Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth has a face for television and a machismo of sorts. It appears, even to parts of MAGA, that Donald Trump put him in charge of the armed forces because the President likes attractive people on TV. “Right out of central casting,” Trump once told Secretary Hegseth, patting him on the bicep. “Pete loves war!” Hegseth has declared that he wants to sideline military lawyers and go from “tepid legality” to “maximum lethality,” partly because it rhymes. He was accused of ordering the killing of survivors after strikes on alleged Caribbean drug boats – which, if true, would be a war crime. Hegseth has a tattoo on his right arm that reads “Deus Vult,” a rallying cry from the first crusade in 1096.

It is hardly news that US relations with the rest of NATO (“rNATO” hereafter) are at an unprecedentedly low ebb. But they took a new and interesting twist last week when the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, issued a curious statement via social media, opining that “middle powers” have no coherent basis for alignment independent of the United States, and that they would therefore be foolish to try. The “middle powers” in question here are erstwhile US allies with enough of their own wealth and technological capacity to pursue meaningful sovereign capabilities, but not enough to independently rival systemic great powers such as the United States (the likes of Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada, Australia and so forth). Colby is a serious strategic mind.

Economist and former New York Times opinion writer Paul Krugman has called for a post-Trump “deMAGAfication” of America, and left no mystery about the comparison he was making. “And I’m not going over the top by using a word that’s very similar to the ‘denazification’ that we pursued successfully after World War Two in Germany.” Krugman remained vague about the nature of this “thorough purging,” but said it should include “not just the MAGA ideology, but the whole structure of hugely unequal power, hugely unequal wealth that made this horrific moment possible.” Today’s left – secular, post-Christian, postmodern and postcolonial, untethered from faith, tradition or national feeling – has few moral intuitions other than “Do not be Hitler.

The speech by Pete Hegseth, the US Defense Secretary, to Singapore's Shangri-La Dialogue was addressed to a Pacific audience. His sharpest messages, however, were for Europe, and especially for a British Government that still hasn't explained in practice how it plans to deliver the political commitments made a year ago in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR). Healey claimed that talking too much and delivering too little has now changed. The Defence Investment Plan is where that claim gets tested ‘Push-up Pete’ - who ostentatiously styles himself the Secretary of War - is a controversial figure. European governments have found it convenient to dismiss him. That is a mistake. Hegseth came to Singapore to unveil the US National Defense Strategy.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla were at their most emollient in Washington, where they exchanged a flurry of presents with Donald and Melania Trump. The King’s gifts to President Trump included a framed copy of the design plans for the Resolute Desk, which was originally given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880. Trump appeared to shelve his hostility toward the United Kingdom for declining to participate in the Iran war, but he quickly made up for his forbearance by pummeling another NATO ally.

In his war briefings, Pete Hegseth pushes religion almost as much as US military might. This has raised questions about whether the War Secretary is a Christian Zionist – and if he views current events in the Middle East as prophetic of the end times. His Pentagon updates often include prayers, Bible readings and religiously-inflected statements about pursuing “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” When asked during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing if he was a "Christian Zionist," Hegseth affirmed, "I am a Christian, and I robustly support the state of Israel.

Is there a plausible legal basis for going to war with Iran? Senate Democrats say no, and late yesterday forced a vote on a war powers resolution to bring the hostilities to a halt. It failed along largely partisan lines, 53-47, but Democrats say they intend to bring it up again, citing widening public disapproval of the war. “We have created a catastrophe in the Middle East,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, who sponsored the resolution. “This is what you get when you put talk show hosts and real estate developers in charge of national security.” The Trump administration has made it plain that providing a legal justification for the war isn’t terribly high on its list of concerns.

​“Welcome to Starbase, Texas,” Elon Musk said from the stage Monday night, as the crowd whooped. “This is a city. It’s actually legally a city that thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built out of nothing. And it’s now a gigantic rocket manufacturing system. For people out there who are curious to see it, we’re actually on a public highway, so you can come and visit. Drive down the road and see the epic hardware. I think this is the first time that a rocket development program has actually been on a public highway.

Pete Hegseth’s Saturday begins with personal training. The Secretary of War, @SecWar on your socials, is very fond of working out with the troops – something most defense secretaries have done without someone dutifully filming the experience for Instagram. Then he heads off to the Reagan National Defense Forum, the annual gathering of war hawks, policy nerds and defense contractors in Simi Valley, California. Hegseth, the veteran of the Global War on Terror, is there to fulfill his mission of denouncing the neocons. “Out with idealistic utopianism, in with hard-nosed realism,” he declares, insisting the United States will no longer be “distracted by democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation-building.

Two weeks ago, six US lawmakers, all military or intelligence veterans, released a cryptic YouTube video where they spoke directly to American service members. They were Senators Mark Kelly (Arizona) and Elissa Slotkin (Michigan), and Representatives Jason Crow (Colorado), Chris Deluzio (Pennsylvania), Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania) and Maggie Goodlander (New Hampshire) “Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” one of them said. “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” said another. “You must refuse illegal orders,” said a third. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

“Some people will correct me. They love to correct me. Even though I’m right about everything,” President Trump was saying, but no one was about to correct the President at this December cabinet meeting, the last in a series of extremely long such affairs that TV has carried this year. At this point, YouTube might as well set up a 24-hour livestream from inside the White House, like the sorts of stunts that were popular at the dawn of the personal video era. Trump is always with us, and talking at us. Before the roundtable of cabinet members listing their accomplishments and kissing the boss’s butt, Trump talked for nearly 30 minutes.