Pentagon expert says Hegseth's 'macho nonsense' will be what 'gets people killed'

26 May

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remarks at the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

One Pentagon expert is arguing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's focus on "warfighting" and a "lethal" U.S. military is actually making military service less safe for service members.

In a Monday column for Politico, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Thomas Ricks — who specializes in military and national security matters — broke down why he found Hegseth's promises to focus on combat so alarming. He opined that while the defense secretary's rhetoric "plays well on Fox News," it has a darker meaning to enlisted men and women.

"he more you know about military operations, the more you understand that you don’t want to focus on fighting," Ricks wrote. "That gets people killed — like your kids or grandkids."

"The worst way to go to war is by flinging your people into combat — 'warfighting,' as the tattooed and tough-talking former TV commentator puts it," he continued. "You don’t do frontal assaults against an entrenched and bunkered enemy — as happened on 'D-Day' — because you want to, but because you absolutely have no other choice."

Ricks clarified that while "force readiness" was always a laudable goal to aspire to, the most important job of the U.S. military is to instead train allied nations to use American-made equipment to decrease the chances of "friendly fire" and head off threats in their own homeland before they turn into full-fledged wars. He cited the example of World War II, in which the U.S.S.R. and the British used equipment manufactured in the United States against German and Japanese forces, as an example of this theory in practice. Ricks also pilloried Hegseth for his mass firings of high-ranking military officers.

"Our military is tactically excellent — 'lethal' is the preferred term at the Pentagon these days — but great tactics without an effective strategy are useless, like a Ferrari without a steering wheel," he wrote. "Yes, that might sound boring on the campaign trail or evening news. But remember that knowing how to actually wage war alongside allies is the way to victory. Not this macho nonsense Hegseth is peddling."

Click here to read Ricks' full essay in Politico.

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