Remember all the criticisms Pete Hegseth endured as his nomination to head the Pentagon proceeded? Besides the gratuitous personal attacks, many so-called defense experts pronounced Hegseth unqualified for the job. Liberal National Public Radio reported that Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense was being met “with disbelief and outrage among some members of Congress and former military officers.” “If confirmed,” NPR said, Hegseth “would be the least experienced defense secretary in the history of the republic.” The New York Times called his selection to head the Pentagon “deeply troubling.”
Donald Trump’s Pentagon led by Secretary Hegseth, it appears, knows how to successfully use force to carry out the nation’s objectives.
Nearly a year later, War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is two-for-two in the limited but complex military operations undertaken against Iran and Venezuela. Put aside for a moment the questions of geopolitical necessity and the policy implications of the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the capture of Maduro in Venezuela, and focus on the competence of our military when used correctly by our civilian leaders.
In Iran, the U.S. military successfully acted with Israel to destroy — at least for the time being — Iran’s capability to construct and deploy nuclear weapons. By doing so, the U.S. seriously set back Iran’s nuclear weapons project and helped remove a threat to all of our allies in the region and, as recent events show, greatly weakened the Islamic regime’s hold on power, without committing our forces to another endless war in the region.
In Venezuela, our military, intelligence, and law enforcement forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who had been indicted by a federal grand jury in New York on terrorism, drug, and gun charges. The Pentagon’s role in the Maduro operation is reminiscent of its role in the capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in January 1990, who, like Maduro, had been indicted on drug trafficking charges (and later convicted).
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine described the complexity of the military operation that led to Maduro’s capture, which involved more than 150 aircraft “launching across the Western Hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to lay effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise.” The operation, Gen. Caine continued, “required the utmost precision and integration within our joint force.” President Trump called it “an extraordinary military operation” in which “overwhelming American military power, air, land, and sea was used to launch a spectacular assault.”
Donald Trump’s Pentagon led by Secretary Hegseth, it appears, knows how to successfully use force to carry out the nation’s objectives. What a difference from the days of Joe Biden’s Pentagon run by Gen. Lloyd Austin, which botched the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Biden’s Pentagon in that instance was reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s Pentagon, led by Harold Brown, which engineered the fiasco of the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran in 1980.
President Trump’s Venezuela decisiveness brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s similar decisiveness about the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada in October 1983, during which our military rescued American medical students and overthrew a brutal communist regime that was backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Reagan followed that up with actions that saved El Salvador from a communist insurgency and led to the ouster of a communist regime in Nicaragua.
Maduro’s Venezuela had increasingly allied itself with China, which strongly condemned Trump’s actions. Under Presidents Obama and Biden, China had made inroads into Latin America via its Belt and Road Initiative. Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry, after all, had publicly pronounced the death of the Monroe Doctrine. Under Obama and Biden, China knew it had nothing to fear by increasing its presence in the Western Hemisphere, and the nations of Latin America knew that they had nothing to fear by inviting China to spread its influence throughout the region. President Trump has not only rhetorically revived the Monroe Doctrine, but he and War Secretary Hegseth have demonstrated that they know how to use America’s military power to accomplish geopolitical objectives.
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