Tom Nichols
Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: think tanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defence Department announcement, because they promote “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.”
This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalisation the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defence.
For good measure, the Defence Department spokesperson Sean Parnell invoked the current holy words of the Hegseth Pentagon: The Aspen forum, he said, did not align with the department’s efforts to “increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalise the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.”
The Aspen gathering is not exactly a secret nest of Communists. This year’s roster of speakers included former CIA Director Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper—a Trump appointee—and a representative from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s office, among many others. John Phelan, the current Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, were set to attend as well.
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