Obama Makes Work’s Defense Nomination Official

Robert Work will be nom­in­ated to serve in the Pentagon’s No. 2 spot, the White House an­nounced Fri­day.

The de­cision is by no means a sur­prise. News of the pending nom­in­a­tion broke a few days ago, and the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vice Com­mit­tee jumped the gun this morn­ing, an­noun­cing it would hold his con­firm­a­tion hear­ing next week.

De­fense Sec­ret­ary Chuck Hagel thanked the com­mit­tee for its “prompt ac­tion.”

Work, who is cur­rently the CEO at the Cen­ter for a New Amer­ic­an Se­cur­ity, pre­vi­ously served as the un­der sec­ret­ary for the Navy, with Hagel call­ing him an “ad­mired and tested lead­er” and a “na­tion­ally re­cog­nized stra­tegic thinker.”

Work, if con­firmed, will re­place Act­ing Deputy Sec­ret­ary Christine Fox, who stepped in­to the role in Decem­ber, be­com­ing the Pentagon’s highest-rank­ing wo­man.

The former Navy of­fi­cial re­turns to the Pentagon as it faces a chal­len­ging fisc­al en­vir­on­ment, and draws down its pres­ence in Afgh­anistan.

Hagel sidestepped ques­tions about a draw­down timeline, spe­cif­ic U.S. troop levels, or when he be­lieves a bi­lat­er­al se­cur­ity agree­ment would be signed with Afghan Pres­id­ent Ham­id Kar­zai, but he did say that Pentagon lead­ers con­tin­ue to work with al­lies to plan for a “post-2014 mis­sion.”

Hagel also ad­dressed the de­part­ment’s on­go­ing eth­ics scan­dals, not­ing that he plans to ap­point a seni­or-level eth­ics of­ficer.

“I don’t think there is one simple an­swer to the is­sue of eth­ics, val­ues, a lapse in some of those areas that we do know about,” Hagel said. “That’s why we’re tak­ing a hard look at this. I think we need to find out: Is there a deep, wide prob­lem? If there is, then what’s the scope of that prob­lem. How did this oc­cur.”