Members of the U.S. military in Quantico, Virginia, U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claim that they are bringing badly needed reforms to the U.S. military by stamping out "woke" policies, which, they say, made the armed forces less effective. But retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, in the conservative website The Bulwark, argues that Trump and Hegseth are undermining the military's time-tested meritocracy in a very "concerning" way.
"It should concern Americans if the military's most excellent officers are being sidelined in the name of fighting 'DEI,'" Hertling warns in a Bulwark article. "But it should also concern them that political leaders are beginning to substitute personal judgment for one of the most carefully designed and rigorously administered personnel systems in the federal government. At stake is trust in the military's promotion system, an institution that has helped produce America's senior military leaders for generations. Most Americans trust that those chosen to lead the nation's sons and daughters in peacetime and wartime have earned that responsibility through demonstrated competence, character, judgment, and performance. But few citizens — and frankly, even few who wear the uniform — understand how those selections are actually made."
Hertling adds, "That lack of understanding makes the recent interventions by Secretary Hegseth especially troubling, because they involve a process specifically designed to insulate professional military advance."
Hertling, who served as commander of U.S. Army Europe under former President Barack Obama and is often featured as a military analyst on MS NOW, notes that Hegseth "removed nine Navy officers from a promotion list after they had already been selected by a board of senior admirals" (according to the New York Times) and "blocked nine Air Force officers for promotion" (according to the Wall Street Journal).
Hertling emphasizes that in the U.S. military, "promotion boards are not informal discussions," but rather, are "extraordinarily structured." And Hegseth, the former U.S. Army Europe commander laments, has a fundamental misunderstanding of that rigorous process.
"Most Americans trust that those chosen to lead the nation's sons and daughters in peacetime and wartime have earned that responsibility through demonstrated competence, character, judgment, and performance," Hertling explains. "But few citizens — and frankly, even few who wear the uniform — understand how those selections are actually made. That lack of understanding makes the recent interventions by Secretary Hegseth especially troubling, because they involve a process specifically designed to insulate professional military advancement from politics while preserving appropriate civilian oversight…. Officers accept the competitive nature of promotion because they believe excellence, performance, and potential will ultimately be recognized. That is why the recent interventions by Secretary Hegseth are so concerning."