On April 29, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that he was canceling Defense Department participation in actions generated by the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017. Hegseth posted on social media that it was “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING. WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”
Journalist Walter Pincus, who spent 40 years at the Washington Post covering topics ranging from nuclear weapons to politics, wrote in a recent column that Trump and Hegseth’s defense strategy is riddled with irrelevant political considerations resulting in a series of strange moves that must surely weaken national security.
In fact, as Pincus points out, what Congress had in mind in the Women, Peace and Security Act was to increase women’s participation in preventing and resolving conflict, countering violent extremism and building post-conflict stability around the globe. It is hard to believe that the program was “pushed by feminists and left-wing activists” when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem co-sponsored the bill when she was in Congress, and President Trump signed the measure in 2017.
Perhaps reminded of this doctrinal dilemma, Hegseth pivoted in a later tweet, arguing that “the woke & weak Biden Administration distorted & weaponized the straight-forward & security-focused WPS initiative launched in 2017.” Hegseth said he will try to end WPS programs at the Pentagon in the next budget.
Asked whether he believed Women, Peace and Security to be a diversity, equity and inclusion program, new Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, at his confirmation hearing last month, replied, “I do not,” adding, “WPS helped us understand the full challenges that face us.”
Hegseth unveiled another terrifying plan on May 5, when he announced “General/Flag Officer Reductions” in a memo to senior Pentagon leadership to “drive innovation and operational excellence unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”
While the military may be top-heavy, it goes without saying that military firings should be based on merit, not political considerations or race-based policies. Hegseth’s purge appears to be totally political. “That’s a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a Marine officer in Iraq and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Politico. “That’s the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea. And by the way, it’s a big part of why those militaries are not as strong and capable as our own.”
Trump’s military purge began in February, when the president fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs CQ Brown — an African American, whom Moulton describes as “one of the most talented general officers of his generation” — for no articulated reason.
In April, Trump fired the redoubtable Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who for unclear reasons consistently has the president’s ear, urged Trump to fire certain officials due to their perceived lack of personal loyalty. She posted a message on social media saying Haugh had been fired for being “disloyal” to Trump.
So far, the administration has fired five four-stars, including three women: the first female chief of naval operations, the commandant of the Coast Guard, and Navy three-star Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, former president of the Naval War College, who was the U.S. deputy military representative to NATO’s military committee in Brussels. Yet women make up less than 10 percent of general and flag officers.
It is baffling what Hegseth intended to accomplish with the purge. We do know that he has accomplished a decided weakening of national security. The measures were apparently meant to root out diversity, equity and inclusion from the military. Instead, the administration is paring much of the core of our officer cadre, throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Along with the May 5 memorandum, Hegseth released a two-minute video announcing what he ungrammatically called the “Less Generals More GIs Policy.” He defensively explained that “this has not been a slash and burn exercise — nothing could be further from the truth ... It’s going be done carefully. But it’s going to be done expeditiously.”
Hegseth said he sought to remove “redundant force structure, to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.” He proposed a minimum 20 percent reduction of four-star positions across the active military and of general officers in the National Guard, plus an additional minimum 10 percent reduction in general and flag officers under the new unified command plan.
So, who will mind the store? And who will call the shots in a national emergency?
The nation’s top generals seem unsure about the implications of Hegseth’s moves to reduce the general staff. At a hearing before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James J. Mingus testified about the flag office, saying, “We began a general reduction inside the Army several months ago, before this was ever announced … I think it’s probably a little too early to tell in terms of what the overall impacts are going to be.”
Air Force Lt. Gen. Adrian L. Spain said, “It’s too soon to say what the exact impact to the Air Force specifically will be with the reductions, but we look forward to seeing the exact language following the announcement.”
Hegseth has proved himself to be a bull in a china shop. It is worrisome, now that he has sent troops to the Southern border, that the military could be used in politically partisan ways. In Trump’s first term, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refused an order to have soldiers shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. Hegseth would be unlikely show as much backbone.
A nervous nation — seeing Hegseth’s obsessive loyalty to Trump and all the weaponizing, the political sturm und drang, the cuts and the dismissals — has to be on edge about how all this will end.
James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.
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