Senate confirmation hearings are slated to begin on Jan. 14, 2025, for Pete Hegseth, whom President-elect Donald Trump has chosen to serve as the next secretary of defense. It’s a massive job, broadly affecting Americans’ security at home and abroad and overseeing huge numbers of people and immense amounts of money.
The Conversation U.S. asked Evelyn Farkas, a longtime Defense Department leader who is now executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, to explain what the secretary of defense’s job entails and what makes a person effective at that job. During the Obama administration, Farkas was a deputy assistant secretary of defense with a focus on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Prior to that, she was a civilian adviser to the top military officer in NATO, and earlier still she was a senior staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the military. She also served as a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
