DOD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
Flournoy briefs the press at the Pentagon in 2012.
As Biden announced six top national-security appointments this week, he left one significant position unnamed: secretary of defense. Many are speculating that he will nominate Michèle Flournoy. The appointment of a woman to head up the Pentagon would align with the president-elect’s commitment to diversity. She was formerly the number-three defense official in the Obama administration, and Washingtonians discuss her nomination as a done deal.
The delay may have to do with progressive skepticism surrounding Flournoy, who has come under criticism for her corporate work with weapons contractors. This summer, I reported extensively on the boutique consultancy that Flournoy founded after serving in the Obama administration. The last three years, as co-founder of WestExec Advisors, Flournoy drew upon her recent knowledge of government institutions to help weapons-makers and tech companies get contracts from the Pentagon. Now, her opaque client list and her closeness with defense contractors, some of which predates WestExec, has caught up with her.
Biden has ushered in some of Flournoy’s shadow-lobbyist colleagues who also worked within the military-industrial complex. But of all the people Biden has been considering for national-security posts, Flournoy has the closest ties to the weapons industry. As a result, while the president-elect’s other appointees are making pledges about what they will do in their new roles this week, Flournoy has been quietly meeting with progressives on Zoom calls to make the case that she can be trusted to enact a consensus-based agenda.
She’s been facing the same questions from all corners, according to a half-dozen Washington insiders who have met with her in off-the-record sessions in recent weeks. If she’s the nominee, she’s likely to face them in public next year across the committee room from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and others. Here are some of those questions.
1. Will Flournoy Embrace Transparency?
Flournoy founded WestExec Advisors with Tony Blinken, whom Biden tapped as secretary of state this week. Their work is shadowy. One WestExec staffer told me that companies ask the firm, “If you want to knock on the door of the Pentagon, how do you do that?” WestExec offers guidance, though it does not directly lobby or represent foreign governments. “There’s work we would do, and there’s work we wouldn’t do,” Flournoy told me. The firm’s founders said they operated by an internal code of conduct, but declined to share that code or discuss it in further detail. They also would not disclose their clients beyond the broad outlines. “We have a couple of defense firms as clients,” the staffer told me, as well as “smaller commercial tech companies who actually want to help in the national-security space, but they have no idea how to navigate.”
Flournoy has deep ties to the defense industry. In 2020, she earned about $250,000 from a board seat at the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Under her leadership, the think tank she founded, the Center for a New American Security, fundraised at least $3.8 million from defense contractors.
It will be particularly challenging for Flournoy who, if nominated, will face questions from Sen. Warren on the Armed Services Committee. Warren openly detests the revolving door’s influence on the Pentagon, and last year grilled Trump’s nominee for the position Mark Esper for his lobbying work at Raytheon. “Coziness between defense lobbyists, Congress, and the Pentagon tilts countless decisions away from national security interests and toward the desires of giant corporations,” wrote Warren in one of her plans. “We have to call this what it is: corruption, plain and simple.”
2. How Will She Implement Biden’s Pledges—and Go Even Further?
One of the reasons Flournoy has likely run into more controversy than other national-security hires on Team Biden is that progressive groups are increasingly advocating for restraint abroad. Their organizing has been successful, and Biden has pledged to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But those pledges are vague; it will fall on the secretary of defense to work out how to fulfill them.
So it’s important to revisit Flournoy’s track record from her time as a think-tank analyst. In 2002, she argued for preemptive strikes on Iraq and in the two decades since has pushed for keeping troops there.
One group Flournoy has been trying to convince is the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a relatively new organization committed to restraint in foreign policy. She met with members of the think tank earlier this month. Quincy researchers wouldn’t comment on the meeting, in accordance with the ground rules they set. But speaking more broadly about Flournoy, the response was mixed.
“By any measure, she’s qualified to be secretary of defense. The question is whether she should be secretary of defense,” said Andrew Bacevich, the president of the institute. He recently criticized Flournoy’s view of China in the Prospect. “We’re at a moment when we need fresh thinking; we need intellectual creativity,” he told me. “I’m very skeptical that she possesses that.”
Others responded more favorably. “She understands better than some other candidates that the Democratic Party has two wings, and it takes two wings to fly this plane,” said Joe Cirincione, a senior fellow at Quincy. He noted that the Pentagon’s annual budget has swelled to $721.5 billion, which on an annual basis is double pre-9/11 levels. “She favors a flat budget, and that’s not good enough,” he added, and suggested that the next secretary of defense set up an advisory board on Pentagon reform “to deal with undue influence of defense contractors.”
3. Will Her Time Working for Foreign Governments Influence Her Policymaking?
Since Flournoy joined the board of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington has paid the company $3 million for consulting fees. Flournoy founded the Center for a New American Security in 2007, which has accepted millions from foreign governments. The United Arab Emirates donated $250,000 in return for a report on missile defense in 2016. Emirati Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, the consummate Washington operator who is close to Jared Kushner, made an appearance at WestExec’s launch party.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are fighting a brutal war in Yemen, and Biden has said he would end American military support for it. But Flournoy remains mute on this issue. When 29 former Obama officials wrote a letter in 2018 calling for an end to the conflict that they had helped facilitate when in office, Flournoy did not lend her name to the cause. At a foreign-policy brainstorming session in 2019, she argued for selling “defensive weapons” to Saudi Arabia, even after the kingdom’s coalition had killed tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The majority of both the House and the Senate voted to end support for Saudi and the United Arab Emirates. Will these potential conflicts influence how Flournoy would implement Biden’s pledge to end weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates?
News organizations have been dismissive of these concerns, even patronizing. One outlet described Flournoy’s corporate work as “rankling” progressives; another said it was making them “grumble.” But these are not things that progressives alone should care about. In a role that oversees 1.3 million service members and the largest arsenal in the world, transparency is the bare minimum. “When you’re talking about a position like secretary of defense, you need to make sure the person occupying that role is beyond reproach,” Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, told me. “There can’t even be the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
