White House Mulls Jim Webb, Ex-Democratic Senator, as Next Defense Secretary
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering Jim Webb, a former Democratic senator and Reagan-era secretary of the Navy, to be the next defense secretary, according to three officials, potentially bypassing more hawkish Republicans whose names have been floated to replace Jim Mattis. Mr. Webb, an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, is being considered as President Trump seeks to carry out campaign promises to withdraw American troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
Those two decisions prompted Mr. Mattis to resign late last month, putting the deputy defense secretary, Patrick M. Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, in the top role in an acting capacity. Representatives for Vice President Mike Pence and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, have reached out to Mr. Webb, one of the three officials said. Separately, a senior Defense Department official confirmed that Mr. Webb’s name had been circulating at the White House. Those two and the third official all spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
Mr. Webb did not respond to a request for comment, and a White House official said the vice president’s staff has had no contact with Mr. Webb. How seriously he is being considered was unclear; Mr. Trump likes to float names as he considers his options for various openings in the government — sometimes to test responses and sometimes to keep the news media guessing. But the views of Mr. Webb, a former one-term Democratic senator from Virginia and candidate during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, align closely with Mr. Trump’s drive to pull American troops from the Middle East and confront China more aggressively.
During a Democratic primary debate in 2015, Mr. Webb railed against Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea and cyberattacks on Americans. “If you want a place where we need to be in terms of our national strategy, a focus, the greatest strategic threat that we have right now is resolving our relationship with China,” Mr. Webb said. Much like Mr. Trump, Mr. Webb was also critical of President Barack Obama’s efforts in 2015 to strike a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. “The end result of this could well be our acquiescence in allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Webb said.
Mr. Webb, now 72, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968 and served in Vietnam as a Marine rifle platoon and company commander. He was wounded twice and awarded the Navy Cross, a prestigious award that ranks just below the Medal of Honor, along with other valor awards. In a 1979 opinion article in Washingtonian magazine titled “Women Can’t Fight,” Mr. Webb wrote that allowing women into the military — specifically in combat positions — would harm national defense. The article would haunt him throughout his political career, despite his changing views on the subject. The Pentagon opened all combat jobs to women during the Obama administration. But Mr. Trump has not vigorously supported the policy, and even Mr. Mattis said the “jury is out” on whether women should be put into combat roles. “This is a policy that I inherited, and so far the cadre is so small, we have no data on it,” Mr. Mattis said in remarks to officer candidates at the Virginia Military Institute in September.
Ronald Reagan appointed Mr. Webb first as an assistant secretary of defense and, in 1987, as secretary of the Navy, where he pushed for modernizing the fleet and opening more jobs for women in the service. Between his stints in government, Mr. Webb continued his writing career, which includes the critically acclaimed Vietnam War novel “Fields of Fire.” He switched parties and in 2006 ran for the Senate as a Democrat; there, he helped pass the post-9/11 G.I. Bill and oversaw Asia-Pacific issues on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Other names that have surfaced as potential replacements for Mr. Mattis have included a former Republican senator, Jim Talent of Missouri, and two current ones, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. David H. Petraeus, the retired Army general and former C.I.A. director, was considered for the post earlier in the Trump administration but recently told the BBC that he “cannot envision returning to government at this time.” Last week, Mr. Trump said Mr. Shanahan might remain as acting secretary “for a long time.” On Wednesday, his second day as Pentagon chief, Mr. Shanahan voiced a tougher stand against China, telling the military’s civilian leaders to focus more on the country, according to a Defense Department official.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/us/politics/jim-webb-defense-secretary.html