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Although most U.S. presidential nominees for cabinet positions usually sail through with pro forma approval, Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, is one of several nominations already sparking controversy largely due to his past comments about women in the military and programs designed to foster diversity in the ranks.
Hegseth has served as an officer in the U.S. Army and was deployed with National Guard units to Iraq and Afghanistan. He received a number of medals for his performance, and like all veterans who perform with distinction, he commands gratitude and respect for his military service.
But in recent years, Hegseth, while working as a commentator and anchor for Fox News and writing several books, has been highly critical of the military’s professional leadership, especially in the Biden administration. According to Hegseth, the U.S. armed forces are rife with “wokeness,” especially at the higher levels of command. An institutional focus on diversity, equity and inclusion has distracted the U.S. military and civilian leadership from their primary missions of combat readiness and performance under fire, he believes. This critique is especially pronounced in his most recent book, “The War on Warriors.”
Most would agree that the primary missions of the U.S. armed forces are deterrence of war or, if deterrence fails, to defeat American adversaries in battle. Hegseth’s argument that the American military is suffused with wokeness to the extent of distraction from its primary missions is based on anecdotes from his personal experience. There is no body of larger studies by expert groups of Defense Department insiders or by outsiders from the larger community of defense analysts that supports this argument. To the extent that the U.S. military is underperforming in its deterrence or combat missions, the research suggests it has little to do with an overdose of political correctness.
The main reason for concern about the U.S. military and its performance has to do with the variety of U.S. commitments and the complexity of U.S. global responsibilities. A number of trends are moving the rules-based international order previously dominated by the United States toward a more pluralistic and competitive structure of interstate behaviors. These developments include the growing alignment of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea; the evolution of BRICS (originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, now evolving into an expanded membership, including important actors in the so-called Global South); the rise of China into an economic and military superpower, with its aspirations to dominate global infrastructure and connectivity; the persistent stalemate in Russia’s war against Ukraine and the costs for the United States and its NATO partners in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression; the continuation of unconventional warfare in the form of terrorist attacks by Iranian proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen; and, finally, the challenge of potentially breakthrough or game-changing technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics (including upscale drones and hypersonics) and a growing dependency on space based systems.
A second reason for concern about the future performance of the U.S. armed forces is the need to compete with civilian occupations for talented enlisted and officer personnel. As the U.S. economy bounces back from COVID-19 aftereffects and sticker-shock hyperinflation, job growth in the private sector will offer increasing numbers of opportunities for ambitious young people who might otherwise consider the military as a career. Another factor is the impact of military service on families. A former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff once noted at his retirement ceremony that he and his family had moved 30 times during his career. And this list of disincentives for troops and their families applies mostly in peacetime. In times of war, they assume greater risks, including the possibility of ultimate sacrifice for their country.
A third reason for concern about the armed forces is the willingness, or lack thereof, of Congress to support the necessary ingredients of force structure, modernization, readiness and sustainability that is required by the demands made on the military by the president, the Department of State, the intelligence community and other components of the American government and body politic. U.S. troops are often placed into situations that call for “whole of government” solutions and interagency cooperation and preparedness. In too many instances, however, the warriors are expected to take on missions other than security and to act as economic recovery specialists, field anthropologists, cultural attaches and other “post-conflict stability” envoys. Often enough, the troops performed admirably in these roles, given the constraints of the assigned missions. If we expect this kind of versatility in future enlistees or officers, then suitable incentives will have to be provided for recruiting and retention of the active duty and reserve forces.
The immediately preceding point bears on Hegseth’s argument about diversity as the cause of military recruiting difficulties and performance failures. To the contrary, the diversity of GIs reflects the diversity of America, and that variety is an advantage in recruiting and retaining combat and support personnel who must deploy to more than 100 countries. Diversity goes beyond race, including the cultural, linguistic and experiential backgrounds of U.S. armed forces, a melting pot of assimilation and patriotism in which all Americans can take pride.
Finally, all large bureaucratic organizations have a certain amount of inertial resistance to change. The history of the U.S. armed forces shows that it took persistence to turn President Harry Truman’s initial order to desegregate the military into lasting changes in organizational behavior. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was a compromise way station later superseded by permitting gays to serve openly in the military, but not without political controversy and some military hesitancy. Former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter issued a directive in 2016, permitting transgendered persons to serve openly in the military despite prior opposition within and outside of the Pentagon. The U.S. armed forces have shown adaptive agility with respect to social and cultural change precisely because their primary focus is on doing the mission, in a country and culture that are always on the move.
Stephen Cimbala is a distinguished professor of political science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous books and articles on international security issues.
Lawrence Korb, a retired Navy captain, has held national security positions at several think tanks and universities, and he served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.