Yvonne Chiu
During Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent remarks to America’s generals in Virginia, they behaved admirably. But his speech was not really aimed at them.
On Tuesday, military watchers all over America breathed a collective sigh of relief that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s conclave of the flags entailed neither purge nor Struggle Session Thunderdome. The extended public shaming over physical standards, however, obscures the attempt to erode American military professionalism and change the nature of the US military.
Reassuringly and unsurprisingly, the general and flag officers (GOFOs) behaved as their profession demands—with attentive silence—to the furious onslaught of partisan propagandizing from both Hegseth and President Donald Trump.
That suits Hegseth just fine, because he does not need them to misbehave. In live-streaming the speeches, Trump and Hegseth were speaking to the US military at large—and laid bare their own shortcomings for foreign allies and adversaries alike, musing about reviving the battleship and gilding official stationery, or daring enemies to “FAFO” and telling GOFOs to “move out and draw fire.” Both speakers, however, have made it clear that they are more concerned about combating “the enemy from within” than without.
Hegseth highlighted a cornucopia of policy changes to make the US military more “lethal”—some helpful, others gratuitous culture warring, some that will make it “less capable and less lethal.” By redefining the terms “toxic,” “bullying,” and “hazing,” the secretary is shifting the baseline for US military professionalism—and also making it harder to report and punish bad and ineffective leaders. Exclusivity of the wrong kind makes a military less capable, and harsh training of the wrong kind makes it less lethal. Hegseth’s speech was a slew of contradictions; in his telling, one should not “be reckless or violate the law,” but should at the same time throw out all the “stupid rules of engagement,” all while being “constitutional.” If nothing else, this administration has an admirable ability to live with cognitive dissonance.
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