A former U.S. Defense Secretary and U.S. Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, talked global politics and the 2024 presidential election at the University of Kansas Dole Institute of Politics on Oct. 3, 2024. (Kansas Reflector screen capture of Dole Institute’s YouTube channel)
LAWRENCE — Chuck Hagel, the 24th U.S. defense secretary and a former U.S. Senator from Nebraska, said Thursday the upcoming presidential election is going to be a defining one for foreign policy and politics at home.
Speaking at the University of Kansas Dole Institute of Politics in a forum on presidential candidates and their relationship to global politics, Hagel said the present day is the most dangerous era since World War II. The candidates, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, aren’t talking enough about the potential threat to America’s place on the world stage, he said.
Hagel was among more than 100 signatories on a recent letter from former U.S. security officials endorsing Harris for president. Hagel said he searches for “three indispensable requisites” in a leader: character, courage and judgment.
“I don’t agree with Harris on everything, but I think elections are always about choices,” he told Jerry Seib, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and a visiting fellow at the Dole Institute, who moderated the Thursday event.
Hagel has disagreed with Trump’s actions and words regarding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, his stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the foreign policy and economic consequences of Trump’s appetite for raising tariffs. However, he said Harris doesn’t have a strong enough stance on Israel.
“This election is going to define one hell of a lot,” he said.
The future of foreign and domestic policy are at stake, and the president must have congressional support, he said. The war in Ukraine will be the “real test” of which direction American foreign policy is headed, he said.
“This just can’t go on indefinitely. So, I mean, how do you end it?” Hagel asked. “How do you end it in a way that’s honorable, that’s right for the future for Ukraine but also for the future of the world?”
As former President Barack Obama’s defense secretary and as a two-term Republican U.S. Senator beginning in 1997, Hagel was often a critic of war, particularly the war in Iraq. He theorized Thursday the dangerous global climate facing the United States today is a product of failing to learn lessons from the past.
“We should’ve learned something from Vietnam,” said Hagel, who served in the war in 1968. “We should’ve learned some lessons from that but we didn’t.”
Now, narrower approaches to government, failed leadership and inadequate education systems have caused the United States to confront again the lessons learned in the 1930s, he said.
In the time since he was a government official, Hagel said, the Republican Party has become less “expansive” in its thinking.
“I’m not sure there is a Republican Party anymore,” he said. “I think it’s an amalgamation of tribes.”
He said he is hopeful for bipartisanship, but “a realist, too.”
“Democracies can only work if there is compromise,” he said.
