If US President-elect Donald Trump’s ultimate goal is to shake up Washington’s military establishment, then his nomination of war veteran and Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth to be the country’s next defence secretary has certainly had the desired effect.
During his first term at the White House, Trump often had a fractious relationship with the many senior military officers he appointed to his cabinet. General HR McMaster, the highly regarded US commander, only lasted a year as Trump’s first national security advisor, while another highly regarded American general, Jim Mattis, resigned as Trump’s defence secretary in 2019 in protest at the president’s determination to end Washington’s military presence in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the deep resentment many senior military figures felt about Trump’s overbearing conduct during his first term in the White House was reflected in the accusation made during the presidential election contest by US Marine Corps General John F Kelly, who was Trump’s homeland security secretary, that Trump had fascist tendencies.
"It's a far-right, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy," Kelly said in an interview with the New York Times.
Following his stunning landslide victory in the presidential elections, Trump has made it clear that, for his second term in office, he intends to appoint only die-hard loyalists who will implement his “America First” agenda rather than Beltway professionals who may not be supportive of his aims, as was often the case in his first term.
With this objective in mind, Trump has made the controversial decision to appoint Hegseth, a 44-year-old high-profile television polemicist with little experience running a massive bureaucracy like the Pentagon, to oversee the defence brief.
Hegseth’s military career included serving as a major in the Minnesota National Guard, as a prison guard at Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming an outspoken right-wing critic of the military. Hegseth does not have a senior military or national security experience.
Between his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, he served in a $110,000-a-year role as executive director of Vets for Freedom, a political advocacy group that advocated for then-President George W. Bush's Iraq surge.
The appointment has certainly had Trump’s desired effect of creating controversy, with Hegseth’s nomination for the job provoking widespread condemnation and ridicule in equal measure among Washington’s national security establishment concerned about some of Hegseth’s more controversial claims.
One of his more headline-grabbing remarks was his call for a purge of America’s top generals for pursuing what he claims are “woke” diversity policies. He caused particular outrage by claiming that the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Charles Brown, was only appointed because he was black and accused him of “pursuing the radical positions of leftwing politicians”.
Concerns have also been raised about appointing such an inexperienced candidate to a key security position at a time when the US is involved in two major conflicts, in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as his ability to run a massive bureaucracy with 1.3 million active-duty service members and the nearly 1 million civilian staff.
Some of the most vocal critics of Hegseth’s selection have been veterans group leaders who opposed him when he was floated for Veterans Affairs secretary during Trump’s first term. “Hegseth is undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history. And the most overtly political. Brace yourself, America,” Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, said in a post on X after his appointment.
Eric Edelman, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Bush administration, told the Politico website that Hegseth’s appointment owed a great deal to his loyalty to the President-elect. “(Trump) puts the highest value on loyalty. It appears that one of the main criteria that’s being used is how well people defend Donald Trump on television.
The twice-married Hegseth, who was raised in Minnesota and has four children, has, in recent years, developed a close relationship with Trump, who has made several appearances on his Fox News show. He was also at the centre of a controversy over a Jerusalem Cross he has tattooed on his chest, which led to him being removed from Joe Biden’s inauguration security detail over concerns he represented an extremist sect.
Apart from his ten-year stint with Fox News, Hegseth has also written several books, including The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In announcing Hegseth as his pick, Trump complimented that book, noting its "nine weeks on the New York Times best-sellers list, including two weeks at NUMBER ONE."
One indication of how Hegseth is likely to approach his new job—assuming, that is, that Congress approves his appointment—is contained in his memoir, in which he writes that: “The next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired.”
Hegseth has been particularly vocal about the military’s apparent obsession with “woke” issues. In a Fox appearance this year, he called for a fundamental shift in US military priorities, warning that the current focus on diversity and inclusivity was weakening America’s ability to defend itself.
