Why Senate Republicans Should Reject Pete Hegseth (The National Interest)
Trump's nominees are excellent, except Hegseth, who lacks any skill or gravitas to effect the Pentagon transformation Trump wants.
By Christian Whiton, January 12, 2025
Every president makes at least one mistaken appointment to his cabinet, and President-elect Donald Trump is no exception. Nominating TV weekend personality Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense was a rash error, and Senate Republicans should spare Trump from the potential consequences by rejecting his nomination.
Let me hasten to say that I support Trump’s other nominees. I was honored to have served at the beginning of Trump’s first term, including during his 2016 transition, helping to secure Senate confirmation of cabinet-level and other nominees.
Second presidential terms are often lackluster—a wise man once quipped that every administration leaves town as a parody of itself. However, Trump’s could be very different; it has the potential to usher in sweeping changes of a magnitude unseen since the arrival of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Dealers in 1933. Regardless of magnitude, Trump’s comeback and coattails on Capitol Hill present the most transformational opportunity for the GOP in decades.
But this exciting potential and Trump’s loyalist personnel criteria do not justify nominating a lightweight man-boy to lead the Department of Defense—the largest and most powerful organization responsible for securing the free world—and serve as the only civilian other than the president in the military chain of command.
The gathering Democrat-led opposition to Hegseth has focused on his alleged personal flaws, including whisper allegations of sexual assault and excessive alcohol intake. My view of such allegations is that they must be ignored unless attested to publicly by credible eyewitnesses under oath. We’ll see what happens at Hegseth’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 14 and after.
For the moment, let us skip the alleged character flaws and focus only on what is certain. Hegseth served in the Army National Guard and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq like millions of others of his generation. He also led a veterans’ advocacy organization. Depending on who the audience is, he is either for or against allowing women and gays to serve in combat roles in the military. Finally, Trump admires his advocacy for veterans’ healthcare and opposition to woke practices that have degraded military culture and impeded recruiting.
Speaking to Sean Hannity about the Senate confirmation process, which has included several awkward meetings with Republican senators, Hegseth remarked:
“And let me tell you, Sean, the founders got this right. This is not a trivial process. This is a real thing: advice and consent of a nominee who the president has chosen. And I’m so grateful that President Trump would have the faith in me to lead the Defense Department, to choose me to do that. But this advice and consent process, meeting with all the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and they all have great questions, and my answers are for them.”
Golly gosh jeepers, Mr. Smith!
Hegseth was considered for the Veterans Affairs secretary position in Trump’s first term. When he was rejected, he grieved publicly, sharing on social media the tattoo he got as a form of personal therapy for the setback. Hegseth talks today about having been conveniently changed by Jesus.
All fine and good, but the impression one gets is of a forty-four-year-old juvenile on a journey of self-discovery, with nothing achieved or even concluded with each episode.
There is much talk about experience, considering he can boast so little. He has never supervised or run an organization of any magnitude or complexity like that of the Defense Department. He has never reformed an obstinate organization, and this obstinate Pentagon has been in desperate need of change since the Cold War ended thirty years ago. It has lost the ability to win wars and is still configured for a Europe-first foreign policy with counterinsurgency and nation-building as side hustles. It needs a radical transformation to deter war with China. Hegseth is neither a leader of leaders, a deal guy, or even a simple manager. His garish choice of finery is another clue to his future performance. That may sound like a gratuitous comment, but appearances matter—man-boys with tough guy tats won’t move a culture that places exceptionally high value on what the military calls “command presence.”
What all this adds up to is a fundamental lack of gravitas. Even an intern in White House personnel can fire a general at the direction of the president. Still, not just anyone can lead four-star generals with decades of field command experience, much less dozens of them. The same is true for other appointed leaders in the Pentagon, including service secretaries (e.g., secretary of the army, secretary of the navy) who have their own ambition, egos, turf to protect, and allies on Capitol Hill. Leaders of the unified combatant commands often have direct access to the president when situations call for it.
Would Hegseth not only be able to manage senior military and civilian officials but also actually lead them by setting a vision with an accompanying national security strategy? Can he create a dramatically different military that is reoriented toward the Pacific and can learn from the lessons of the Ukraine War and the radical tech transformations we are witnessing? This means a new military based on high-tech communications and sensors, autonomous mesh networks in space, and lower-tech airborne and underwater drones to supplement infantry, plus rebuilding nuclear forces and catching up to the Russians and Chinese on technologies like maneuverable hypersonic missiles. This enormous undertaking and expense will require canceling the acquisition of vulnerable new $13 billion aircraft carriers, $5 billion ballistic missile submarines, $700 million subsonic B-21 bombers, the army’s obsolete deployments (particularly in Italy, Germany, and South Korea), and many other politically sacred cows. Doing so would require a coordinated effort across the national security establishment, defense industry, and members of Congress. Is this a job Hegseth has any chance of accomplishing?
However, that is not the job Trump has in mind. Perhaps Hegseth is meant to be more than a Queen Elizabeth II of the Pentagon—there to set a tone and an example, attend events, and be seen, but not to do the real policy work. This fits with Trump’s announcement of some of the rest of his senior nominees for the Pentagon—presumably to assuage concerns about Hegseth.
The problem is that there are some duties that only the secretary of defense can do by law.
Consider the following scenario. It’s dawn in Pyongyang, and North Korea launches a handful of ballistic missiles at the United States. The duty officer of the fabled North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs is alerted by U.S. satellites looking for the heat signature from such missiles. The North Koreans know that alerts from older generations of such satellites were less persuasive at orbital daybreak, which interfered with optical instruments and led to false alarms and hesitations.
Imagine it’s late in the evening in Washington, DC. The NORAD commander begins initiating a Missile Attack Conference by adding the watch commander of Strategic Command in Omaha, which would coordinate nuclear retaliation. The men can go directly to the president but have the option of adding the secretary of defense to the call, which they do. Minutes pass as they wait for Trump, who is on stage delivering remarks. The military officer who accompanies the president with the nuclear “football” confers with the leader of Trump’s Secret Service detail and the deputy White House chief of staff who have accompanied Trump. They hesitate. After all, Trump has only been pulled from the stage once: when he was shot in the head. And there are so many military drills and false alarms.
By now, the missiles have completed powered flight and are moving through space on sub-orbital paths above the Arctic. The satellites have lost them, but radar stations in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland spot the missiles and confirm their trajectory. Strategic Command upgrades confidence in its attack assessment to “high” and informs those on the call that targets include Washington, NORAD, Omaha, and land-based nuclear missile sites in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The military men on the call know they likely have only minutes to live.
Chinese and Russian leaders, whose own satellites detected the launches, use hotlines to call their U.S. counterparts, profess to know nothing in advance of the North Korean attack, and not only urge but also demand U.S. restraint. The trained men at the Missile Attack Conference know this is irrelevant. North Korea is conducting a classic decapitation strike, inevitably to be followed by a massive follow-on attack. Whether Pyongyang planned this with Beijing or Moscow is irrelevant. The Chinese and Russians must expect U.S. retaliation and, therefore, will inevitably begin their own launch preparations immediately.
At this point, with Trump still not on the call, the head of Strategic Command advises a large-scale attack on nuclear forces in North Korea, China, and Russia. Expending all available ground and submarine-based ballistic missiles will hopefully give enough time and operational leeway for America’s modest bomber force to complete the destruction of enemy nuclear bases before too many enemy weapons are fired. The plan will leave millions of Americans dead and tens of millions of enemy dead. But the alternative of riding out the attack to verify that it is nuclear and then decide what to do would lead to a decapitated U.S. government, an ambiguous military chain of command, and a decimated force with which to attempt retaliation. America would lose the nuclear war, and American civilization could effectively pass into history in minutes.
As radar confirms the missile payloads are splitting into Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles—each missile carries several warheads—there are perhaps five minutes left until everyone on the call is dead. NORAD and Strategic Command headquarters are wiped out.
Trump is finally yanked from the stage, but the Secret Service is more focused on getting him into his car and getting him airborne as soon as possible. Since Trump is neither incapacitated nor truly incommunicado, Vice President JD Vance has no authority to act and is not a part of the Missile Attack Conference. By statute and nuclear-release protocol, the decision falls to the secretary of defense.
Will he act? Will he dither, afraid to decide without Trump? Will he panic? Will he even be sober? The probability of the scenario is remote but not nil. Appointing someone who lends ambiguity to the scenario will only encourage it to occur.
Hegseth lacks the maturity, experience, and character to make decisions like these. Frankly, he lacks the experience and knowledge to hold his own in simple National Security Council meetings against his counterparts from the State Department, Treasury Department, and CIA.
Trump’s decision to nominate Hegseth was understandable, especially after a first term in which both of his confirmed defense secretaries were disloyal and, as we have learned, actively worked against his expressed directions. It’s an understandable view, but the wrong one. Republican senators should reject Hegseth and insist on another nominee. They would not only be doing Trump a favor but also performing their duty in defending this nation.
Christian Whiton was a State Department senior advisor in the second Bush and first Trump administrations. He served as a deputy special envoy for North Korean human rights issues and also advised the secretary of state and other senior officials about public affairs and East Asia matters. During the 2016 Trump transition, he aided in the confirmation of the secretary of state and other senior department officials. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a principal at Rockies Aria LLC, a public affairs and government relations firm. The author of “Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War,” Christian co-hosts the “Domino Theory” podcast and edits “Capitalist Notes” on Substack. He frequently appears on Fox Business and has appeared on Fox News, BBC, GBTV, Newsmax, NHK, Sky News Australia, CNBC, MSNBC, and numerous other outlets. In addition to the National Interest, his articles have been published by Fox News Opinion, Daily Caller, Wall Street Journal, the Australian, and others.
Original article URL: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-senate-republicans-should-reject-pete-hegseth-214350
Good points. I wish Trump had put Hegseth up for secretary of the Army or VA secretary and dug a little deeper for the top job. But you’re right it chews people up, McNamara looked great on paper but failed his nation as bad as any appointee ever did, and success in the job is almost impossible.
Not sure the hypothetical rings true for me. Considering how many absurdly qualified (Austin) or literal genius (Rumsfeld, McNamara) SecDefs we’ve had, who have actually sucked really bad at the job generally, or in the face of adversity, I don’t feel any worse off with Hegseth than careerist officers or pie-in-the-sky geniuses. I’m not saying he’s a good pick (I’d like to see him get a crack at it anyway), but this is a position that is notorious for chewing up and spitting out eminently qualified people who might be great in other cabinet spots.
In the face of nuclear war, a random Army captain might actually do better than a snobby, crusty qualified brown noser. We simply don’t know and I think it’s much harder to predict than a lot of people might imagine it to be.