Warrior Spirit: What Pete Hegseth Got Right and Wrong in his Big Speech

We look at recent DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth's big speech on the warrior ethos through the prism of history.  

Transcript

Warrior Spirit:  What Pete Hegseth Gets Right and Wrong

October 2025

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”

Julius Caesar

“Without supplies, no army is brave.”

Frederick the Great

From Caesar’s Commentaries,  “The battle was long and vigorously contested, since the Sotiates, relying on their former victories, imagined that the safety of the whole of Aquitania rested on their valor; [and] our men, on the other hand, desired it might be seen what they could accomplish without their general and without the other legions, under a very young commander; at length the enemy, worn out with wounds, began to turn their backs, and a great number of them being slain, Crassus began to besiege the [principal] town of the Sotiates on his march. Upon their valiantly resisting, he raised vineae and turrets. They at one time attempting a sally, at another forming mines, to our rampart and vineae (at which the Aquitani are eminently skilled, because in many places among them there are copper mines); when they perceived that nothing could be gained by these operations through the perseverance of our men, they send ambassadors to Crassus, and entreat him to admit them to a surrender. Having obtained it, they, being ordered to deliver up their arms, comply.

Caesar’s personal account of the war in Gaul served both as dispatches to the Senate and a real-time account to the voters in Rome of the awesomeness of the writer—an Autobiography in real time and an incredible political strategy.  For the Romans, it was like reading an action novel, but the hero was real and beloved for this success.

What comes through in this account, and really all of the nine years of Caesar’s Gallic campaigns, is the warrior spirit in his adversaries.  Only rarely do the Romans have a numerical advantage. In Caesar’s military masterpiece, the siege of Alesia, the Romans built one set of walls to encase the forces of Vercingetorix, which alone outnumbered the Romans, and a second set of walls to keep out a massive relieving force, which by itself had a 2:1 advantage.  It was not just emblematic of Roman discipline, but engineering brilliance.  

Gallic society was similar to medieval Europe in that it had a caste system featuring warriors.  These figures did not till the fields nor engage in trade.  From childhood, they were taught to fight.  Yet the Romans won.  Part of it was Caesar’s brilliance, but from the time of Scipio Africanus to Scipio Aemilianus and Paullus, to Marius, Sulla, and Pompey, the Romans bested all of their enemies.  Even after Caesar, Rome continued to produce victorious generals, including Marcus Agrippa, Tiberius, Drusus, and Germanicus.  Not to take anything away from Gaius Julius, but to paraphrase James Carville, it was the Legions’ stupid.  

The definitive attributes of the Roman legions were discipline, organization, engineering, resourcefulness, and logistics.  The original maniple and the subsequent cohort, based on the Century, were brilliant military innovations, but without the training and discipline, they would have been useless.  

I write this in response to Department of Defense Pete Hegseth summoning nearly all American general and flag officers and their senior enlisted advisers to Quantico, Va., which was a sight to behold.  

A quick note.  I like calling it the Department of War but I do not use that reference here because the power to establish and define federal offices is vested in Congress through its enumerated powers under Article I of the Constitution. This includes the ability to create departments, define their functions, and approve their leaders.  Just because we have a gutless and supine Congress, even when majorities agree with the president it was never put to a vote, so it is Defense.  Back to the Hegseth speech.

Now, some have questioned the necessity of this, and an argument can be made that the content could have been issued in a Zoom call, as a taped video, or in a written memo.  Yet others have questioned Hegseth’s ability to even call all the leaders together.  That is wrong.  We have not one, but two civilian oversight mechanisms of our military: the Secretary of Defense and, of course, the elected Commander-in-Chief, the President.  I praise the Romans in this podcast but the destruction of their Republic was partly wrought by generals turning their armies into personal tools of conquest.  Rome’s legions evolved into Sulla’s, Pompey’s and Caesar’s legions. That is precisely what our Founders wished to avoid by creating civilian control—Hegseth is in his rights to summon military leaders to talk about baking recipes if he wishes.  

Obviously, he is not that calloused.  Instead, it was to talk of a warrior ethos. So when Hegseth talks about warrior spirit, I have a million slaughtered Gauls as a response. I could at to that the British Light Brigade in the Crimea, Picket’s forces at Gettysburg, the British on the Somme in World War I.   And would one argue that the Japanese, who out of a force of 20,000 on Iwo Jima in 1945, only had 300 men surrender, lacked a warrior spirit? 

Yes, I agree; you need that warrior spirit to complement all the other stuff, but alone or even paired with one or two of the other attributes I have illustrated above, using the Romans as an example, it is not enough.  

But here is a lot of what Hegseth got right: 

“From this moment forward, the only mission is this: warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit, not because we want war, no one here wants war, but it’s because we love peace. We love peace for our fellow citizens. They deserve peace, and they rightfully expect us to deliver. Our number one job, of course, is to be strong so that we can prevent war in the first place.”

You can have ideological arguments in education, but not in the military.  You can have discussions about words from the press secretary, but not the Secretary of Defense.  One can contend whether ideology drives justice, housing, or even commerce.  But a military, as Hegseth alludes, exists to accomplish two goals: destroy a nation’s enemies through martial force, or to be powerful enough to deter enemies from using their military force.  That is it.  

But does the American military fail in the endeavor to achieve, as Hegseth claims, “lethality?”  Kevin Williams has a great take on this: “During our 20 years in Afghanistan, fewer than 2,000 US troops were killed in action—there were more than five times as many deaths from homicides in Chicago during those same years.  US forces are so impossible to beat in battle that they have created, through no fault of their own, a kind of serious geopolitical problem: Nuclear proliferation, development of weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism are all driven in no small part by the fact that there isn’t a conventional force on this Earth that can face the American military on a battlefield without being turned into compost in great numbers. Lethality, indeed, is the military’s calling card.”

Hegseth notes, correctly, that the following takes away from the mission of our military, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” Hegseth declared. “No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions.” I agree with all of this but have these items truly diminished the ability of our military to kill, or deter other forces from being killed?  

Granted, it is puzzling how an accomplished soldier, someone who ran the elite 10th Mountain Division like Mark Milley, who unlike Hegseth, passed Ranger School, thought that diversity and other impractical focuses were important.  When the majority of a military force goes decades without fighting (the last mass action of the US army was in 2007), it is not the accomplished combat veterans but the best politicians who often receive the promotions.  We saw it in the War of Independence, the Civil W

ar, and World War II.  We did not see it in the Korean War because the two primary American Commanders, Douglas MacArthur and Matthew Ridgeway, had cemented their abilities just a half-decade earlier in World War II.  Now, I must say that my argument is not that we go into combat to test generals.  As Hegseth notes, peace is the goal.  Instead, one should be wary of why one general gets promoted up the chain of command and another does not.  

And Hegseth is correct in laying out priorities. 

“You see, this urgent moment of course requires more troops, more munitions, more drones, more Patriots, more submarines, more B-21 bombers. It requires more innovation, more AI in everything and ahead of the curve, more cyber effects, more counter UAS, more space, more speed.” 

The SecDef also commented on physical fitness, “All hands will be required to take two annual service-specific PT tests and pass his or her service’s height and weight standards twice yearly.” 

Again, I totally agree; if an army is either lethal or perceived as such, then it must be prepared for the incredible physical rigors it will encounter. Great message, the issue is then what is Hegseth’s address to recruitment? According to Peter Mansoor of the Hoover Institute, “Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic all but halted in-person recruiting in America’s high schools, the US military has fallen short of its recruiting goals. The US Army missed its FY22 recruiting goal by 25 percent, and its FY23 recruiting goal by 10 percent. The Army requires roughly 65,000 recruits each year, but it has strained to acquire that many in a tight job market. The Air Force and Navy have suffered similar shortfalls. FY24 witnessed a rebound, with the armed forces recruiting 12.5 percent more personnel (roughly 25,000 more recruits) than the previous year. Regardless of how one interprets the numbers, recruiting remains a tight market. In the past few years, only the U.S. Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force have consistently met their recruiting needs.”

Perhaps some of this can be addressed by making the military more, well, martial.  I have my doubts. More like a recession 

One of the most significant issues with Trump, his administration, and, by extension, Hegseth, who has never managed an enterprise with more than 20 people and never commanded anything above the rank of Major, is that they operate in a Potemkin manner, all show and no substance.  Trump was to issue a new health care plan, but he never has.  He was going to outline a comprehensive trade policy, then do ad hoc, knee-jerk tariffs, here, there, everywhere.  He plans to eliminate the Department of Education without a legislative program to accomplish that.  The DOE is still with us (much to my personal chagrin) and will remain so until 2029.  

It is great to say we are ratcheting down on the troops and the generals, but if that increases departures from the military, what is the plan?

Again, I get back to the Romans.  They always seemed to have a plan, or instead of that, as Caesar showed at Alesia, the ability to materialize a very effective one out of thin air. 

Later, Hegseth says this, “You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” Cringe because he himself wrote that book.  The brass did not laugh.

And here is both correct, and historically ignorant, “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done. Simply put, if you do not meet the male-level physical standards for combat positions, cannot pass a PT test, or don’t want to shave and look professional, it’s time for a new position or a new profession.” 

I love his talk of standards. I love his comments about professionalism.  But beards?  Who had beards?  Cyrus of Persia, Hannibal Barca, US Grant, and William Sherman.  All the confederates.  I explained my position on their decision to take up arms in the Civil War in a previous podcast, but those bearded wonders, such as Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, and Stuart, were indeed very good generals – the best we have ever produced.  You know who did not have beards?  

Heck, even veteran and Trump Vice President JD Vance has a beard.  George McClellan, Joe Hooker, and Husband Kimmel, the admiral in charge of Pearl Harbor on December 7.  

This is tongue-in-cheek because my real point is that Hegseth assembled the top brass from the four corners of the globe to talk about shaving.  The best a man can get?  

We’ll promote top-performing officers and NCOs more quickly and remove poor performers more efficiently. Evaluations, education, and field exercises will become genuine evaluations, not just box checks, for everyone at every level. These same reforms also occurred before World War II. General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson followed a similar approach, and as a result, we won a world war.

This was a part of it, but the real reason we won the war was because America’s population could put 10 million men into the field, and because of our industrial base, could produce 

It’s nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture, even if a previous president and a previous secretary created that culture.

Culture is tough to change.  

Here is the reality of the DOD.  The DOD oversees seven military branches. These branches are then subdivided into 11 different spheres, of which seven are based on geography and three by function. The military has 1.3 million active-duty personnel and another 811,000 in the National Guard. Then add to this another 750,000 civilians who work in the department.  Finally, add in another 950,000 contractors.  The largest private company by revenue is Walmart, with around $600 billion.  They have 2 million employees, and their annual spending is approximately $490 billion.  The DOD has four times as many employees and spends 40% more.  They are also responsible for the protection of all 340 million Americans and countless others worldwide.  And Pete has never managed anything larger than a platoon and never run an organization larger than 50 people.  Yet he is lecturing generals who have managed commands of hundreds of thousands.  Again, it is vital that he instills the warrior ethos and tries to reestablish a culture that is warrior-driven.  But that is not ultimately what will make the department successful.

What do the 4 million employed or contracted do?  Are they being used with efficiency and focus? Is the current geographic structure correct?  Do the seven branches work well together? What is the best equipment?  Where is the US on drones? Is the Aircraft carrier obsolete?  What is the best fighter plane?  What about space?  If China invades Taiwan and responds militarily, what does that look like?  And on and on AND on.  

One of the great debating tools is to make your points about an argument you wish to have, and not the one in question, the one that is truly at the core of victory or defeat.  Online it is ridiculously common.  Hegseth wants to talk about DEI in the military and I too wish to omit the concept.  He does not want to talk about these other things.  

The Trump administration is often more concerned with performance than with actually getting into the details of the matter.  The Hegseth speech, as telecast and featuring Trump’s rambling, incoherent final presentation, is a TV episode, not a long-term solution for our ultimate protection.  Maybe I am wrong.  Perhaps Hegseth is either on or has hired the correct folks to manage this sprawling enterprise, though the prominence of a figure such as Eldridge Colby gives me pause.  But there is nothing in Hegseth (nor his boss’s) history to indicate that is so.  And there was certainly nothing in that speech that suggested this Hegseth is any different from the Fox weekend host in his role some 11 months ago.  There was nothing in that speech that indicates we have the right person for the job.