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And Salt
Bad Judgment and Biden’s Pentagon
A
nother Biden nominee with a record of
intemperate tweets is at risk of sinking
in the Senate, and the press is compar-
ing him to Neera Tanden, the
President’s withdrawn first
pick to lead the Office of Man-
agement and Budget. Yet who-
ever replaces Ms. Tanden is
unlikely to change the trajec-
tory of the Biden Administra-
tion’s progressive policies.
The Pentagon nomination of Colin Kahl, a
dogmatic proponent of the Iran nuclear deal, is
another story. A no vote in the Senate Armed
Services Committee could push the Administra-
tion toward a Mideast approach that better
serves America’s national interest.
President Biden has tapped Mr. Kahl for un-
dersecretary of defense for policy, one of the
most important non-cabinet jobs in the federal
government. While the Secretary of Defense
handles high-level defense politics, and the dep-
uty secretary manages the department day-to-
day, the undersecretary plays the leading role
setting strategy—including representing the
department at National Security Council depu-
ties meetings.
Mr. Kahl’s strategic Mideast misjudgments
have been pronounced. In 2015 as Mr. Biden’s
national security adviser, Mr. Kahl argued for
sanctions relief on Iran, declaring they “are not
going to spend the vast majority of the money
on guns, most of it will go to butter.” In the
event, Tehran took advantage of the windfall to
increase its financing for proxies in Syria, Leba-
non and Yemen.
Out of government Mr. Kahl relentlessly as-
sailed the Trump Administration’s reorienta-
tion of Iran policy, tweeting in 2019 that
“hawks” in Congress “won’t be satisfied until
they get the war they’ve pushed for decades.”
Democrat Joe Manchin, the swing vote on
Armed Services who opposed the Iran deal and
applauded President Trump’s 2018 withdrawal,
might be interested in whether Mr. Kahl thinks
he is a warmonger as well.
Mr. Kahl seems unable to see the strategic
benefits to U.S. interests in containing Iran. He
sees only apocalyptic risks. After the U.S. strike
that killed Iranian terror commander Qasem So-
leimani, who had the blood of thousands of
Americans on his hands, Mr. Kahl’s reaction on
Twitter was that “Trump has started a war with
Iran in Iraq.” War never came.
When the U.S. decided to move its Embassy
in Israel to Jerusalem, Mr.
Kahl declared “Trump’s Jeru-
salem decision further isolates
the US” and warned of a “third
Intifada,” or Palestinian upris-
ing. Yet the Embassy move
strengthened America’s ties
with its closest Middle Eastern ally. The Trump
Administration’s wider Mideast rebalancing to-
ward Israel and the Gulf states helped broker
closer Arab-Israeli ties, culminating in the 2020
Abraham Accords.
Mr. Kahl described the accords in his hearing
as the “culmination of a set of trends, frankly,
that have been in the region for about a decade.”
Yet he doesn’t recognize how U.S. courtship of
Iran can destabilize the region. He doesn’t seem
to have revised his thinking on the 2015 nuclear
agreement at all, though even some proponents
of the deal acknowledge that the Trump Admin-
istration’s sanctions on Iran packed more punch
than they thought possible.
Senators last week also pressed Mr. Kahl on
the idea of a “no-first use” nuclear policy, which
would damage the credibility of American de-
terrence and which Joe Biden endorsed when
Mr. Kahl was his adviser. Mr. Kahl didn’t give a
clear position in a written answer to the com-
mittee, though at the hearing he said he op-
posed it. One 2017 tweet also seems to suggest
skepticism of America’s planned Ground-Based
Strategic Deterrent missile system.
Democratic administrations lean more on di-
plomacy and soft power than Republican ad-
ministrations, and that’s clearly team Biden’s
preference. But with the State Department
stacked with liberal internationalists, and John
Kerry as a cabinet-level climate envoy, it’s im-
portant for the Pentagon to provide a counter-
perspective.
Mr. Kahl’s nomination is in jeopardy for bom-
bastic tweets like his claim that “every Republi-
can Senator” who supported arms sales to Saudi
Arabia “shares 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 hard-headed
strategic thinker for this crucial national-secu-
rity post.
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