The resignation of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is indicative of ongoing adjustments in Barack Obama’s military policy. According to American experts, there may be two reasons behind his resignation.

       According to American experts, there may be two reasons behind his resignation. First, Chuck Hagel was the only Republican in the current administration and, accordingly, he fell victim to the victory of the Republican Party in the recent Congressional elections. Second, the White House is dissatisfied with Hagel’s performance as defense secretary. A third reason cannot be excluded, either, whereby President Obama sacrificed Hagel to cover up more disturbing developments in Washington’s military policy.

       Americans believe that the way Hagel is handling the ongoing operation against ISIL is his largest failure. Back on August 8, the US started airstrikes on Islamic radicals. On September 23, the Pentagon brought air strikes to Syrian territory. However, there have been no tangible results of this so far. ISIL continues to hold the positions it won in the summer and continues demonstrative executions of American hostages, which causes indignation among American voters.

       Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has adopted an unfriendly position toward Hagel. Back in August, he criticized the airstrikes against ISIL, saying that air strikes alone will do little to defeat Islamic radicals. According to him, a large-scale combined arms operation on the ground is needed in order to accomplish this. On November 16, General Dempsey visited Baghdad. Following the visit, he said that the Iraqi defense forces are too weak compared to ISIL. President Barack Obama was supportive of his position.

       Last year’s crisis in Syria is also believed to be Hagel’s failure. On September 9, 2013, Congress gave the US President the authority to use force against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. However, back then, the Pentagon didn’t have enough troops in the region to destroy Syrian air defenses and military infrastructure. There were no allies who were willing to send in troops on the ground. Even its traditional ally, Britain, not to mention Israel and Turkey, refused to support the United States. Barack Obama's administration had to quickly accept Russian mediation, which was perceived painfully by the White House.

       The strategy of Chinese containment didn’t work out, either. In late April 2014, President Obama went on an East Asian tour to demonstrate the reliability of his position to Beijing. The US President agreed to a partial expansion of Japan’s military independence and signed an agreement with the Philippines to place US troops on its territory. Experts believe that this was part of Hagel’s strategy to intimidate Beijing. However, the Chinese government took the White House’s threat in stride, and went ahead, sharply aggravating the situation in the South China Sea in May.

       American experts have occasionally blamed Hagel even for failures in Ukraine. Back in March, the American political analyst George Friedman said that Russia had an easy time annexing Crimea because there was no US military infrastructure in the Black Sea. On May 20, this thesis was indirectly confirmed by Vice President Biden during his visit to Bucharest. His calls to set up American infrastructure in the Baltic-Black Sea region meant that Washington hasn’t yet done so.

       All these things can be described as failures. In reality, Hagel’s fault in these failures is not any larger than that of other members of the US military. The problem runs deeper. Over the past 100 years, the American strategy was inspired by the ideas of Italian General Giulio Douhet about the unconditional superiority of "air power." War was seen as an attempt to force the enemy to surrender by bombing raids. This premise was also behind the logic of nuclear deterrence, with its threats to destroy enemy cities and infrastructure.

       No one, however, has explained what should be done if the enemy does not surrender, but instead begins to use countermeasures. Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the first to sound the alarm. "High-precision systems may be powerless if the enemy uses barbaric but effective means of suppression like thermite shells," he said in late 2008, commenting on the outcome of the war in South Ossetia. Three years later, General Dempsey joined him, saying that the US finds it increasingly difficult to recruit enough troops for ground operations. Unlike during the Cold War, the allies are in no hurry to send in troops on the ground under American "air cover."

       Possible successors to Chuck Hagel include former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, Democratic senator from Rhode Island Jack Reed and former Under Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. No matter who will become the next secretary of defense, he or she will hardly be able to do without changing the US strategy. Washington will seek to improve its mechanism for military interventions in regional conflicts. Russia should be particularly careful, as long as the United States continues to consider it a potential adversary.

       This article was originally published in Russian on www.ng.ru

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.