WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel has traded the halls of the U.S. Capitol for Tuesday afternoons in a Georgetown University classroom.
But if you’re thinking tweed jackets and piles of dusty tomes, forget it.
A visitor to his on-campus office is greeted by a flat-screen television tuned to the latest reports previewing President Barack Obama’s announcement Tuesday of his plans for the war in Afghanistan.
“This will put the Obama stamp on the Afghan war,” Hagel said. “Whatever he decides, he’s got to be very clear to the American people as to what they’re buying into, what he is committing America to.”
Afghanistan is just one of the subjects scrutinized in Hagel’s class, “Redefining Geopolitical Relationships.”
The 18 graduate students come from diverse international backgrounds and include veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For them, the class represents a chance to hear from an instructor and others who have been in the thick of historic foreign policy decisions. Hagel continues to hold a position advising Obama on intelligence matters.
Course assignments include writing policy memos and delivering oral briefings in class, with the rest of the students assuming such roles as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the National Security Council.
“I wanted to connect some reality to the theory,” Hagel said.
Hagel spent much of a recent class guiding his students through a wide-ranging free-for-all discussion. They covered the threat of the military-industrial complex, the role of the secretary of state, term limits, money’s influence in politics, the authority of Congress to declare war, terrorism and the federal budget deficit.
Hagel invoked his own experiences running for office and representing Nebraska for 12 years in the U.S. Senate. By the time he retired, Hagel was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and had became an outspoken GOP critic of President George W. Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.
One student asked Hagel whether Congress had ceded too much of its authority on foreign policy to the White House.
Hagel told her that power ebbs and flows and that the Bush administration absorbed a tremendous amount of power as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
He said Congress failed to exercise enough oversight and simply let the administration “run with it.”
“When the history is written of that time, I don’t think anybody’s going to come out looking very good, especially Congress,” Hagel told the students. “I think we failed our constitutional responsibilities.”
The discussion moved on to declarations of war and who the United States would declare war against in the current era of terrorism and “asymmetrical threats.”
“There are probably more al-Qaida and associated terrorists in Yemen than there are in Afghanistan,” Hagel said, adding: “In fact, I can’t talk too much about this because I actually know some of these things.”
Hagel was recently named co-chairman of the Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board and said he has been sharing advice with Obama and his top advisers.
For his class, Hagel has brought in several guest speakers this semester: James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank; former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski; and Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup.
“I don’t even get in the room with guys like that typically, so the opportunity to fire questions at a former senator and a national security adviser — you can’t pass that up,” said Eric Knight, who grew up in La Vista and is one of two Nebraskans in the class.
Knight is a former Air Force intelligence officer who is now a reservist.
Hagel, who lives in northern Virginia, has been globe-trotting as a member of numerous advisory boards and as chairman of the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank. He also is a distinguished professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he appears once or twice a semester for a lecture or event.
As for the looming decision on Afghanistan, Hagel said Americans need to realize there are no good options there.
He said it’s also important to focus attention on Pakistan, a nuclear state situated at what Hagel described as the most combustible crossroads in the world.
“Afghanistan is a sideshow,” Hagel said. “Pakistan is the real issue.”
Contact the writer:
202-662-7270, joe.morton@owh.com
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