Cliff Owen/Associated PressMr. Hagel after his remarks to military and civilian Pentagon employees. Mr. Hagel did not speak at length about the budget, but the cuts, he said, are coming. “We need to deal with this reality,” he told an audience in the Pentagon auditorium. Hours after being sworn in as the 24th defense secretary, Mr. Hagel struck a folksy tone in the roomful of both military and civilian Defense Department employees, with some of the military’s top brass populating the front rows. Eschewing the lectern, he walked in front of the audience like a candidate at a town-hall-style meeting and played up his roots as an Army infantryman. He called the United States a “force for good,” but said that it should not dictate its agenda to the world and must strive to build alliances among countries with common interests. “We must lead with our allies,” said Mr. Hagel, who most recently served as chairman of the Atlantic Council, a centrist foreign policy group. On his first day, Mr. Hagel also received briefings on delicate intelligence and operational matters, met with the civilian secretaries of the armed services, visited the Pentagon’s Sept. 11 memorial, and spoke by phone to several members of Congress, George Little, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. Mr. Hagel is also expected to make his first overseas trip as secretary soon. Mr. Hagel, 66, a former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, will be the first defense secretary in more than a decade to have to preside over deep cuts in the Pentagon’s budget, which has ballooned in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Even if automatic budget cuts do not go into effect at the end of the week, Mr. Hagel will still have to find ways to slash billions of dollars in spending by September. Pentagon officials have warned that they may have to furlough up to 800,000 civilian employees; sharply reduce training, including flying hours for pilots; and delay deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group that was bound for the Persian Gulf. In addition to the immense budget challenges, Mr. Hagel faces a steep learning curve in mastering myriad foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration, including deciding whether to increase aid to the Syrian opposition and confronting Iran over its nuclear program. William S. Cohen, who served as defense secretary in the Clinton administration, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Hagel should “get ready to drink from the fire hose.” “He’s got to demonstrate that he’s up on the issues and has a firm handle on them,” Mr. Cohen said. “The next few days, he’s going to be putting in 18- to 19-hour days.” The Senate confirmed Mr. Hagel in a 58-to-41 vote on Tuesday, with only four Republicans supporting their former colleague. It was the smallest margin for a defense secretary since the position was created in 1947, according to Senate records. He succeedsLeon E. Panetta. It remains to be seen whether the Senate confirmation battle — during which Republican senators accused him of not being tough enough on Iran and criticized past remarks that they said made him seem insufficiently supportive of Israel — has permanently crippled his ability to negotiate the cuts with lawmakers. Mr. Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine, suggested that over time, and with plenty of one-on-one meetings, Mr. Hagel could forge a working relationship with his critics on Capitol Hill. “Personal animosities, to the extent they’re there, will be put aside,” Mr. Cohen said. “They won’t be best friends, but they also don’t want to see the country’s security compromised.” Mr. Hagel said in his remarks that shortly after he was sworn in he visited the Pentagon’s memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and “reflected a bit on what happened that day.” Recalling a phrase once used byWinston Churchill, he called the attacks “a jarring gong” that set in motion more than a decade of war. As a senator, Mr. Hagel became a vocal critic of the Iraq war, and during his confirmation fight he was challenged by Republican senators about his opposition to the troop surge ordered by PresidentGeorge W. Bush. Mr. Hagel did not raise this criticism during his speech on Wednesday, saying only that American foreign policy is fallible. “We make mistakes,” he said. “We’ve made mistakes. We’ll continue to make mistakes.” Mr. Hagel referred to his combat service in Vietnam several times during his remarks, and a soldier who introduced him pointed out that Mr. Hagel “knows the costs of war.” “I’ll never ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do,” Mr. Hagel said at one point during the speech. Mr. Hagel is the first defense secretary to have served in combat as an enlisted soldier, and he said that at times he still had the mind-set of an infantryman. He joked that while the Army’s chief of staff, Gen.Ray Odierno, made him shake a bit, it was the sergeant major of the Army — its highest-ranking enlisted member — who “scares the hell out of me.” A version of this article appeared in print on February 28, 2013, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: .
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