The ideal Pentagon boss

Here's a free piece of advice to President Barack Obama or President John McCain: There's no need to look for a new secretary of defence. You already have the best man in the job.

The Obama campaign in particular seems to have noticed the virtues of Defence Secretary Robert Gates. It's a little head-spinning to see senior Democrats lauding a Bush cabinet officer in the heat of the campaign, but earlier this month, Richard Danzig, the former Navy secretary who has become one of Obama's closest national security aides, said that many of Gates's pragmatic policies at the Pentagon "are things that Senator Obama agrees with and I agree with."

The case for Gates goes beyond the obvious question of assisting the next president in handling Iraq, which Gates has helped haul back from the brink of total collapse. He has also been instrumental in launching a sweeping revolution in US national security.

Gates has found space to do so since, with the exception of Vice President Cheney, the hard-liners who populated the first Bush term are now gone. Even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who played cheerleader to the addled muscle-flexing policies of the first term, has surrounded herself with career diplomats and is actually listening to them.

The most important change, however, is that the administration has finally hit on a long-term way to make the US secure: by promoting prosperity abroad. This doesn't sound like Pentagon business, but Gates has shown a surprising willingness to think creatively. He doesn't get the attention that his abrasive predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, did, but Gates has put forward a national security policy vision that will be far more lasting - and successful.

Gates has argued that, as he put it on September 29 at the National Defence University, "direct military force will continue to have a role" in the "prolonged, world-wide irregular campaign" against Al Qaida and other violent extremists. But here's the important part: Gates understands "that over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory."

Failing states

Instead, he calls for beefed-up US diplomatic and development capabilities. Unlike Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were obsessed with potential great-power competitors such as China, Gates bluntly admits that the "most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland - for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack - are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states." His solution to failing states? Help patch them up.

Gates argued that the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan is that "economic development, ... good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications, and more - these, along with security, are essential ingredients for long-term success."

Another sign of this revolution came last week with the release of a new Army field manual whose sections on conflict-ridden, fragile states give similar weight to both nation-building and major combat operations. Gates sees reconstruction and economic development as central parts of the Pentagon's push to make the United States safer from the threats that can lurk inside weak and failing states such as Afghanistan.

In a world in which the United States has endured double-digit declines in its popularity since 2002, such efforts can restore US credibility - the key missing ingredient for winning the war on terror.

It's this sort of broad-mindedness that we need - and that Gates values. The Pentagon chief likes to quote General George Marshall's description of Dwight Eisenhower as the "almost perfect model of a modern commander: part soldier, part diplomat, part administrator."

Gates understands that all three aspects are crucial, that for all our core national security problems - finishing the jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, stabilising Pakistan, defeating Al Qaida, confronting a resurgent Russia and advancing the Middle East peace process - the secret to success will be giving people in the area more comfortable, hopeful lives. If McCain and Obama understand this as well, they'll ask Gates to stay put. He has served his country well, but his country isn't done with him yet.

Nancy Soderberg, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, is a visiting scholar at the University of North Florida. Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress. They are co-authors of "The Prosperity Agenda."