In Trump’s Pentagon, a growing skepticism about US military power
By Noah Robertson
Jan 28, 2025, 01:05 PM
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. (L), speaks with the media during his first official arrival at the Pentagon as secretary in Washington, DC, on Jan. 27, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
To understand how the second Trump administration may use the U.S. military, the best clues aren’t written in the pages of Foreign Affairs or sussed out during panel discussions at Washington think tanks.
Instead, they’re found in the chatter on X, formerly Twitter, where a handful of officials now entering top positions in the Pentagon have posted their takes on defense policy for years.
This group is highly confident, highly online and scornful of Washington’s foreign policy consensus. It thinks America’s military is overstretched in wasteful areas of the world, like Europe and the Middle East. And rather than call for a bigger defense budget alone, its members argue the United States should do less — or reprioritize its scarce resources.
https://www.militarytimes.com/pentagon/2025/01/28/in-trumps-pentagon-a-growing-skepticism-about-us-military-power/
