Steve Clemons, Washington Editor-at-Large of the growing online magazine The Atlantic, has a wide-ranging exclusive interview with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel seven months after he replaced Robert Gibbs at the Pentagon.
Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo/DoD via TheAtlantic.com
The interview provides valuable insight into the office of the Secretary of Defense and Secretary Hagel himself. When asked by Clemons about the strategic picture and foreign policy issues in the rapidly developing Middle East region, Hagel discussed how foreign policy decisions are typically made:
“Let’s start with my role and the Pentagon’s role in this process. As you know, I am a member of the National Security Council as well as the chairman, General Dempsey. We participate in every meeting. We have a voice. The president is very receptive. We’re at the table, just a very few of us. And that’s, I believe, as it should be. This president uses his National Security Council and he listens carefully. He probes. He pushes. He wants to know.
“So we are very active in that. But as I said earlier, our role is not—is not to lead foreign policy. Our role is—is an instrument of foreign policy. Our role is input in the National Security Council. And we give the president our best advice on military affairs and so on. But at the end of the day, whatever foreign policy the president decides on, then our responsibility is to review if it includes any kind of military option. And then we will carry that out. And he has confidence, the country has to have confidence, that we will employ whatever option the president decides.”
Mr. Clemons was a speaker at all three U.S.-Saudi Business Opportunities Forums in Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.
