Well, he has zero experience in administrative positions.
Here's a quote by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who voted against his nomination:
"Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests," the senator said. "Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been."
I can't understand how someone like that got into such a position.
It was deliberate. President Stable Genius wants a loyal "yes man" in that critical position. The Fox new host was it. Competence and continuity are not important for what the administration is doing.
If Hegseth gets cut-out, someone equally ridiculous will be chosen to fill that role.
Well, to explain that properly, I’m going to need to explain the Southern Strategy and how that and subsequent efforts helped transform the party of Lincoln into the party of Pete Hegseth and Michael Brown.
As a canuk, I was anxious a little bit when orange man kept blathering about annexing Canada, but now seeing how uttery incompetent this administration is, my anxiety died down.
Unfortunately, incompetents can still do plenty of harm with sufficient power at their hands. Russian invasion of Ukraine is a good example, and the power disparity was smaller there than between US and Canada.
sadly they haven't replaced all the competent people yet, so I'm afraid they can still do a lot of damage. but thankfully they're working their way through the list.
Failing checks and balances, and the wrong elected representatives given the power to put someone in that position. The current US administration was years in the making.
Not the only country by the way.
The issue here is classic shadow IT, the respective military/agencies are unable to supply anything as portable and usable as a mobile phone for classified communications.
Governments are simply run the same way businesses are now run
The signal chat did not have anything that someone would try to hide. People want easy things, they want to manage an air strike using their mobile phone from their bedroom. They don't want to sit in their office for that or use some hardened government issued device that is older, uglier and an extra brick to take along, with no real support of IM (my assumptions on DoD devices)
some years ago it was unthinkable to manage a battle remotely, now it is common practice. This job changes too.
In any case the same issues you have in a regular company also exists in the upper echelons, no reason you can't give them technology that is encrypted and easy to use. That doesn't mean they are supposed to use Signal though
We weren't 'dragged' into the Ukraine war. We watched an invasion, we saw refugees arrive in our society, we sent resources to help, we are watching war crimes and we now count Ukrainians amongst us. Our systems were taken by surprise and have taken time to respond. But the previous administration's policy was one of alliances and diplomacy and not intimidation or force.
The EU has it's own agency and it is a perfectly good thing for us to 'take over'.
If you focus on one (admittedly ill formulated) part of a downvoted and now deleted comment, you can infer anything.
Yes, Germany supplied moderate amounts of weapons in the beginning, so they were involved from the start if you like. Then Nordstream happened, then the previous US administration repeatedly put pressure on Germany and other EU countries to do more:
The US policy that the EU should get more involved has been a recurring theme during the Biden administration. Now the EU is begging the US to continue. We do not know if all this is political theater or if Trump really wants to end the war. We might know by the end of this year.
Germany is not sole EU country. For example Poland delivered 300 tanks starting from April 2022 (also - SPG, aircraft and other heavy equipment and also lighter equipment)
I just spoke up because something we're seeing a lot as Europeans is these subtle twists and turns in the narrative. When you live here a lot of this stuff is up close and personal - we don't need to infer anything from internet comments or past news articles. We've been paying attention - I have personally watched the military convoys running east-west. We have Ukrainians integrated into our communities.
We expended much energy internally consumed by internal debates and arguments about who is supplying what, how much, through which channel. As EU member states we're not always aligned and we are different cultures speaking different languages. This has been used against us in the information warfare layer.
I really don't believe you can simplify the entire EU and say we're begging. There are certain capacities that we can't replace, and for decades member states prioritized dismantling our military industrial complex (in perfectly good faith!). Winding up heavy military industrial supply chains can't be an over-night process. And yeah, I believe you're absolutely correct - a lot of this is political theater.
My own personal view: the war won't be over anytime soon. The other side has gone all in on it. Even if they were to slam the brakes it would take years to reduce that momentum. They've had their own internal wars and purges fueling this thing and whatever they do, they would need to have a solid explanation. It's basically a sacred crusade to them.
Now, this might be controversial, but my personal belief is that on some level, we too prefer that the war grinds on. Only as long as it does not escalate into nuclear. It might be a cynical belief, but at this point it's the Ukrainians who are going to have years of real-life warfare experience and the EU wants access to this to learn from.
Anyways, there's a fucking TV host running the US DoD. These aren't serious people. Trump doesn't have nuanced ideas to read into on any of this - he wants to end the war as much as he wants to eat cheeseburgers and have crowds cheer for him. Maybe he'll get that headline, maybe he won't.
> We do not know if all this is political theater or if Trump really wants to end the war...
The utterly confused picture of what the president is thinking is itself a considerable problem. Political theater would be unconscionable, yet that is mostly what we get.
The question was why Hegseth got into that position. The now deleted comment speculated, perhaps in a clumsy fashion, why polarizing, incompetent but loyal figures can be useful for a permanent bureaucracy to achieve its long term goals.
The fact that the figures are polarizing helps, because everyone focuses on the person and not on what is actually happening.
Note that this is speculation, because we do not have full information.
Here's a quote by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), who voted against his nomination:
"Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests," the senator said. "Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been."