Under pressure Hagel quits as defence chief

Exit among concerns that he was not proactive or engaged in Cabinet meetings

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel announced yesterday he is stepping down, leaving under pressure following a rocky tenure in which he has struggled to break through the White House’s insular team of national security advisers.

The president praised Hagel, a Republican who grew close to Obama while they both served in the Senate, as an “exemplary defence secretary” who forged a strong bond with troops stationed around the world.

During a White House ceremony, President Barack Obama said he and Hagel had determined it was an appropriate time for him to complete his service. “Chuck Hagel has devoted himself to our national security and our men and women in uniform across six decades,” Obama said.

Hagel is the first Cabinetlevel casualty of the collapse of Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and a beleaguered national security team that has struggled to stay ahead of an onslaught of global crises.

Officials described Obama’s decision to remove Hagel, as a recognition that the threat from Daesh would require a different kind of skills than those that Hagel was brought on to employ.

While Obama has sought to consolidate foreign policy decision- making within the White House, advisers have privately worried about Hagel’s ability to communicate the administration’s positions.

There have also been concerns that Hagel wasn’t proactive or engaged in Cabinet meetings and other national security discussions.

In what appeared to be an effort to refute that criticism, Obama said yesterday that Hagel had always “given it to me straight” during their private conversations in the Oval Office.

A Republican with military experience who was sceptical about the Iraq War, Hagel came in to manage the Afghanistan combat withdrawal and the shrinking Pentagon budget in the era of budget sequestration.

But now “the next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus,” one administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He insisted that Hagel was not fired, saying that he initiated discussions about his future two weeks ago with the president, and that the two men mutually agreed that it was time for him to leave.

But Hagel’s aides had maintained in recent weeks that he expected to serve the full four years term as defence secretary.

Even before the announcement of Hagel’s removal, Obama officials were speculating on his possible replacement. At the top of the list are Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defence; Sen. Jack Reed, D- R. I. and a former officer with the Army’s 82nd Airborne; and Ashton Carter, a former deputy secretary of defence.