With the departure of Hillary Clinton and the scuttled nomination of Susan Rice -- and men slotted as nominees or returnees for key positions including secretary of state, defense secretary, CIA director, director of national intelligence, White House chief of staff, and national security advisor -- it's hard to avoid the impression that the Obama administration's foreign-policy team is something of a boy's club. As FP columnist Rosa Brooks put it in a recent article, "It's fine to say that such critical foreign-policy and national security positions ought to go to the best guy for the job, but sometimes, the best guy is a woman."
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There are exceptions, of course: Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano might stay in their positions, and there are certainly plenty of high-ranking women scattered across various agencies, but at the uppermost levels, it's looking awfully male. (And awfully white, for that matter.) Now, some of the United States' most prominent female national security experts are finding themselves on the outside looking in.
Here are a few alternative names Barack Obama might want to consider for high-ranking posts:
JANE HARMAN
Current job: Director of the Wilson Center
Qualifications: Jane Harman has been closely involved in U.S. national security policy since Jimmy Carter's administration, when she served as counsel to the Department of Defense. Over her two decades in Congress, Harman served on the Armed Services, Intelligence, and Homeland Security committees, traveling widely as part of congressional delegations. She stepped down in 2011 to run one of the country's most respected foreign-policy think tanks. She has lately been a critic of America's overreliance on drone strikes in counterterrorism. Due to her longtime interest and expertise in intelligence issues, she had been mentioned as a potential successor to David Petraeus as director of the CIA.
MICHÈLE FLOURNOY
Current job: Board member at the Center for a New American Security
Qualifications: Michèle Flournoy served in several capacities in Bill Clinton's Defense Department and went on to co-found the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) -- one of Washington's most influential defense think tanks. She led Obama's defense transition team and from 2009 to 2012 ran the Pentagon's powerful policy shop. During the 2012 campaign, she was one of the Obama campaign's leading surrogates on foreign policy and more recently was one of the main names being mooted as defense secretary prior to Chuck Hagel's nomination. FP's Brooks made the case for Flournoy in December. She's knowledgeable, well-liked in Washington, and extremely capable.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images; Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images
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