Hegseth’s Unusual, Partisan, and Dangerous Convening of Military Leaders

At an unusual gathering of several hundred of the country’s top military officers he called on short notice and for unexplained reasons, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exalted yesterday as “another liberation day,” dubbing it the “liberation of America's warriors.” He decried “fat generals” and rules of engagement that ensure conduct is consistent with the laws of war (which, by the way, were developed by the United States Army in 1863). He scolded the senior officers and sergeants major, who would each have spent over thirty years of their adult lives defending our country, telling them that they had become a “woke military.”

In his diatribe against so-called “beardos” and elsewhere in his address, Secretary Hegseth was clear about grooming and other standards. No one present would doubt the civilians’ right to set those standards, because strict subordination to civilian control by the U.S. military is deeply ingrained in the institution.

And offensive as some of the comments might have been for the senior military leaders, there are other elements that many will welcome as corrections to the excesses of both the prior administration and both parties in Congress, such as high standards for combat units and less emphasis on diversity. Even if the made-for-TV spectacle announcements don’t fix actual problems, they may allay concerns among segments of the public—concerns that Trump, Hegseth, and other far-right pundits have significantly contributed to fostering.

Surveys of public attitudes by the Reagan Institute show that the public does have concerns about progressive social policies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) affecting the military—but these surveys show even greater public concern about politicization of the military. And if Secretary Hegseth’s event serves to allay the former for some, it aggravates the latter for all.

However, the “secretary of war” was just the warm up act for the commander in chief. Following Hegseth’s address, Trump took the stage and delivered a garrulous stump speech, ludicrous—even if it hadn’t been norm-shattering—to deliver to a military audience. During his 73-minute speech, he talked about tariffs and the presidential autopen, and argued that he deserved the Nobel peace prize. He bad-mouthed his predecessors, current governors and mayors, and told the assembled military the 2020 election was rigged.

Most dangerously, the commander in chief intimated that his administration would wage war in U.S. cities. “San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” said President Trump. “This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.” He claimed to have directed the secretary of defense to use those American cities as training grounds for the military, alleging that Washington, D.C. was more dangerous than anything any of the assembled had experienced in Afghanistan. 

Americans should be frightened at this prospect, and Congress should be preparing to constrain the executive power to enact what the president described. One way would be for the legislative branch to modify the 1807 Insurrection Act to more clearly limit the conditions that qualify for the president to send troops, especially when over the objections of governors. Congress could also reinstate the requirement for approval by a Supreme Court justice to verify that an insurrection is occurring. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act should also be amended to more tightly proscribe presidential power and to eliminate the exercise loophole, which was utilized for deployments. Authority over the D.C. National Guard should be devolved from the president to the city’s mayor. 

Amid the invectives and political jabs lobbed by the president and his secretary of defense, the officers and their senior enlisted advisors comported themselves incredibly admirably. They had a duty to be present, because they had been legally ordered by the secretary to be, but also had a duty not to participate in the partisan politicking. The president was so taken aback by the stoicism that he tried to encourage them to applaud, saying “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before.” He was not successful.

However, we should be careful not to project too much meaning onto the silence. We don’t know what the military officers and NCOs present thought of the event—nor should we. The American public is best served by a military inert in the country’s politics. It is both historically anomalous and a blessing that in nearly 250 years of American government, a powerful military—influential in policymaking and vastly more popular than the country’s elected politicians—has never once been a threat to our democracy. Military leaders have never tried to take over, never perverted governance into their own hands.

The military must now veer toward the political correctness of a different stripe being propagated by the Trump administration. This new political correctness forbids any mention of climate change affecting the geopolitical landscape and the value of diversity. And the military will follow through, because it is the Constitutional prerogative of the civilian leadership to set military policies. As Professor Heidi Urban said to me, “[T]he longest running war the United States military doesn’t want to fight is the American culture war.”