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| US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel |
By Ankit Panda
Chuck Hagel, despite his flaws, was an asset for the administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia.
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that he will resign, reportedly after pressure from President Barack Obama. The president has determined that a shake-up in the White House’s national security team is necessary amid spiraling conflicts the world over. Hagel, while more passive than he should have been on other issues, was nonetheless an important advocate of the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. Although many observers, both partisan and non-partisan, have criticized the Obama administration for failing to deliver on its much-touted “pivot” to Asia following the departure of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Hagel, as defense secretary, wasn’t a weak link.
In his first months on the job, Hagel set out to visit important U.S. allies at breakneck speed, revealing a passion for the United States’ defense posture in the Asia-Pacific region. When the U.S. government shut down in late 2013, forcing the president to embarrassingly miss last year’s APEC summit and cancel a broader scheduled trip to the region, Hagel carried on, visiting Japan and South Korea. As the New York Times noted at the time, Hagel’s visit to South Korea in late 2013 was “the longest stay by an American defense secretary in a generation.” At a time when the president was having trouble “showing up” in Asia, Hagel in effect became the face of the “pivot” to the United States’ allies in the region. In recent months, Hagel has overseen the process of redrawing the United States’ defense guidelines with Japan, the lifting of the United States’ lethal arms embargo with Vietnam, and the evolving U.S.-Philippines security partnership, among other issues.
Beyond the United States’ friends in Asia, Hagel was a regular interlocutor with its rivals as well. In particular, Hagel cultivated a strong rapport with China’s senior political and military leadership. Hagel’s tenure was, of course, marked by several periods of tension in the U.S.-China relationship, including China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea, the Cowpens incident, Chinese spying on RIMPAC, the U.S. indicting PLA officers for counterespionage, and much more. At a time when U.S. allies and partners began doubting the United States’ commitment to the status quo in the region amid an increasingly assertive China, Hagel was the United States’ voice of reassurance. For example, at this year’s Shangri-La Security Dialogue, Hagel called on China to make a choice — either “unite, and recommit to a stable regional order, or, to walk away from that commitment and risk the peace and security that has benefited millions of people.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat