‘He’s making it worse’: Frustrations with Hawley’s Pentagon nominee blockade boil over

“What my colleague from Missouri is doing is making us less secure because he’s holding nominees,” Shaheen said following Hawley’s objection. “He’s complaining about the problems we have in Russia and Ukraine and he’s making it worse because he’s not willing to allow those nominees who can help with that problem to go forward.

“He sits on the Armed Services Committee with me where he has access to the same information about our pressing national security challenges, and yet he’s holding up these nominees,” she added. “He’s disregarding the threats that we face because he’d rather grandstand on Afghanistan.”

Other Democrats, led by Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.), have criticized the holdup in confirmations as nominees wait months to get on the job. Reed pushed for Senate leaders to begin holding votes on long-stalled nominations, a process that began last week and has seen five officials confirmed since then.

Over the past few months, Hawley has blocked easy confirmations for President Joe Biden’s Pentagon nominees and demanded the ouster of top members of his national security team over Afghanistan. He reiterated the call on the Senate floor Thursday and dinged Biden for being too slow to bolster Ukraine against Russian aggression.

“What accountability has there been in this time? Who has been relieved of duty? Who has been shown the door? What have we learned?” Hawley asked. “The answer is there’s been no accountability.

“If you think that Vladimir Putin and the other dictators around this world weren’t emboldened by this administration’s weakness, by their utter failure in Afghanistan, then you’ve got another thing coming,” he added.

Shaheen, who co-chairs the Senate’s NATO Observer Group, also attacked Hawley’s outlook on the alliance as “disturbing and shockingly uninformed.” Hawley has pushed the administration to reverse course on U.S. support for Ukraine’s prospective membership in NATO, arguing a binding military commitment could detract from U.S. efforts to compete with China.

“Maybe he doesn’t remember 9/11 because he was too young, the countries that came to our aid were our NATO allies,” Shaheen said.

Wallander and Dalton were approved by the Armed Services Committee last week. The panel green-lighted Honey in October. Hawley blocked a previous attempt by Democrat Mark Kelly of Arizona to quickly confirm Honey in December.

A spokesperson for Hawley noted after publication that Wallander’s nomination sat in the Armed Services Committee for nearly seven months without action, a wait they contend undermines Democrats’ argument that her confirmation is urgent now. Wallander was nominated last June and received a confirmation hearing in January.

Wallander, a top Russia official on the National Security Council in the Obama administration during the 2014 seizure of Crimea, notably criticized the last Democratic administration’s response.

At a confirmation hearing last month, she told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Obama administration’s response “was too slow and too incremental.”

“If confirmed, I would apply the lessons that I learned, and I believe others in the U.S. national security community learned, to better address Russia’s ongoing and heightened aggression against its neighbors,” she told senators.

Wallander also told Senate Armed Services that she supports NATO allies spending more than 2 percent of their GDP on defense, exceeding the minimum goal established by the alliance’s Wales Pledge in 2014.

Wallander was a senior director for Russia and Central Asia on the NSC staff from 2013 to 2017. She also worked at the Pentagon as the deputy assistant secretary for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia during the first three years of the Obama administration.

She is now president and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation, a nonprofit organization aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries and promoting private sector development in Russia.

Senate Democrats recently have begun chipping away at the backlog of civilian Pentagon nominees.

The Senate has confirmed five of Biden’s DoD picks since last week, the largest tranche since Hawley began slow-walking nominations on the floor.

Recent nominees approved include the acquisition chiefs for the Army and Air Force and the second ranking official in the Pentagon’s policy office.

In all, 30 Pentagon nominees have been confirmed since Biden took office.