businessmen, bankers, and lawyers were placed in the top-tiered slots, and the fit was smooth. Their professions lent them experience in managing large organizations. And their business interests coincided with national-security interests: The dominant conflict of the day was capitalism vs. communism, and who better to grasp the contours of capitalism’s interests than a successful, internationally minded capitalist?

Today, business interests sometimes coincide with national interests, but at least as often they diverge—or have little to do with one another. The main challenges—terrorism, rogue states, nuclear proliferation, shifting regional powers, pandemics, climate change—don’t fit the traditional categories. What kinds of professions serve as natural breeding grounds for the 21st Century secretary of defense? The answer isn’t clear.

So what to make of Carter, the next nominee for the job? At first glance, he seems an odd candidate: educated in medieval history and theoretical physics, a bit of a wonk, and more than a bit arrogant—a trait that, Michael Crowley writes in Politico, “could be a warning sign in an administration that has already burned through three defense secretaries who resented White House micromanagement of their affairs.” Let’s deal for a moment with this business of resentment and micromanagement. First, Cabinet secretaries have always complained of White House interference (and many White House officials have always complained of Cabinet secretaries’ narrow-mindedness).

The deputy secretary of defense also, by tradition, runs the day-today operations of the entire Defense Department. For two-and-a-half years before he took that job, Carter was assistant secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics— which involved supervising all the weapons systems and dealing with program managers, industry executives, and congressional committees. In those forums, too, he’s known and respected; Senate leaders have already deemed his confirmation a slam-dunk.

Two questions are open. First, how skillfully will he make the move from being the guy who manages the enterprise behind the scenes to being the guy who openly makes the decisions? The two jobs require different skills, instincts, and degrees of stamina. Second, what does he know about broad issues of policy, and how cogently can he express his views?

Whether Carter works out depends on what Obama wants from him. If he wants a placeholder for his final two years in office, someone who can run the Pentagon with an iron hand and a thorough knowledge of the building and the industry, Carter might be the most qualified person out there.

If he wants advice on the crises of the day, from the vantage of the top civilian official (an insider-outsider in the Pentagon), then Carter is a bit of a gamble. At the same time, people who know Carter say he’s very smart, a fast learner, and a strong advocate for whatever views he’s pushing. The question then is what he’ll be pushing.