Pete Hegseth’s faux diagnosis of a crisis in America’s warrior spirit

This week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has convened a literally unprecedented meeting of most American field commanders from the level of one-star and up. Several hundred military officers are involved. Apparently, the secretary wishes to reinvigorate an ethos of warfighting in U.S. military leadership after a period when, in Hegseth’s mind, that ethos has weakened due to assault from political correctness and woke American culture. He and President Donald Trump believe such trends largely explain the modern American armed forces’ struggles on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan in modern times. They need to reassess.

To be fair, there is an element of truth in Hegseth’s and Trump’s concerns about trends in America’s military history. Certainly, the first two-thirds of our history had fewer setbacks than the last third. The history of battlefield prowess in the United States dates back to the American Revolution itself, then the 1790s half-war against France over shipping practices in the Caribbean, followed by battles against faraway Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean, the largely unnecessary War of 1812, hundreds and hundreds of battles against Native Americans until roughly 1890, the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848, the hugely sanguinary Civil War, and the Spanish-American War of 1898.

The United States had a strong military track record throughout this period. And of course, the United States was on the winning side in both world wars as well. But since then, we have struggled in Korea and Iraq, lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and suffered setbacks in smaller operations like the Iran hostage rescue attempt of 1980, the Beirut Marine barracks’ bombing of 1983, and the Black Hawk Down tragedy in Somalia in 1993 (even as we had some significant successes too, for example, with the invasion of Panama in 1989 as well as Operation Desert Storm in 1991).

However, on balance, Hegseth’s concerns are misplaced. While there may be areas where he, as a former soldier himself, can ask tough questions and change some policies for the better, the overall fighting spirit and capability of the U.S. Armed Forces have not suffered due to a purported pursuit of political correctness or diversity for diversity’s sake. Hegseth’s first instinct should be to follow the Hippocratic Oath and do no harm to a system and an institution that remain excellent.

Hegseth’s generation of military and political leaders, including Vice President JD Vance, who also bravely wore the uniform, is right to ask tough questions about where the United States is today as a superpower. To be blunt, those of us in older generations have sometimes let our generation down, in terms of what we asked them to do and how we asked them to do it. Trying to stabilize and rebuild fractured societies halfway around the world is very difficult in the best of circumstances. But we should not confuse these broader strategic and political challenges with the technical and tactical combat capabilities of the American armed forces. The latter remain excellent, and the wrong kind of reforms could easily do much more harm than good.