The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the United States, paying 2.1 million military personnel and more than 770,000 civilians. Its annual budget is $900 billion, larger than the GDP of Switzerland. It is estimated that the organization has 750 bases in at least 80 countries and is an extremely complex and important organization. And, to host the show, Donald Trump chose a Fox News haircut due to his (alleged) drinking problem.
It's hard to emphasize how unqualified Pete Hegseth is for the Pentagon's top job — but Hegseth himself made the argument well during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday. "He said over and over again, 'Oh, I'm not that experienced, but I'm going to hire people smarter than me to do this,'" Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) explain. Committee's. "All day long, I was thinking, 'Well why don't we hire someone smarter than you to do this job?'"
When Duckworth asked him to name three international security negotiations that the defense secretary had personally led on behalf of the United States, Hegseth hesitated. "...NATO?" he asked lamely. In case you're curious, they are: Status of Forces Agreements, which describe how military personnel operate within another country (such as South Korea); Acquisition and Cross-Services Agreements, a treaty related to shared logistics (which the United States has with countries such as Latvia security agreements); and defense trade cooperation treaties related to mobile or shared equipment (such as the nuclear submarine agreement contemplated by the United States, United Kingdom and Australia).
In his opening remarks, Hegseth spoke of the importance of deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. A key component of the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy is reliance on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "I thought, OK, great ... I'm going to throw him some softballs, right?" Duckworth recalled. She then asked him if he could name the countries in ASEAN, or even how many countries there were.
"I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan, we have allies in AUKUS with Australia," Hegseth said. But they are not members of the association. (For the record, ASEAN consists of 10 South Asian countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.)
"This man knows absolutely nothing," Duckworth said bluntly rolling stones. Duckworth, a woman and a veteran who lost both legs in Iraq, voted to confirm Mark Esper and James Mattis, Trump's first-term defense secretary nominees. Despite her political differences with Esper, Duckworth said, "He's capable, he can do his job, he can go to Singapore, attend the (Asian Defense Summit), the Shangri-La Dialogue, and conduct Face-to-face." With the Chinese defense minister - and, I'm sorry, Hegseth couldn't go head-to-head with the Chinese defense minister and think he would walk away from that situation smiling. "
Duckworth will not support Hegseth's nomination, which she said sends a chilling message not only to the men and women of the U.S. military, but also to other countries.
"It shows that we don't care about their lives," Duckworth said. "We require our service members to be tactically, technically proficient so that they can get the job done under any conditions - even under fire, even if you're dying and bleeding to death, our troops will Fight back because they're trained to do the job. And yet, to have a secretary of defense who is going to make the decision to dedicate his life to defending America, who doesn't understand how to negotiate the best deal?"
While Hegseth showed a woeful lack of understanding of the basic outlines of the job he wanted, he also blithely threatened to fire admirals and generals currently serving in the Pentagon. If that happens, Duckworth said, military personnel will be the ones to bear the burden: "All the senior leaders who have the experience to be able to tactically plan operations will be gone, and you'll have a group of people who have never commanded more than 200 "Hackers of people who will decide whether you go to Greenland or Panama, wherever that is, it's really demoralizing."
Still, her Republican colleagues seemed ready to confirm Hegseth's claims, she said. “Senate Republicans knelt before Donald Trump, and not a single one was willing to stand up — at least not on the Armed Services Committee.”