Let Me Count the Ways: How Hegseth is Harming the US Military
Secretary of Defense Hegseth came on board champing at the bit to remake the culture of the US military. He saw it as in the grip of the latest vogues in diversity and gender inclusion, to the detriment of traditional warrior virtues. The military needed to purge itself of these foreign viruses and get back to its roots: macho celebrations of strength, manliness, fitness, violence and tactical excellence. Armies are designed to kill people and blow things up, and we have gotten away from this core understanding.
Unfortunately this approach will exacerbate, not correct, the American military’s underlying problems. Recently the Council on Foreign Relations conducted a survey of historians to rank the top 10 greatest foreign policy successes and failures in our 250 year history. At the top of the failure list were #1, the Iraq War and #2, the Vietnam War. Certainly the war in Afghanistan also belongs on this list.
A possibly apocryphal exchange between an American and a Vietnamese general, long after the war, highlights the US problem. American: “You never beat us once.” Vietnamese: “True, but irrelevant.” The US military has not fallen short at killing people and blowing things up. It has won all the battles, but lost the wars. Where it failed was at the strategic level, in understanding its enemy and what kind of wars it was fighting. The consistent cause of these failures has been the same: over-confidence in our strengths in technology, weaponry, and logistics; under-estimation of the commitment and resilience of our enemies.
History has not been kind to the commanders responsible for these campaigns. William Westmoreland in Vietnam, and Tommy Franks in Iraq, vie for the title of America’s most incompetent general. Westmoreland was convinced that the US could win by attrition and prioritized body counts as a way to judge progress; Franks focused on defeating Saddam’s military and failed to plan for the follow-on. Both thought American superiority in firepower was all that mattered.
Behind each of them looms a Defense Secretary—Robert McNamara for Vietnam, Donald Rumsfeld for Iraq—in the grip of the same blindspots. McNamara was convinced his Systems Analysis Office would make warfare rational and cost-effective. Rumsfeld was convinced modern intelligence and precision-strike munitions meant strategic effects could be achieved quickly and without the need for expensive humans.
Today the United States is replicating these same mistakes in Iran. Great tactical skills and awesome capabilities are being squandered by leaders who failed to define clear goals or bothered to understand the enemy. Despite all the historic evidence, an air campaign is, by itself, expected to be decisive in achieving ambitious strategic aims.
The American military’s failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were not caused by the cultural shifts that Hegseth and Trump detest. Integrating African-Americans, women, gays and transgender soldiers into the force has been long and difficult, but there is no evidence it has reduced readiness or lethality or esprit de corps. Hegseth’s focus on undoing these shifts is all about ensuring loyalty and pandering to the MAGA base—and perhaps to Hegseth’s reactionary religious convictions—not improving the military.
Hegseth is in fact reinforcing our strategic weaknesses by doubling down on stereotypes of what an effective military looks like. In and out of the military there are many who blame our defeats on weak-kneed civilians imposing restrictive rules of engagement. The story that ‘we were stabbed in the back’ follows many military failures.
The Hegseth warrior image gains its strength from this myth. If only the military took the gloves off, stopped worrying about civilian casualties and winning hearts and minds and just went out and kicked butt, we would win. This is the thinking we now see at work in the Iran war.
The Hegseth warrior is all testosterone and no brains or morals. Hegseth has intervened in the military education system to prevent officers from attending the country’s top universities. He has prohibited them from going to professional conferences, like the prestigious Aspen Security Conference, claiming it “promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country and hatred for the President of the United States.” He just fired the head of the Army’s chaplain service. His rhetoric is a never-ending bombast about inflicting maximum pain, bombing enemies back to the stone age, and asking for Jesus’s blessing to see all our bullets find their mark.
The American military has been tactically proficient but strategically deficient. The United States badly needs more senior leaders equipped to think deeply about the country’s long-term goals and how to use our enormous wealth and power to achieve them. Unfortunately the President and his Secretary of Defense are in the process of getting rid of any soldier who thinks of war as something other than a video game. They are revamping military training and education to teach the same lessons. Several more years of this will result in lasting damage to the entire defense establishment.
The campaign against ‘wokeness’ has another purpose, to ensure loyalty. Women and minorities are automatically suspected of not being on the Trump train; witness Hegseth’s recent insistence on refusing promotion to four officers, two women and two African-Americans—the only officers that Hegseth singled out.
Hegseth is trying to destroy the idea that there might be honest disagreement or that military service might require questioning the judgment or legality of a course of action. When Senator Mark Kelly, retired fighter pilot and Space Shuttle commander, joined with other members of Congress in reminding soldiers that they have a duty not to obey illegal orders, the Pentagon tried to punish him by docking his pension—a petty action dismissed in court, but designed to send a warning to others. We will reward and punish you based on your loyalty to Donald Trump, not to the Constitution or the nation.
This paves the way for sycophancy. Soldiers who think independently are not welcome here. Such soldiers will see no chance for advancement and will leave, replaced by those willing to bend the knee.
It also paves the way for a military less willing to resist pressure to act improperly, both overseas and at home. The longer this continues, the easier it will be to carry out Donald Trump’s impulsive and incoherent wishes. Invade Greenland? Yes, sir! And the easier it will be to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty forces against the President’s internal enemies.
The US military has long been respected by American citizens for its professionalism, its independence from politics, and its commitment to include every American who wants to serve. These traditions are under assault. Once gone they will be hard to restore.