Handover of Power at the Pentagon

The unexpected announcement of U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s resignation, who must remain in his post until the Senate confirms his successor, is a clear indication of the strategic decline suffered by the superpower during the two successive administrations of President Barack Obama, who will soon bring in his third Pentagon chief after Robert Gates — who had occupied the position since the time of George W. Bush — and Leon Panetta, and hints at the possibility of reformulating Washington’s strategies regarding the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the confrontation with the Islamic State and the growing American involvement in the Syrian civil war. But, at the same time, Hagel’s replacement, a Republican politician tightly linked to corporate interests, is the reflection of a realignment in the bipartisan political landscape after the midterm elections that took place on Nov. 5 and the defeat therein of Obama’s own Democratic Party.

In the first of these areas, the strategic one, the American position in the Middle East is more entangled than ever in its own contradictions, in the loss of a clear vision from the White House and in a geopolitical landscape that has changed profoundly since the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) by U.S. forces and its allies. Although in those conflicts Bush the younger reached his goal of procuring abundant business for his country’s military industry and its corporate partners, U.S. national security was not strengthened and the “war on terrorism” led to a thick swamp that has trapped Obama’s government since its beginnings.

The Democratic politician reached the presidency with a promise to end the war in Iraq and inflict a decisive strategic defeat against the fundamentalist factions in Afghanistan, but in the former case, Washington has not yet been able to finish cutting military ties with the regime it installed in Baghdad, and in the latter, the defeat of the Taliban and al-Qaida is far from coming true. The former still controls significant portions of Afghan territory and the latter gave rise to new fundamentalist organizations, more scattered but also much more radical; the slow dissolution of al-Qaida opened the way for the rise of the Islamic State group, a more belligerent group that gained strength, initially, with American intervention in the Syrian conflict. In another misstep typical of Obama, he was close to starting a conflagration with Iran, a possibility that was fortunately prevented by a resolute Russian diplomatic offensive. The government in Moscow, for its part, is back in the Middle East and in other parts of the world as heir to the other extinct superpower, the Soviet Union, while China is currently an effective counterweight to U.S. presence in the Pacific Ocean.

In the domestic political arena, it is clear that the paradoxical offensive by Obama after the recent legislative elections at the beginning of the month seeks to fully exploit the divisions in the ranks of the Republican Party concerning subjects such as immigration reform and defense. Even though the president’s party has lost control of both chambers, the present moment, when forces are regrouping, allows him to make seemingly bold moves such as the executive orders on immigration drafted independently from Congress — which are portrayed as substitutes for legislative immigration reform — and the replacement of a secretary of defense with whom he seems to have never felt comfortable in the 20 months he lasted in the position. That was not so much Hagel’s fault as Obama’s, who in six years heading the White House has been unable to formulate a complete and coherent strategic vision in accordance with the new circumstances in the world.