Ashton Carter to be nominated as next defense secretary

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter is expected to be nominated by President Obama for the position of secretary of defense. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

CRAIG WHITLOCK, MISSY RYAN 
11:29 AM

President Obama will nominate Ashton B. Carter, a physicist with long experience in national security circles and at the Pentagon, as his new secretary of defense, according to a person familiar with the decision.

If confirmed by the Senate, Carter would succeed Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator who is being pushed aside by the White House after less than two years in the job. Hagel, a Republican, fell out of favor with Obama’s inner circle as the U.S. military became embroiled in a new war in the Middle East, a challenge that is expected to preoccupy the Obama administration for its remaining two years in office. 

Carter, 60, is little known outside Washington but is renowned for his intellect. A Rhodes scholar, he earned a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University and holds degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale. A longtime faculty member at Harvard, he began lecturing at Stanford this fall.

Formerly the No. 2 at the Pentagon and before that its chief weapons buyer, Carter was passed over for the top job when it went to Hagel instead. 

Carter stayed on for a year as deputy defense secretary — a position often described as the chief executive of the Pentagon bureaucracy — but his relationship with Hagel was seen as awkward. When he stepped down in December 2013, Carter didn’t give a specific reason for leaving, simply stating in his resignation letter that “it is time for me to go.”

At a farewell ceremony for Carter at the Pentagon, he was jokingly lauded as a “middle-aged uber-wonk” by Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I think he’s been called the most important, least known figure in Washington, or some language to that effect, and I agree with that,” Dempsey said.

Carter would be the first defense secretary to come of age after the Vietnam War. He graduated from Yale in 1976, three years after the end of the U.S. draft. 

He did not serve in the uniformed military but first joined the Pentagon in 1981 as a civilian program and technical analyst, working on missile defense, the nuclear arsenal and programs to ensure the continuity of government in the event of nuclear war. 

As a physicist, Carter was the rare high-ranking Pentagon official who had a granular understanding of how its most sophisticated weaponry worked. 

“I think his particular skill set is the ability to combine a technical intelligence, a knowledge of the technical, esoteric dimensions of defense, with a broad policy perspective that’s informed by history,” said Joseph Nye, who worked with Carter on the Harvard faculty and also served with him at the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, when both were appointed as assistant secretaries of defense.