By Abe Greenwald
Monday, April 21, 2025
The road to Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as secretary of
defense was littered with all sorts of lurid details. He supposedly drank too
much, mishandled funds, was reprimanded by his mother in email, acted
inappropriately with colleagues, and sounded off on far-right causes. He made
it through all that. But it turns out, he shouldn’t have.
The problem isn’t substance related, it’s not his fiery
anti-wokeism, and it’s not his family squabbles. It’s his incompetence. The
secretary of defense can’t protect sensitive battle plans from falling into the
wrong hands—his. Hegseth sends group messages detailing U.S. military strikes
like a new parent blasting out birth announcements.
He should, of course, be let go. America can’t afford to
have the secretary of defense be the weakest link at the Pentagon. But, judging
from White House statements, Hegseth will probably have to fumble a few more
times before Donald Trump cuts bait. “The president absolutely has confidence
in Secretary Hegseth,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt today.
“I spoke to him about it this morning, and he stands behind him.”
That’s a dangerous place to stand. For one thing, we can
expect Hegseth to make more mistakes that compromise national security. His
conduct so far points to a gross misunderstanding of the seriousness of his
position. It’s not just his messaging incontinence. Hegseth arranged for Elon
Musk to get a top-secret military briefing on China policy (before the White
House found out and killed it), had his wife sit in on high-level Defense
Department meetings, and has presided over months of spiteful battles and general
disorder at Defense.
But there’s a greater danger, and it’s one we all face.
Hegseth is one member of a larger foreign-policy team, and they’re not hitting
it out of the park either. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally
invited Jeffrey Goldberg into the chat that became the first Signal scandal.
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has been traveling the globe to reassure America’s
enemies that we mean no harm. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
publicly sided with Vice President JD Vance in trying to prevent an Israeli
strike on Iran’s nuclear program. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s job
seems to have been reduced to spokesman for deportations.
There are many ways to project weakness abroad. Barack
Obama did it by apologizing for American power. Joe Biden did it in one
misbegotten move—withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan and handing an
instant victory to the Taliban. Trump is revealing American weakness in
selecting and vouching for the Bad News Bears of foreign policy.
We’re lucky that Hegseth’s early stumbles have had no
immediate consequences beyond our borders. Trump’s placing a bet that this will
remain the case. But the totality of American foreign-policy incompetence and
weakness during this Trump term is in no ways inconsequential. Antagonists like
Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, and Xi Jinping see an undisciplined
national-defense team held together with duct tape. They see a group of
neophytes learning on the job, broadcasting deference to strongmen, straining ties
with allies, and they see Trump standing by all of it. Every American president
is tested by enemies of the United States to find out how he responds to
provocation of a given magnitude. When the Trump test comes, it’s going to be a
doozy.
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