Remaking the military: Pete Hegseth’s war on diversity and ‘fat generals’

When Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of the US military’s top brass from around the globe to a special meeting in Virginia last week, “rumours ran wild”, said Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic. Was the Secretary of Defence about to purge the ranks, or demand that these leaders swear fealty to the president? No, it turned out the former Fox News host wanted to lecture them on the “warrior ethos”.

Hegseth said he was fed up with “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals”. All soldiers would have to be in good shape, and clean-shaven: “no more beardos”. Diversity and inclusion is out: there would be “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he declared, “no more climate-change worship... we are done with that shit!” Training should be “scary, tough and disciplined”. Sergeants must be allowed to “instil healthy fear”, to “put their hands on recruits”.

Risk takers

What was remarkable about Hegseth’s lecture, said The Wall Street Journal, is that it “probably needed to be delivered”. The Biden-era focus on identity politics did indeed erode standards in the military.

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Hegseth was also right to argue that the military needs to be more open to “risk takers”, allowing those who make honest errors to continue their careers. Reagan’s navy secretary, John Lehman, has warned that none of the fleet admirals who won the Second World War would make it past the rank of captain in today’s one-mistake navy. Ingenuity and creativity really matter in warfare – “see Russia’s battlefield floundering in Ukraine”.

Modern battlefield

Hegseth’s speech, and the rambling address by President Trump that followed it, were ultimately both exercises in “military nostalgia”, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Hegseth, a former National Guard officer, wants to revive a sort of gung-ho, “hard-ass” approach that would be well suited to staging another landing on Omaha Beach, but is less relevant to a modern battlefield dominated by drones and AI.

Trump talked of bringing back battleships, a fighting platform that became obsolete in the 1940s. He also repeated his desire to use the military for domestic law enforcement, to fight “the enemy from within”, which is ominous, unconstitutional – and “just dumb” at a time when Russia and China pose a growing threat. A preoccupation with “woke” culture and internal enemies “won’t prepare the military for the hi-tech demands of 21st century war”.