Senate affirmation hearings are slated to start on Jan. 14, 2025, for Pete Hegseth, whom President-elect Donald Trump has selected to function the following secretary of protection. It’s a large process, extensively affecting American citizens’ safety at house and in another country and overseeing massive numbers of other folks and immense quantities of cash.
The Dialog U.S. requested Evelyn Farkas, an established Protection Division chief who’s now government director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State College, to provide an explanation for what the secretary of protection’s process includes and what makes an individual efficient at that process. Throughout the Obama management, Farkas was once a deputy assistant secretary of protection with a focal point on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Previous to that, she was once a civilian adviser to the highest army officer in NATO, and previous nonetheless she was once a senior workforce member of the Senate Armed Services and products Committee, which oversees the army. She additionally served as a professor on the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Team of workers School.
What does the secretary of protection do?
They’re liable for about 3.4 million other folks, together with 1.2 million energetic responsibility carrier contributors and 1.3 million reservists, in addition to about 900,000 civilian staff. The secretary is liable for ensuring the ones individuals are in a position to do their jobs – which, jointly, is to shield the US, the American other folks and U.S. pursuits.
They’re liable for protection coverage, spending and operations, which contains the folks, belongings and gear at about 500 army bases throughout all 50 states and every other 750 or so bases in 80 international locations around the globe. They’re liable for budgeting and spending nearly US$2 trillion a yr in federal finances, which is set 16% of the full federal finances.
The Pentagon is the headquarters for the U.S. Protection Division.
AP Picture/Charles Dharapak
What’s the secretary’s function in commanding the country’s army forces?
The president is the commander in leader and makes a decision when and how one can use the army. However the president’s determination to make use of pressure will depend on recommendation and suggestions from the secretary of protection and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Team of workers. The president orders the secretary to hold out army operations, and the orders move down from the secretary to the related commanders from there.
What’s a median day or week for the secretary of protection?
The secretary units the imaginative and prescient and tone for the Division of Protection and is helping the president expand his or her protection technique, after which implements that technique. The secretary additionally designs and implements insurance policies to advance the method and the full nationwide safety goals of the president.
The Protection Division’s duty is concerned with using the army, whether or not it’s to discourage assaults or shield American pursuits. The secretary will have to make certain the army is provided and educated – in a position – to battle and win the country’s wars and to behavior another operations, corresponding to humanitarian, counterterrorism or peace operations.
The secretary units priorities, that are mirrored within the division’s finances. The finances needs to be negotiated with Congress, in fact. Daily, the secretary is protecting conferences with people who find themselves charged with managing other facets of the dept’s task. This occurs frequently within the Pentagon or when the secretary visits army devices and installations within the U.S. or around the globe.
There are undersecretaries for coverage and the finances and different purposes corresponding to staff and readiness. Then there are carrier secretaries, who have a look at all of the ones problems however just for one explicit carrier – the Military, the Army, which contains the Marine Corps, and the Air Pressure, which contains the House Pressure.
Potential infantrymen stand in a coaching formation.
Scott Olson/Getty Photographs
Does the president communicate to the secretary of protection frequently?
It will depend on the president. Maximum presidents have common conferences with their most sensible officers as a Cupboard, as a gaggle, after which, in fact, in my view. Some presidents could have a status lunch with their Cupboard contributors, or only a formal assembly.
Most often talking, maximum presidents would search to have a gathering once or more every week that comes to their secretary of protection. There’s so much occurring on the planet, and lots of the occasions or crises contain some determination about using army pressure or some impact on protection functions.
How does the secretary of protection have an effect on common American citizens’ lives?
The secretary’s involvement in a call to make use of nuclear guns would no doubt have an effect on nearly each American. In order that’s a technique, and any choices involving struggle may probably have an effect on any given American.
Wanting that, the industrial ripple results of selections the secretary makes may well be nationwide. The protection finances is huge, however now not sufficient to have an effect on everybody all on the identical time. However as an example, if the secretary of protection makes a decision to near a base, that will have affect on most of the people in that neighborhood, if now not they all, a minimum of not directly. Companies must regulate or shut, and the army staff and their households must transfer. And the political management of the neighborhood could be empowered to make choices concerning the civilian use of homes up to now owned by means of the Division of Protection.
Virtually each more or less corporate does industry with the Division of Protection, both without delay or not directly. The commissaries inventory meals and medication and all forms of common pieces that the army buys, along with apparatus for combating.
After which there’s analysis and building. Traditionally, the Protection Division has put some huge cash into the ones efforts, which has had numerous impact on customers’ lives. It’s now not simply the web, even if that’s one instance of one thing that was once invented for army functions after which translated into civilian use. A large number of smaller tendencies occur, too, as a result of when some huge cash is being poured into innovation, they uncover issues alongside the way in which that may be commercialized.
This present day the civilian sector has outpaced the Protection Division relating to analysis and building and innovation, however the protection greenbacks nonetheless make a large distinction.
A U.S. army automobile travels thru Germany on its long ago from workouts in Poland.
Robert Michael/image alliance by the use of Getty Photographs
What private or skilled attributes make for an efficient protection secretary?
I labored for 4 of them, 3 without delay. Robert Gates had a excessive sense of empathy and plenty of prior executive revel in. Leon Panetta had an acute humorousness and a right away however humorous means of interacting. He additionally had the benefit of having held more than one high-level jobs in different portions of the federal government. Chuck Hagel had a right away line to the Senate, and Ashton Carter was once a hard-driven knowledgeable.
Essentially the most helpful attributes come with honesty, empathy, a humorousness, a pointy mind, the facility to be informed temporarily and the ability to decide what’s essential temporarily. In fact, prior executive revel in operating with the dept is helpful. It’s useful to have an working out of the way the Protection Division works, with all its elements, and its strengths and weaknesses, ahead of you get into the process. The dep. has an army and civilian forms, and it takes some savvy paintings to get it to transport temporarily to put in force the president’s technique.
Throughout the affirmation procedure, like any nominees, the secretary is needed to attest in writing and on occasion verbally that they are going to supply fair solutions to Congress and that they are going to be responsive when Congress has questions.
Other secretaries do a greater process at that than others. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld frequently would annoy contributors of Congress as a result of he knew there was once a point in time on his skill to talk and on every senator’s skill to talk. So he would simply talk till the clock ran out, and that made them mad. He wouldn’t at all times solution questions without delay and on occasion got here off as boastful.
The interactions with Congress are this refined dance, as a result of a secretary needs to offer protection to the prerogatives of the president and the chief department. However Congress can pay the expenses, supplies any new government the secretary may well be in search of and will curtail each the authority and the finances. A secretary needs to shield the insurance policies, the finances and the movements of the Division of Protection. However in addition they need to be respectful of Congress’ function and obligations and the person contributors of Congress.
Once in a while that stability is tricky to strike. They’re in a truly challenging process, and so they get known as to testify in entrance of Congress, normally with the TV cameras on. Participants of Congress aren’t at all times well mannered, so it takes numerous endurance and self regulate at the a part of the secretary of protection to effectively handle just right members of the family, private and non-private, with contributors of Congress.
What do the American other folks deserve from a protection secretary?
The secretary must be anyone who will rise up for the army and civilians within the division and insist from the president and Congress the sources had to execute their undertaking and to supply for the well-being of the staff, who’re, in spite of everything, American citizens.
I might additionally say a secretary must have interaction with the media in some way that moves the suitable stability between informing the American public about what the dept and the army are doing within the identify of the American other folks and protective nationwide safety secrets and techniques. On the finish of the day, the secretary of protection is operating for the American other folks of their passion and that of the country.
This tale is a part of a chain of profiles of Cupboard and high-level management positions.
