Who is Robert Gates?

2 Dec 2008, 1:12 pm   -   Source: AFP
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Former spymaster and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has kept his job despite the United States' shift to a Democratic administration. (AAP)

Former spymaster and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has kept his job despite the United States' shift to a Democratic administration. (AAP)

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has steered US forces toward the exit in Iraq in a deft two-year performance that helped pull the United States back from the brink of failure in the Middle East.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has steered US forces toward the exit in Iraq in a deft two-year performance that helped pull the United States back from the brink of failure in the Middle East.

With candor and a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor, the former spymaster, who seems set to be nominated Monday to stay on his post by president-elect Barack Obama, disarmed critics in Congress even while undertaking an unpopular but ultimately successful 30,000 troop surge in Iraq.

Two years after Gates succeeded Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, the US military is pivoting toward Afghanistan, the "forgotten war" that Obama has said should be the top US priority.

Gates, 65, now seems set to have a new president to advise, his seventh in a 40-year career steeped in the Cold War struggles with the Soviet Union, with the last two almost totally focused on Iraq.

Richard Danzig, the first Obama adviser to suggest that Gates had a place in the Democratic administration, said the defense chief was "in tune" with Obama on Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

"Secretary Gates has been a good secretary of defense. I think he'd be an even better one in the Obama administration," Danzig, a former navy secretary who was also seen as a pick for defense secretary, told reporters October 2.

But Gates is not totally in synch with Obama on Iraq, having argued for a slower drawdown of US forces than the 16-month timetable Obama called for in his campaign.

"As we proceed deeper into the end game, I would urge our leaders to implement strategies that while steadily reducing our presence in Iraq also take into account the advice of our commanders," he told lawmakers recently.

Some observers believe Gates is staying to assure a smooth wartime transition, and will then bow out.

He has said he is eager to retire to his lakeside home in Washington state, and often reminded reporters that he carried a timepiece that counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the end of his term.

Hallmarks of Gates's tenure at the Pentagon have been pragmatism and a modest, low-key demeanor, which served to set him apart from his combative predecessor.

Gates, who came to the job from the presidency of Texas A and M University, quickly set about easing strained relations with the military brass, the Congress and allies in wake of the turbulent Rumsfeld era.

Internationally, he used wit and wry understatement to try to defuse tension.

When Russia's Vladimir Putin attacked the United States in an inflammatory speech in Munich in February, 2007, Gates returned to the same podium the following day.

"One Cold War was quite enough," he said.

On other flashpoint problems, like Iran, Gates has warned against military action except as a last resort, and pushed "soft power," arguing for more money and a greater role for diplomacy and other non-military instruments of power.

"Not every outrage, every act of aggression, every crisis can or should elicit an American military response, and we should acknowledge such," he told an audience of military officers at the National Defense University earlier this year.

"Be modest about what military force can accomplish, and what technology can accomplish," he said.

Gates has been quick to fire top generals, however.

He sacked the air force secretary and chief of staff on the same day – a bureaucratic decapitation without precedent at the Pentagon – because they had not been sufficiently responsive to a series of nuclear blunders.

When the Washington Post revealed that wounded soldiers were being treated shabbily at Walter Reed Hospital, the army's premier medical centre, the generals in charge were soon shown the door.

Marine General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Rumsfeld, was denied a second term after Gates concluded that his nomination would come under fire in the Senate.

Gates is unusual in that he rose through the analytic ranks of the CIA to the top of the spy agency in 1991, but along the way he also crossed over into the realm of policy with postings at the National Security Council.

He had powerful mentors as well, including former CIA director William Casey, a central figure in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage scandal that blew up at the end of the Reagan administration.

Gates withdrew his nomination to become CIA director in 1987 rather than face hostile confirmation hearings, only to come back four years later after a stint at President George H.W. Bush's deputy national security adviser.

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