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| Ashton Carter: meet the man rumoured to be Obama’s next secretary of defense | Ashton Carter: meet the man rumoured to be Obama’s next secretary of defense |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Ashton Carter was almost out of Schlitz. | Ashton Carter was almost out of Schlitz. |
| It was 2010, and Carter was the US undersecretary of defense in charge of acquisitions – everything the most cash-flush military in the world buys, from aircraft carriers to bandwidth. The unglamorous job is a buzzsaw for attempts at saving money, as purchasing priorities pivot to the threat of the moment, gear runs over budget, and defense contractor veterans cycle in and out of the Pentagon. Carter, speaking at the Center for American Progress, was driven to a beer metaphor. | It was 2010, and Carter was the US undersecretary of defense in charge of acquisitions – everything the most cash-flush military in the world buys, from aircraft carriers to bandwidth. The unglamorous job is a buzzsaw for attempts at saving money, as purchasing priorities pivot to the threat of the moment, gear runs over budget, and defense contractor veterans cycle in and out of the Pentagon. Carter, speaking at the Center for American Progress, was driven to a beer metaphor. |
| His plan accepted cost overruns as an inevitable cost of doing business. Carter said the military would offer an equal split with defense contractors for projects that went 20% over budget. But past a hypothetical $120 for a $100 item, the company would be bear the entire financial burden and risk losing its contract altogether. | His plan accepted cost overruns as an inevitable cost of doing business. Carter said the military would offer an equal split with defense contractors for projects that went 20% over budget. But past a hypothetical $120 for a $100 item, the company would be bear the entire financial burden and risk losing its contract altogether. |
| “When we get to $120,” Carter told an audience at the CAP, a liberal DC thinktank favored by the White House. “I’m out of Schlitz and it’s all yours.” | “When we get to $120,” Carter told an audience at the CAP, a liberal DC thinktank favored by the White House. “I’m out of Schlitz and it’s all yours.” |
| The results of what Carter termed Better Buying Power, his signature initiative as acquisitions undersecretary, are mixed. The companies do bear overrun burdens. But Carter’s Better Buying Power plan has had limited success in incentivizing premier projects to stay on-budget, such as Boeing’s KC-47 tanker ($1.1bn past budget) or Lockheed’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ($163bn past budget), which Carter’s successor Frank Kendall called “acquisitions malpractice”. | |
| As for cancelling over-budget contracts, “I’m not sure if that’s actually been implemented or not,” said Todd Harrison, a respected defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. | As for cancelling over-budget contracts, “I’m not sure if that’s actually been implemented or not,” said Todd Harrison, a respected defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. |
| Yet the White House has poured Carter a refill. In 2011 he was promoted to deputy defense secretary, where he ran the Pentagon’s daily operations for Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel. He retired in 2013. Now, Barack Obama is reportedly on the verge of picking the wonkish Carter to take over the Pentagon entirely. | Yet the White House has poured Carter a refill. In 2011 he was promoted to deputy defense secretary, where he ran the Pentagon’s daily operations for Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel. He retired in 2013. Now, Barack Obama is reportedly on the verge of picking the wonkish Carter to take over the Pentagon entirely. |
| The choice – still in its final stages and reportedly due to be finalized in the next few days – appears to have been a compromise. Two likelier nominees, former Pentagon policy chief Michele Flournoy and secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, declined the job, prompting a wave of Washington chatter about how under a micromanaging Obama no one wants to be the world’s most powerful defense chief. The abrupt dumping of Hagel last week, absent a clear reason, contributed to an impression of the White House consolidating power over security affairs for the remainder of Obama’s presidency. | The choice – still in its final stages and reportedly due to be finalized in the next few days – appears to have been a compromise. Two likelier nominees, former Pentagon policy chief Michele Flournoy and secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, declined the job, prompting a wave of Washington chatter about how under a micromanaging Obama no one wants to be the world’s most powerful defense chief. The abrupt dumping of Hagel last week, absent a clear reason, contributed to an impression of the White House consolidating power over security affairs for the remainder of Obama’s presidency. |
| Carter ticks several boxes for the White House consistent with that impression. Befitting an acquisitions undersecretary and deputy secretary, Carter’s profile is more technocratic than ideological. As a physicist and Harvard professor who has taken interest in cybersecurity and stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Carter has long been within the Democratic firmament of defense wonks. He lacks a prominent political profile, offending as few people as he inspires. | Carter ticks several boxes for the White House consistent with that impression. Befitting an acquisitions undersecretary and deputy secretary, Carter’s profile is more technocratic than ideological. As a physicist and Harvard professor who has taken interest in cybersecurity and stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Carter has long been within the Democratic firmament of defense wonks. He lacks a prominent political profile, offending as few people as he inspires. |
| At the Pentagon, he was a firm advocate of Obama’s desired “pivot” to the Pacific, which he told a 2012 New York audience would be foremost among the “security challenges that will define our future after Iraq and Afghanistan”. The pivot gels with a late-90s proposal Carter co-wrote with Clinton defense secretary Bill Perry offering military reassurance in places like Asia to forestall emerging conflicts and prevent war. To the degree Carter has taken controversial stances, they have been in Asia: he argued in 2006 for a preventive attack on North Korea’s long-range Taepodong missile despite the risk of sparking a new war on the Korean peninsula. | |
| Yet Iraq and Afghanistan have not relinquished their hold over the United States. The war against the Islamic State (Isis) has unfolded and expanded by increment, flouting reassurances from the White House that it has not restarted the Iraq war it bragged about ending in 2011. The White House acquiesced to military pressure to keep a more robust combat presence in Afghanistan next year, a reversal of another Obama promise. No more does Obama boast, as he did in his 2012 re-election campaign, that the tide of war is receding. | Yet Iraq and Afghanistan have not relinquished their hold over the United States. The war against the Islamic State (Isis) has unfolded and expanded by increment, flouting reassurances from the White House that it has not restarted the Iraq war it bragged about ending in 2011. The White House acquiesced to military pressure to keep a more robust combat presence in Afghanistan next year, a reversal of another Obama promise. No more does Obama boast, as he did in his 2012 re-election campaign, that the tide of war is receding. |
| Choosing Carter for the Pentagon is likely to disappoint those who want Obama to commit firmly to his new war against Isis. Carter has not been a prominent voice in the debate over what to do about the jihadist force that has overrun parts of Syria and Iraq. Its emergence challenges the statements Carter has issued in the past about the 9/11 era “coming to an end” and managing declining defense budgets, both of which echo Obama priorities the White House has struggled to implement and which the newly empowered Republican Congress rejects. | |
| “Everything I’ve seen so far in American strategy to Isis has been purely reactive and I don’t think Ash Carter is going to change that,” said Christopher Harmer of the Institute for the Study of War, who noted that Carter is “very well respected in the Pentagon as a programmatic guy”. | “Everything I’ve seen so far in American strategy to Isis has been purely reactive and I don’t think Ash Carter is going to change that,” said Christopher Harmer of the Institute for the Study of War, who noted that Carter is “very well respected in the Pentagon as a programmatic guy”. |
| As defense secretary, Carter would be challenged to climb above the technocratic weeds in which he has spent his career. Mistrust lingers between the White House and the Pentagon, spurred early in Obama’s tenure over the Afghanistan surge, and both sides will eye Carter to see whose man he is. Within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill he is a known and accepted quantity, perhaps Carter’s chief asset. | As defense secretary, Carter would be challenged to climb above the technocratic weeds in which he has spent his career. Mistrust lingers between the White House and the Pentagon, spurred early in Obama’s tenure over the Afghanistan surge, and both sides will eye Carter to see whose man he is. Within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill he is a known and accepted quantity, perhaps Carter’s chief asset. |
| Carter’s Better Buying Power initiative continues at the Pentagon, on to its third, minimally heralded iteration. Harrison called it an attempt to “make incremental changes to the system, and what’s really needed is systemic change”. Some will consider a Defense Secretary Carter the embodiment of that view, and wonder whether the White House will drink all his Schlitz. |