Advice: Bad Judgment and Biden’s Pentagon

President Biden called Mr. Kahl was named secretary of defense for policy, one of the most important posts in the federal government. While the Minister of Defense handles high-level defense policy and the deputy secretary manages the department on a daily basis, the deputy secretary plays the leading role-setting strategy – including representing the department to National Security Council delegates.

Mr. Kahl’s strategic misjudgments in the Middle East have been voiced. In 2015 as mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Mr. Kahl argued that the sanctions against Iran would be eased, stating that they “will not spend the vast majority of the money on guns, but that it will mostly go to butter.” In that case, Tehran used the windfall to increase its funding for proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

From the government, Mr. Kahl relentlessly attacked the Trump administration’s reorientation of Iran policy and tweeted in 2019 that “falcons” in Congress “will not be satisfied until they get the war that has driven them for decades.” Democrat Joe Manchin, the swing vote on armed services that opposed the Iran deal and welcomed President Trump’s 2018 withdrawal, might be interested in whether Mr. Kahl also believes he is a warmer.

It looks like Mr. Kahl does not hold the strategic benefits for Iran’s US interests. He only sees apocalyptic risks. After the American strike that killed Iranian terrorist commander Qasem Soleimani, who had the blood of thousands of Americans at hand, Kahl’s reaction on Twitter was that “Trump has started a war with Iran in Iraq.” War never came.

When the US decided to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Mr. Kahl states that Trump’s decision in Jerusalem further isolated the US and warned of a ‘third Intifada’, or Palestinian uprising. However, the embassy has strengthened the ties of America with its closest Middle Eastern ally. The Trump administration’s broader rebalancing in the Middle East toward Israel and the Gulf states has helped tighten Arab-Israeli ties, which culminated in the 2020 Abrahamic Accords.

Mr. Kahl described the chords in his trial as the “culmination of a series of trends that have honestly been in the region for about a decade.” Yet he does not know how the American courtship over Iran could destabilize the region. He does not seem to have reviewed his thinking on the 2015 nuclear deal at all, although even some proponents of the deal acknowledge that the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran were more than they thought possible.

Senators also called on Mr. Kahl pressed on the idea of ​​a ‘nuclear policy for a non-first use’, which would harm the credibility of American deterrence and which Joe Biden endorsed when Mr. Kahl was his adviser. Mr. Kahl did not give a clear position in a written response to the committee, although he said during the hearing that he was against it. One 2017 tweet also indicates skepticism about America’s planned ground-based strategic deterrent missile system.

Democratic administrations rely more on diplomacy and soft power than Republican administrations, and this is clearly Biden’s preference. But with the State Department with liberal internationalists and John Kerry as a cabinet level at the cabinet, it’s important that the Pentagon offers a counter-perspective.

The nomination of mr. Kahl is in danger of bombastic tweets, such as his claim that “every Republican Senator” who supports arms sales to Saudi Arabia has “ownership of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” But there are sound policy reasons for the Senate to exercise its advice and consent power to demand a more stubborn strategic thinker for this important national security post.