Pete Hegseth Is Out of His Depth

On the alarm bells currently going off.

Photo by Lawrence Krowdeed on Unsplash

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World does not have a ton of contacts within the Trump administration, but occasionally information comes our way from inside the executive branch. I was chatting with one of these folks recently and they told me that when it comes to national security and foreign policy, any semblance of a policy process can be distilled into a simple two-step:

1. Marco Rubio, JD Vance, and Susie Wiles confer to get on the same page;

2. They stay on that same page when entering the Oval Office.

I don’t know how much stock to put in that account, but if is true, the reveal is the name that is not mentioned: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

This is concerning! Ordinarily a national security team should have a strong Secretary of Defense providing counsel about any military options that might be on the decision-making table — not someone who just texts emojis.

The problem is that Pete Hegseth was never qualified to be Secretary of Defense and in his eight plus months on the job has repeatedly demonstrated his abject incompetence at the job. Why, just yesterday the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World questioned Hegseth’s decision to bring every general and admiral to Quantico for a lecture on grooming.

I was hardly the only one to think this was a bad idea; the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote, “Hegseth has had a lot of bad ideas, but this one is disruptive and even somewhat dangerous. All of these men and women have real jobs they should be doing. Even if Hegseth is calling this meeting to discuss serious issues of national defense—and so far, the Pentagon has given no such indications—few things are important enough to justify the security risk of putting the entire top U.S. military command, the secretary of defense, and the president all in the same room.”

In the last 24 hours, however, two stories have come out about Hegseth that paint an even more disturbing picture of his emotional stability and ability to lead the Pentagon. The first one, from the Daily Mail’s Susan Greene, describes Hegseth as… well… um…. someone who is not handling sobriety well. According to the Daily Beast’s Laura Esposito:

Pete Hegseth is crumbling under the pressure of leading the Pentagon.

The defense secretary—who prefers the moniker “Secretary of War”—is being described by staffers as “manic,” erupting into fits of rage and tumultuous tirades, the Daily Mail reported on Monday.

While he has reportedly always been temperamental, two staffers claim the former Fox News star’s mental state has reached new, frenzied heights after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this month.

They said Hegseth is becoming increasingly “obsessed” with his own security and exhibits frantic behavior, such as fidgeting and pacing during meetings.

“There’s a manic quality about him. Or let me rephrase, an even more manic quality, which is really saying something,” an insider told the outlet.

“Dude is crawling out of his skin,” another source said….

Also under scrutiny are Hegseth’s extensive personal security demands, which, according to the paper, are now straining the Army agency responsible for protecting him. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) has reportedly pulled agents away from criminal probes in order to safeguard Hegseth’s residences in Minnesota, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.

Now the Daily Mail is not exactly at the top of the investigative journalism pyramid. Maybe this is just some uniformed staffers speaking out of turn. Even if that were true, however, Hegseth’s past purges of staff he believed to be disloyal suggests that this is a guy who abjectly fails at inspiring loyalty. Not a great quality to have in someone that high up the military chain of command!

That is not the most disconcerting story of the past 24 hours, however. That prize goes to the Washington Post’s national security team. WaPo dropped another natsec lulu suggesting that Hegseth is way, way out of his strategic depth at the Pentagon — and that lack of depth is about to have real-world consequences:

Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons top brass to a highly unusual summit in Virginia on Tuesday, according to eight current and former officials.

The critiques from multiple top officers, including Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, come as Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa….

People familiar with the editing process, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive deliberations, described a growing sense of frustration with a plan they consider myopic and potentially irrelevant, given the president’s highly personal and sometimes contradictory approach to foreign policy….

The draft plan has been shared widely with military leaders from the global combatant commands to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some of whom questioned what its priorities would mean for a force designed to respond to crises around the globe, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Dissent during the drafting process is normal, but the number of officials concerned about the document — and the depth of their criticism — is unusual, several people said.

Caine shared his concerns with top Pentagon leadership in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“He gave Hegseth very frank feedback,” one of the two people said, noting that Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby was also included in the discussion. “I don’t know if Hegseth even understands the magnitude of the NDS, which is why I think Caine tried so hard.” (emphasis added)….

“There’s a concern that it’s just not very well thought out,” one former official said of the strategy.

And now we have arrived at the really concerning thing about Hegseth; he fundamentally does not understand his job. If the reporting is correct and Hegseth simply cannot comprehend the strategic implications of a grand strategy that cares only about the Western hemisphere, he should not be the Secretary of Defense. As it stands all he is doing is enabling Elbridge Colby to do whatever he wants to do.

Maybe all these reports are bunk. Maybe Pete Hegseth is doing a better job than other survivors would intuit. But it seems more likely that Hegseth is exactly who he appears to be — a man too distracted by his need for a drink to be able to get what he wants.