Hegseth invokes ghosts of presidents past in national security appeal
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President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Dec. 2 meeting at the White House. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
To better understand Trump 2.0, perhaps it's best to consult past presidents.
The big picture: President Trump wants a big-spending but smaller-footprint military, focused on the Americas, with deterrence for adversaries and some distance from allies. His team is turning to history to justify that outlook.
Driving the news: In a speech given to the Reagan National Defense Forum in California this weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked four commanders in chief and sought to separate Trump from a fifth.
- Trump, he said, is the "true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan."
- The Monroe Doctrine, articulated by President James Monroe, "is in effect and is stronger than ever under the Trump corollary," he said.
- The U.S. "will be strong" but not "unnecessarily confrontational," he said. "To quote another great Republican president, we will speak softly and carry a big stick." (Note: Speaking softly is not exactly Trump's trademark.)
- Trump "restored freedom of navigation," he said, referencing fights in Yemen and the Red Sea. "Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson is smiling."
- And in stark contrast, he said, the Biden administration was "more concerned about Ukraine's borders than our own."
State of play: Hegseth's rhetoric adds color to the White House's national security strategy, which arrived this month. The document prioritizes the Western Hemisphere while chiding past administrations for overreaching. It generated alarm in Europe, plus praise from Moscow.
- "Out with utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism," Hegseth said at the conference.
- "The War Department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building," he added.
- "We will instead put our nation's practical, concrete interests first."
Zoom in: Bits of the presidents' precedent schtick are already in play.
- Golden Dome is seen as the successor to the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, which ultimately foundered.
- And Trump is deploying the military closer to and at home more frequently, including in major U.S. cities, the southern border and the Caribbean.
Reality check: Words may not always match reality. While blasting past presidents for nation-building and vowing to extricate the U.S. from the Middle East, Trump is also about to name himself chair of a governing board for Gaza.
- The four presidents Hegseth mentioned also had contrasting foreign policies, though all took interventionist or expansionist approaches within the hemisphere.
Between the lines: While attempting to define Trumpism in the present, Hegseth and company are also litigating the past — placing Trump in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, while his critics contend the contrast could hardly be starker.
- "Folks in Washington like to invoke President Reagan's name, often when they criticize President Trump. They say, or at least insinuate, that Donald Trump is nothing like Ronald Reagan," Hegseth said.
- "But those folks are wrong. They are dead wrong."
Go deeper: Trump 2.0 refashions U.S. military muscle
