Pete Hegseth once scared America’s allies. Now he reassures them

TO SOME he embodies the “revenge of the field-grade officers”, the angry mid-ranking veterans who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with loathing for the politicians and generals who sent them to fight losing wars. Pete Hegseth, a former army major and now America’s defence secretary, celebrates soldiers “with dust on their boots”. But though he may be a MAGA radical at home, there are signs that he is turning into a surprisingly conventional American globalist abroad.

Begin with the disrupter. In the name of restoring the “warrior ethos”, he has fired prominent black and female commanders, banished transgender soldiers and banned books promoting “woke” ideas. He has also been obsessed with leaks, sacking staff suspected of disloyalty. As a “recovering neocon”, he shocked European allies in February by appearing to forsake Ukraine and NATO. “President Trump will not allow anyone to turn Uncle Sam into Uncle Sucker,” he warned.

Yet on May 31st he presented an altogether more reassuring and familiar American persona at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual Asian security conference in Singapore organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think-tank. Mr Hegseth described allies not as a burden, but as “force multipliers”. As he put it, “America First certainly does not mean America alone.”

Mr Hegseth told Asian allies that America had their backs: “We are here to stay.” And rather than berate Europeans, he held them up as models for Asia to emulate as they rushed to re-arm. He warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “could be imminent” and implied any assault would lead to war with America. “We will not be pushed out of this critical region, and we will not let our allies and partners be subordinated and intimidated,” he insisted.

For all his bellicose tone—China warned him not to “play with fire”—many in the audience welcomed his comments as a return to normality. Mr Trump, after all, has accused Taiwan of “stealing” America’s chip industry. Even such erstwhile defenders of the island as Elbridge Colby, recently confirmed as the Pentagon’s under-secretary for policy, seemed to want America to stand back when he said a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would not be an “existential” threat. In Mr Hegseth’s telling, it “would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world”.

Foreign interlocutors who meet him are pleasantly surprised. “He is not a caricature. He listens,” says one. The forthcoming defence budget, and decisions about force deployments globally, will reveal much about his philosophy. He has privately assured NATO that any drawdown in Europe will be done “responsibly”. South Korea worries about American troop withdrawals, too.

How to explain Mr Hegseth’s duality as a culture warrior at home and apparent upholder of the status quo overseas? He has not given up being the grunts’ champion. Before dawn Mr Hegseth set out for physical training with the troops, doing jumping jacks and push-ups with the crew of the USS Dewey, a guided-missile destroyer docked at the island.

Those who know him say it comes down to him being a “half-trained Jedi”. He has fierce views about masculinity and loyalty to the “trigger-pullers”. But he is out of his depth in one of the world’s most complex bureaucracies, which explains the managerial chaos. Although a Princeton graduate, he lacks fully formed views on geopolitics, never having gone to war college or worked at a think-tank or in Congress. (After his service, Mr Hegseth ran veterans’ organisations and became a Fox TV host). Thus, some surmise, on matters of strategy he may be deferring to the very generals he claims to despise.

Many abroad, and even some critics at home, see signs that Mr Hegseth is learning fast. His former associates, though, worry he is being tempted away from the MAGA faith. The question for all is whether the new-look Mr Hegseth speaks for Mr Trump, or will be disowned by him. ■