https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1973264889096597857
If I were American, Trump and Hegseth's speech would actually worry me: they quite literally announced that they were transforming the military into a force politically loyal to MAGA - purging officers who aren't - and refocusing it on domestic enemies.
I'm not even exaggerating:
- Trump said that the "war from within," against what he described as "the enemy from within", "is a big part of the war now" (he repeated this twice) and that it was "going to be a major part for some of the people in this room." He said these "enemies from within" had to be "handled before it gets out of control," essentially backing preemptive military action against domestic enemies.
- It's crystal clear from the speeches that the "enemy from within" are democrats, or generally people who aren't aligned with MAGA ideology. Trump literally defined the "inner cities" that had to be "handled" as "the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats." You can't make it much more obvious than this... He also defined civilian protesters as "insurrectionists paid by the radical left" and said he removed the rules of engagement that prevent the US military from attacking American civilians: "If it's okay with you, generals and admirals, I've taken that off. I say they spit, we hit."
- Hegseth was very clear that he was purging the military along ideological lines. He said that he "fired a number of senior officers" because he was trying to change the "culture", and that it was impossible to do this with "the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture." He also enticed the officers in the room who didn't agree with this new culture to "do the honorable thing and resign."
- It's clear that this new "culture" is eminently political. Hegseth said it explicitly, defining the previous culture as "woke" because it followed Democrats: "As foolish and reckless as the woke department was, those officers were following elected political leadership." He defined the military before as following "civilian policies set by foolish and reckless political leaders" and he said that the military must now "embrace the War Department [as opposed to what he calls the "woke department"] and execute new lawful orders [as opposed to, apparently, unlawful orders under previous political leadership]." Which of course all means that this "cultural" change is about ensuring that the military serve a political ideology.
- And when you listen to the changes that are being made it's even more clear, every single "reform" they announce tracks exactly with US ideological wars. Gender identity policies and DEI (eliminating what Trump called in his speech "identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses"), environmental initiatives (getting rid of "green fleet and electric tanks"), diversity programs (Hegseth attacked "the insane fallacy that our diversity is our strength"), and health-related measures (Hegseth lambasted previous military leadership for kicking out those "who refused an emergency vaccine"). In short the message, quite explicitly, is: "if you don't embrace MAGA's position on every culture war issue, you don't belong in our military."
Now I'm not saying that the Democrats didn't do some of this too. There's definitely something to this "woke department" that Hegseth refers to. But:
a) the answer to politization is not more politization but for the other "side" (especially when, very ironically, Hegseth celebrated "unity" as being "our strength" in his extremely partisan and divisive speech)
b) this is objectively an entirely new paradigm. Never before in US history, save for perhaps the Civil War, has military leadership been told that "war from within" against fellow Americans would be "a major part" of their mission, and has there been such unabashed and systematic ideological purges of the officer corps
Quite striking also from both speeches is the front and center importance of this compared to previous priorities. China, which used to be defined as the number one priority for the Pentagon, was mentioned only once in Trump's speech, and that was to say that "in five years, they’ll be equal" to the US in nuclear.
Which is immensely telling in and of itself - he's essentially conceding the strategic competition with China ("they'll be equal") and he is more interested by the home front (which is incidentally the same order of priorities set in the latest Pentagon's latest National Defense Strategy: x.com/RnaudBertrand/). I myself long thought that this was going to be the case and wrote an article called "Has America, in fact, already withdrawn from Asia?" back in June (arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/has-america-)
Which is probably the only silver lining from this speech: the US's attempt to contain China is ending with Washington's quiet acceptance of a multipolar world. The question for Americans though seems to be: but at what cost? 
Link to both speeches for reference:
- Trump's speech: sofx.com/president-trum
- Hegseth's speech: war.gov/News/Transcrip
Link to both speeches for reference:
- Trump's speech: sofx.com/president-trum
- Hegseth's speech: war.gov/News/Transcrip
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