The Pentagon

Back in 2010, there was no more respected warfighter and general beloved by his men than Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. Bob Gates once called him "the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met." He was also a man of the people, uncomfortable around the fat and happy elites of the foreign policy and national security world. As the late reporter Michael Hastings wrote in his profile for Rolling Stone, McChrystal's favorite beer is Bud Light Lime, his favorite movie Talladega Nights, and dismissed fancy restaurants with candles on the table as "too Gucci". It was that notorious article that proved to be McChrystal's undoing and led directly to him offering his resignation to President Barack Obama.

The Washington firing squad is out for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His department has seen the dramatic departure of three top aides who were placed on leave and escorted from the Pentagon, before ultimately being fired on Friday. Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick have for their part maintained they were wrongly slandered by others in the building as leakers – and a fourth former spokesperson, John Ullyot, took the rare step of taking to the pages of Politico to publicly denounce the current Pentagon direction as a chaotic "Month from Hell.

In the past two days, three senior Defense Department officials have been suspended and one has resigned. Their departures are apparently connected to an internal investigation into "recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information." On Tuesday, Dan Caldwell, who has been working closely with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, the Defense Department’s deputy chief of staff, were escorted from their office by guards. Then, yesterday, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, was ousted, too. John Ullyot, a top Pentagon spokesman, also announced he was resigning.All four men are military veterans.

With a 51-49 vote, the debate on Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary ended Thursday afternoon. The vote mostly fell on party lines, with the exception of two Republican senators: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.  "After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for secretary of defense," Murkowski said in a post on X. "I did not make this decision lightly; I take my constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent with the utmost seriousness." “Although he has recently revised his statements on women in combat since being nominated, I remain concerned about the message that confirming Mr. Hegseth sends to women currently serving and those aspiring to join,” Murkowski followed.

President Joe Biden delighted Kyiv officials and war hawks — and infuriated the incoming Trump administration (and, separately, the Kremlin) — on Sunday by authorizing Ukraine to send long-range missiles into Russia. Ukraine had been begging for approval to conduct strikes deep into Russia with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) for years, only to receive the go-ahead in the final months of Biden’s lame-duck presidency. The decision is being reported as a response to Russia importing 10,000 North Korean troops a few weeks ago, but the timing feels curious.

Regular readers may recall how fond I am of a mot from the British diplomat, author and art collector Edgar Vincent, the first (and, as it happened, the last) Viscount d’Abernon: “An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.” When I first encountered Lord D’Abernon’s saying, I was impressed by its slightly disabused cheerfulness. “Whew,” I thought. “As usual, some impending disaster was neatly avoided at the last moment by the wit and pluck of the doughty Brits.” The drama of the near-escape added to the sweetness of relief. Surely we Yankees — most of whom, until recently, were basically displaced Brits — could also be counted on to display the requisite derring-do at the critical moment. Could we though? “Almost too late.

Nearly ten months after President Biden ordered defense secretary Lloyd Austin to undertake a comprehensive, across-the-board review of America's military overseas, the Pentagon finally concluded the study this week. And it landed with a loud thud of disappointment. So far as we can tell (the entire product won’t be released to the public), the results of the Global Posture Review (GPR) range from unimaginative to pitiful. Or, in the words of one congressional aide familiar with the findings, "No decisions, no changes, no sense of urgency, no creative thinking. Lots of word salad.” Of course, the GPR is hardly the first government report to be classified this way.

The Biden administration’s latest $3.5 trillion spending proposal continues to attract attention. With a hodgepodge of Democratic priorities ranging from climate change to Medicare expansion, the bill is the more partisan companion of the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Of course, another blockbuster story has been distracting attention from these packages — the difficult withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many in Congress continue to be critical of the administration’s handling of the pullout, and some are determined to use the crisis to their political advantage.