The Gates Factor

There’s been a rash of interest recently in the idea of Robert Gates staying on as Defense Secretary for maybe 9-12 months in order to smooth the military transition and give time for his eventually replacement to gain some seasoning as Deputy Secretary or some such. Part of the calculation is based on the fact that there are various indications, including some of Gates speeches since becoming SecDef, and things like the Iran CFR task-force he co-headed before becoming Secretary that Gates’ underlying views are closer to Obamaism than to Bushism.

To me that’s all plausible enough, but it’s just very hard to actually know from sitting behind your computer. Before making any such decisions, you would expect the president-elect to sit down with Gates and actually assess what he thinks about various things and what kinds of policies he’d be prepared to support. This pimping for the Reliable Replacement Warhead is not only wrong on the merits, but at least could indicate that Gates wouldn’t be on board for Obama’s ambitious pledge to pursue steps toward global nuclear disarmament. Since this latter pledge has been endorsed by Republicans like George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger it’s something that you would hope a Republican with a reputation for pragmatism like Gates would be willing to embrace and lend some bipartisan cover to. But since it’s also probably the most substantively important part of the foreign policy vision Obama has outlined, it’d be absolutely crucial for the whole team to be on board.