Rash: Senate must thoroughly, thoughtfully vet Hegseth

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“We face the risk of a near-term great-power war, and we are unprepared,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And this dangerous dynamic comes as the U.S. “confronts the most daunting geostrategic environment right now that we’ve seen since 1945 — and that view is consistent with the explicit assessment and conclusion of the bipartisan, congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy commission.”

Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer and Black Hawk helicopter pilot, served in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon. He also taught at West Point and Georgetown and for nine years was an adviser to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.

So it is with that vast experience and expertise that he cautions senators soon to consider President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth — a Minnesota native, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, and Fox News host — to be the nation’s next secretary of defense: “I would want someone who understands the severity of the threats we face, who sees them in the proper historical context.”

That context is constantly shifting, according to Mara Karlin, the interim director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Karlin, who served in national security roles for six secretaries of defense, wrote the lead article in Foreign Affair’s November/December issue examining today’s “World of War.”

“It is surprisingly difficult to characterize war at any given moment in time; doing so becomes easier only with hindsight,” Karlin wrote, adding: “Harder still is predicting what kind of war the future might bring. When war changes, the shape it takes almost always comes as a surprise.”

Among the many manifestations of this, Karlin said in an interview, is that “we are seeing the character of warfare to include the whole of society.”

That’s tragically apparent in the Mideast, Eastern Ukraine, Sudan and other war-torn areas around the world. And so the next secretary of defense, Bowman said, should be one who “understands the need for significantly increased defense spending, who is honest and objective regarding our unpreparedness for a great-power war consistent with what the National Defense Strategy Commission concluded, who understands the need to dramatically increase the health, vitality and production capacity of our defense industrial base.”

Additionally, Bowman said, the next Pentagon leader needs to “defend forward for the nature of the threats we confront, value allies and partners as a grand strategic asset and not a liability, dramatically increase our air missile-defense capabilities” and more — including, crucially, be “responsible stewards of tax dollars.”

Hegseth’s perspective on these issues — indeed, even if he’s carefully considered them at all — seems unclear despite his media ubiquity. That’s why a serious Senate vetting is imperative instead of Hegseth ascending by a recess appointment, a process Trump called for from the three senators vying to become Senate majority leader. On Wednesday, South Dakota Republican John Thune won that intraparty race, but not before racing along with his rivals to signal agreement with Trump’s demand.

“The confirmation of nominees is one of the most important responsibilities we have, and it’s a big part of our system of checks and balances,” Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar told me on Monday amid news of Trump’s first wave of cabinet nominees. Loyalty like the kind Hegseth has showed to Trump is a factor for any prospective presidential appointment, but Klobuchar said it’s crucial that cabinet candidates are evaluated “in a normal fashion, which is to say: Is this someone who’s qualified to do their work, and are they going to live up to the expectations of running that department?”

Confirmation isn’t a coronation. Every pertinent political and even personal part of a nominee’s record should be thoughtfully, thoroughly examined for the Senate to fulfill its constitutional duty.

Including the defense-related perspective that Hegseth’s been most outspoken about: his consistent criticism that today’s modern military is too “woke.”

Without weighing in on Hegseth’s nomination directly, Bowman offered this view, which would be a good guide for senators and citizens alike as they weigh this issue overall and Hegseth’s nomination in particular:

“The U.S. military is the most impressive military in human history,” Bowman said. “It’s filled with some of our best citizens who are willing to raise their right hand and stand between us and those who want to kill us, understanding that they may not come home in the process.

“That’s amazing. We better not take that for granted.”