Why the Secretary of Defense’s Mysterious Disappearance Means He Needs to Go

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin might well be gone from the Pentagon by the end of the week. A good case can be made that he should be.

In the new year’s strangest bureaucratic mystery (and one of the strangest in any year), Austin, who is 70, was hospitalized on Jan. 1, but nobody in the White House—not even President Joe Biden—knew of the fact until Jan. 4. The deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, who would stand in for him in an emergency, didn’t know until Jan. 3, and even then, she didn’t know he was in the hospital.

This is no minor lapse. U.S. military forces are on high alert in the Middle East; two aircraft carriers were moved into the Mediterranean, as a deterrent to Iranian intervention in the Israel-Hamas war, and those carriers and other vessels have come under fire. If Biden wanted any of those forces to take offensive action, his orders to the regional combatant commander would go through the secretary of defense. If Biden or his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called a “Principals Meeting,” Austin would represent the Defense Department.

Certainly Austin, like any other Cabinet secretary, even like the president himself, is entitled to take time off for a medical emergency, but he needs to tell the commander in chief, as well as his stand-ins and everyone else around him, what’s going on.

If Austin were a vital member of Biden’s national-security team, if he were deeply enmeshed in decision-making on the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East, excuses might be made and tolerated. But the fact that Biden learned of Austin’s absence only after four days—i.e., the fact that Biden hadn’t been in touch with his secretary of defense for four days during a period of round-the-clock military operations and crisis—suggests that Austin is far from essential.

This is all the more significant, as Biden nominated Austin in large part because the two had a close relationship, dating from the time when Austin was the last U.S. commander in Iraq and Biden, as Barack Obama’s vice president, was supervising the U.S. withdrawal from that country. Another major factor: Biden’s beloved son Beau served on Austin’s staff in Iraq. The two—both observant Catholics—sat together at Mass every Sunday and kept in touch even after both returned stateside.

Finally, both as vice president and as a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden had long railed, privately and sometimes publicly, against stonewalling and resistance from senior officials and officers at the Pentagon. (He warned Obama several times not to get “boxed in” on false promises and inflated troop levels in Afghanistan.) He knew that Austin, a classic “good soldier,” would not push back against his decisions. (Biden rejected Michèle Flournoy—seen by many as the top candidate for the job—because she had never been a member of his inner circle and because she would have pushed back. As undersecretary of defense in Obama’s term, she advocated the “nation-building” policies in Afghanistan that Biden opposed.)

Austin—who had served as head of U.S. Central Command and as operations chief on the Joint Staff—has been a competent secretary of defense. He has been responsive to requests from Capitol Hill on Pentagon budgets and programs. He has effectively lobbied foreign governments for continued military aid to Ukraine. He has been a trusted U.S. spokesman at meetings with counterparts in Taiwan, South Korea, and Israel, among other nations.

But he hasn’t made any dents in the Pentagon’s way of doing business, at a time when innovation and efficiency are more vital than ever. He hasn’t cut a high profile as the military establishment’s top leader (he has held very few press conferences and often travels with only one or two reporters). And—again, as his unnoticed four-day MIA stint suggests—he hasn’t stepped up, or perhaps been allowed to step up, as a constant top-level adviser to the president, as most defense secretaries would at a time like this.

In a statement released on Saturday, Austin took “full responsibility” for the decision to keep his hospitalization secret and acknowledged, “I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed,” adding, “I commit to doing better” at placating “media concerns about transparency.”

This failed to satisfy anyone. Leading Republicans and Democrats on the congressional armed services committees are pressing for more answers, possibly for a formal investigation. It wasn’t until Friday, after 5 p.m., that the Pentagon informed Congress and the public that he had been rushed to Walter Reed Medical Center as the result of complications stemming from a voluntary medical procedure. Even since then, we haven’t been told any more details, except that the procedure (whatever it was) took place on Dec. 22 and that Austin began suffering extreme pains from it 10 days later.

Biden has said he still has confidence in Austin, which is what a president is expected to say. It wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone if Austin himself announced, say, by the end of the week, that he was stepping down due to health issues (which, as a private citizen, he would be under no obligation to specify).

The president has his plate a bit too full for a new defense secretary’s long and possibly contentious confirmation hearings. The good news is that Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, 53, could step up without resistance. A long-standing national-security expert who is widely respected among the senior officer corps, Hicks was a civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1993 to 2006, then, after a brief spell in the think-tank world, became deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans, and forces during the Obama administration.

Austin was just the third retired general ever to be nominated for secretary of defense less than seven years after leaving the armed forces. The law forbids such people to become defense secretary unless Congress issues a waiver. At his confirmation hearing, Austin pledged to rely heavily on the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, emphasizing that he would treat Hicks—already nominated deputy secretary—as a “partner” in setting policy. This was unusual, as deputies are usually administrators, but insiders say he has made good on his promise. A Senate aide, who told me that he and others hope Austin does not resign, added, “Kath Hicks is a very good deputy, and I think the national security community at large would be perfectly happy to have her step up, if needed.”

Austin has a distinguished military record, but he has broken national-security protocol, violated the public trust, and fallen far short of any president’s expectations of a Cabinet secretary’s behavior. He should go.