Exclusive: Flournoy Drops Out of Race to Be Next Secretary of Defense by John Hudson and Yochi Dreazen, Foreign Policy
Michèle Flournoy, the most widely rumored candidate to replace Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense, has taken herself out of the running for the job, according to sources familiar with the situation. The decision complicates what will be one of the most important personnel decisions of President Barack Obama's second term.
Flournoy, the co-founder and CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank that has served as a farm league for future Obama administration officials, would have been the first female secretary of defense had she risen to the position.
But in a letter Tuesday to members of the CNAS board of directors, Flournoy said she would remain in her post at the think tank and asked Obama to take her out of consideration to be the next secretary of defense…
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Maybe the WH should have paid attention to the letter from Hagel concerning Russia and the Ukraine.
Many Americans really fail to remember how the entire world and especially Europe literally slid into WW1 all by bits and pieces and all leaders declaring they did not wanting war.
so much for Putin's comments yesterday that he was not going to get into geo political games.
#Putin reportedly threatened #Poroshenko with an offensive and demanded recognition for terrorist ”republics“
It just keeps on getting worse and worse.
Many Europeans have been questioning exactly where the US leadership has been the last seven months-Putin fully understands and uses this inherent US weakness as a strength and I am surprised the NSC does not see this.
“When the president goes through three secretaries, he should ask, ‘Is it them or is it me?’”
Was Chuck Hagel the wrong man for the job—or on the wrong team?
Taken from the article--reflects something I recently posted here at SWJ--that the relations between the DoD due to heavy micromanagement were at their lowest levels in many many years.
Seems to have been true---no wonder the job offer was turned down.
According to this senior military officer, Hagel’s memo to Rice was “the beginning of the end for Chuck,” who couldn’t “live with the ambiguity of an ambiguous policy.” And it wasn’t just Hagel who felt that way. According to a retired senior officer who served in Iraq, Hagel’s problems with the ambiguity of White House policy “accurately reflected” the views of most senior military officers.
In the end, though, it was the NSC’s “micromanagement” of the military’s ISIL fight that most disturbed the secretary of defense and top brass. “It’s a hell of a thing,” a top military officer explained to me last week, “but the chief targeting officer for Iraq is Susan Rice. It’s very frustrating.”
That kind of micromanagement exacerbated an already tense White House-military relationship that dates back to when Adm. Michael Mullen was Joint Chiefs chairman. Mullen disagreed with Obama’s drawdown plans for Afghanistan in 2011, implying that Obama’s decision to accelerate the withdrawal was more risky than the military preferred. Obama’s rejection of the military’s advice spurred a cascade of quiet finger-pointing by military officers who supported Mullen and considered the Obama team of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and Rice as “cruise missile liberals”—those dedicated to fighting wars on the cheap.
No wonder the SecDef position is "damaged goods".
If the following is correct and he was basically ignored then there is a serious problem on the civil military side of the house and between the NSC/Obama and the SecDef who is there to help in formulating foreign policy as he reps for the entire DoD in order to avoid another Pearl Harbor.
Hagel had warned Obama that US needed to be tougher, more focused on Putin http://on.wsj.com/1veTR24 via @WSJ
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/573937/20141125/russia-nuclear-world-war…
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-russian-air-forces-super-weapon…
Happy to see someone indirectly state the SecDef position is now after what happened between the NSC/Obama and Hagel "damaged goods".
Whoever steps into this position is now fully aware that he and or she have virtually nothing to say when it comes to foreign policy strategies and or the lack thereof which has been the case as of late.
The signs of this disaster were seen when the JCoS and the ACoS have more influence than their own civilian SecDef--ie even though both voiced a strong couple of statements on Russia that was about it before they shifted gears again towards IS which they never beat before when they had the opportunity.