The Senate voted to confirm Ashton Carter as the 25th US Secretary of Defense, giving President Barack Obama his fourth Pentagon chief in six years at a time of turmoil from Iraq to Ukraine.
Carter, 60, a physicist and veteran Pentagon official, was approved, 93-5, on Thursday in a show of support from both political parties. The smooth confirmation contrasted with the fight over his predecessor, departing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who stumbled over policy questions at his confirmation hearing and later had a falling out with White House aides that led to his departure.
Carter will inherit an array of defence and foreign policy challenges that are likely to help define the remaining two years of Obama's presidency. He must guide the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan when many military officers and some members of Congress want to slow it. He also will be a central figure in the debate over Obama's request for congressional authorisation for the war against Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria.
"It's a blessing for the White House that Ash Carter is being confirmed before this debate starts," said David Gergen, a former advisor to four Presidents who's now a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "He could turn out to be a pivotal player because he enjoys the support of many Republicans in Congress."
Ukraine weapons
Carter also will have to negotiate conflicting views within the administration and Congress over whether to send weapons to Ukraine in its battle against Russian-backed separatists. He'll face opposition from Republicans if he recommends transferring more prisoners from the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which Obama has vowed to close.
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Carter "a worthy choice" who may have "limited influence" on defence policy because of White House micromanagement.
McCain, who voted for Carter, said on the Senate floor before the vote that he has "little confidence that the President who nominated Dr Carter will empower him to lead and contribute to the fullest extent of his abilities".
Carter will have to champion the Pentagon's proposed $534.3-billion base budget request for the financial year that begins October 1, which exceeds by about $36 billion the budget caps known as sequestration that will resume unless Congress and the president reach an agreement to ease or repeal them.
The new defence secretary is expected to testify to Congress on the budget request early in March. Carter also will have a voice in replacing Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose term is up on September 30.
Micromanagement complaint
In his new role, Carter won't have the independent political power base enjoyed by his three immediate predecessors. Robert Gates was a Central Intelligence Agency director and Pentagon chief under President George W Bush. Leon Panetta also was a former CIA director, as well as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and a one-time House Budget Committee chairman. Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, won two Purple Hearts in the Vietnam War.
All three of them have complained of micromanagement by the Obama White House. Carter witnessed the tensions while serving as the deputy defence secretary under both Panetta and Hagel. Before that, he served under Gates as the military's top weapons buyer.
"Public service at senior levels in Washington is a little bit like being a Christian in the Coliseum," Carter wrote in a short autobiography for the Kennedy School, where he's been a faculty member. "You never know when they are going to release the lions and have you torn apart for the amusement of onlookers."
Independent tone
At his confirmation hearing, Carter struck a respectful but independent tone that suggested he may stray from some White House positions.
While Obama has resisted providing arms to Ukraine, Carter said he's "very much inclined" to supply some weapons. He also said he'd be willing to recommend slowing Obama's timetable for a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan if "I ascertain as the years go by that we need to change that plan."
He also pledged to resist any potential White House pressure to increase the pace of prisoner transfers from Guantanamo.
A former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the UK, where he earned a doctorate in theoretical physics, Carter's involvement in defence policy dates to Cold War-era debates over the MX nuclear missile. He joined a team of scientists analyzing the system for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1979, according to his autobiography.
Since then, he has cycled mostly between positions in government and academia, serving as chairman of the Kennedy School's International and Global Affairs faculty.
After leaving his post as the Pentagon's No. 2 civilian leader in December 2013, he became a senior executive at the New York-based Markle Foundation, which seeks to use emerging technology to improve national security and health care, according to its website.
