Sources inside the Pentagon describe the war secretary as increasingly isolated after officers with impeccable reputations were forced out of the institution.
Since Donald Trump’s first term, they have been viewed as the “adults in the room” — a last bastion against the impulsive whims of a president who holds the nuclear codes.
Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War/PHOTO: Profimedia
But after an unprecedented wave of layoffs, compared by some to the Stalinist purges, the Pentagon’s high command no longer seems like a wall of confidence.
Since Trump’s return to power last January, Pete Hegseth — an exuberant defense secretary who has set out to rewrite the military ethos he denounced as “woke” — has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders without giving performance-related reasons.
About 60 percent of those are people of color or women, an approach that appears to reflect the administration’s stated offensive against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring.
However, the removed officers have impeccable reputations. The latest victim is General Randy George, the Army chief of staff, ousted last month, apparently after refusing to comply with Hegseth’s instruction to remove four officers — two black men and two women — from a promotion list, The Guardian writes.
The wave of layoffs began last February with the removal of General CQ Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – a key link between the armed forces and the civilian leadership.
Brown, a distinguished black Air Force commander, was replaced by Dan Caine, a three-star general who had already retired and had to be quickly promoted to four stars to win Senate confirmation — though some observers say he lacks the necessary qualifications.
Among the removed female officers is Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female Chief of Naval Operations and the first female Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Hegseth expressed no regrets in a hearing last week when Democratic Sen. Jack Reed asked him whether Trump had asked him to specifically target black officers or women. His answer: “Of course not.” More revealing was what followed: “Members of this commission and former department leadership have focused on height, social engineering, race and gender in ways that we consider unhealthy.”
Hegseth, increasingly isolated
Inside sources describe Hegseth — a former Fox News anchor known for his bellicose appearances and aggressive attitude toward the press — as increasingly isolated in the Pentagon bureaucracy, surrounded by a handful of close associates, including his wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, his brother Phil — named a senior adviser — and attorney Tim Parlatore.
Much of the day-to-day work of a huge department — 2.1 million military personnel and 770,000 civilian employees — is overseen by Steve Feinberg, the billionaire investment firm owner and deputy defense secretary.
Hegseth, meanwhile, focused on matters of personal interest, including the reorganization of religious services—a concern aligned with his Christian beliefs, which he frequently expresses through the invocation “Christ is King.”
Military analysts say the recent purges are part of Project 2025 — the radical Heritage Foundation project that has closely guided Trump’s second-term policies.
“They want to create ideologically purified armed forces, docile to the president and the secretary of defense”
“They talked about a purge of officers and the elimination of so-called high-level woke officers,” says retired Major General Paul Eaton. “They want to create ideologically purified armed forces, docile to the president and the secretary of war, whose oath will be more to a person than to the Constitution.”
Eaton compares the eliminations to Stalin’s far bloodier purges of Red Army generals before World War II – believed to have hampered the USSR’s initial efforts to repel the Nazi invasion in 1941.
“I think the senior leadership of the US military has been affected significantly”he says. “It creates a fracture in the cohesion of people at this level. If you haven’t been purged, you wonder if you’re next, if you say the wrong thing to the person next to you — something that could draw the ire of the secretary of war or the president. It’s an extremely unhealthy environment when you’re afraid to speak freely — not just to speak truth to power, but to stand up for truth in the face of stupid decisions.”
The military’s willingness to stand up to Trump seems more crucial than ever, given the president’s recent threats to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure and his notorious warning that “an entire civilization will die” if Iran’s leaders do not accept his terms.
Veterans worry about the impact on troops of threats of war crimes or even genocide. So does the ability of figures like General Caine to resist.
Kevin Carroll, a former colonel who served in the offices of the secretary of defense and the chiefs of staff, says: “All the retired officers I know are seriously concerned about the long-term effect on the forces when senior leaders say things like ‘no quarter’ or ‘no mercy’ – claims made by Hegseth – or that we’re going to wipe out a civilization, without any reaction from senior military officials. I think that’s a real threat.” long term to the ethics and ethos of the force.”
In addition, there are questions about the authority of Caine, who has never held a senior command position. Some believe he lacks the prestige of his predecessors to resist Trump’s impulses.
Joe Cirincione, a national security analyst, points to the danger of a president who could launch a nuclear attack: “People don’t understand that the president has full and unlimited authority to launch nuclear weapons whenever he wants, for any reason. The chain of command is very short. It turns out that relying on the military to refuse an illegal order from the president is not a sufficient deterrent. We need something much stronger.”
Carroll, the former colonel, ends on a somber note: “There were tensions between the defense secretary’s office and the chiefs of staff in 2002-2003 over Iraq as well. But it was all extremely professional and civil. Now this is just a mess. It’s crazy.”
