Thus begin the nomination hearings for senior positions in the incoming Trump administration.
First up was Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, a former mid-ranking officer in the National Guard turned Fox News host. The most important thing to know about Pete Hegseth is that he is deeply, deeply unqualified for the job of Defense Secretary. He has been credibly accused of sexual assault, has a history of public intoxication on the job, and routinely expresses paleolithic views on the status of women.
He also has no significant management experience, which is arguably the most important qualification for someone tapped to lead one of the largest and most complex bureaucracies on the planet.
In his confirmation hearing yesterday, most Democratic senators focused on his personal misdeeds and misconduct. Those may have generated some great clips on social media. But in my view, this (slightly edited) exchange with Minnesota Democrat Gary Peters strikes at the heart of why Hegseth is a uniquely bad pick:
Sen. Gary Peters: Just talk about your qualifications. The jobs you’ve had. Your two previous positions. How many people reported to you in those positions?
Hegseth: Senator, at Vets for Freedom, we were a small upstart. (I think he meant “startup”)
Peters: Just the number, please.
Hegseth: We probably had 8 to 10 full-time staff and lots of volunteers.
The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world. It has an $842 billion budget and employs around three million people. No other organization in the United States, public or private, comes close. This includes the U.S. Postal Service, Walmart, and Amazon. Its budget exceeds the GDP of about 150 countries.
The point is, the DoD is a massive bureaucracy. And now, the person being tapped to run the place is someone whose previous management experience included running two small non-profits into the ground. (According to several media reports, Hegseth was sidelined as head of both Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America amid allegations of financial mismanagement and public intoxication at company events.)
Alas, more likely than not, he’ll get confirmed. As will the rest of Trump’s foreign policy team.
In this week’s Global Dispatches podcast interview, I sit down with veteran DC foreign policy reporter Joshua Keating, a senior correspondent with Vox.
We go through a list of key foreign policy figures in the incoming administration, discuss the distinct foreign policy traditions and personal experiences that have informed their worldviews, and explain what baggage or, perhaps more charitably, “perspectives” they will bring to their new roles. In addition to Hegseth, this includes National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, and others. As Keating explains, many of these picks come from different strains of Republican foreign policy thinking. Certain key decisions, particularly on Ukraine, may determine what faction of Republican foreign policy ideology will have the upper hand in Trump’s second administration.
The episode is freely available across all podcast listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But we’d love your support.
Here’s an excerpt
Mark Leon Goldberg: Josh, thanks so much for chatting with me today. I wanted to just go through some of the key personalities that will be filling Trump’s foreign policy team with you and have you kind of explain a bit of their background and what they bring to the table. Let’s start with Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor Designate. Now, this is not a Senate-confirmed position. So, Mike Waltz will be the National Security Advisor, barring any unforeseen circumstances. What’s his background, and how did he gain Trump’s confidence?
Joshua Keating: Mike Waltz is a congressman from Florida, a military veteran. He was the first Green Beret ever elected to Congress. And he is somebody who, I think he would’ve traditionally identified with the more sort of hawkish wing of the Republican Party. If you look at his statements on China, on the Middle East, and Ukraine even. I mean, I think what’s been interesting about him to me is how in the last couple years, particularly on the issue of Ukraine, which has been a subject of a lot of division within the Republican foreign policy world, he’s shifted from initially hanging a Ukrainian flag in his office and pushing the Biden administration to provide more weapons.
He’s now a little more skeptical. He has voted against some of the more recent aid packages, and he is somebody who’s talked about what he sees as the issue of providing too much treasure and effort in this war in Europe when we should be focusing on the real threat from China. And that’s a message you’re going to hear a lot from people in Trump’s orbit that our national priorities are kind of wrong, and we’ve taken our eye off the ball of the real threat in the world. I think there’s a way that he’s tailored his views to make them a little bit less traditional GOP hawk, maybe a little more MAGA friendly.
Mark Leon Goldberg: So, you preempted where I was hoping to lead this conversation several minutes from now, which is how these personalities will inform the debate around Ukraine, which, as you noted, is where you see the most profound and distinct divisions in Republican foreign policy right now.
But before we get there, I wanted to ask you more about Mike Waltz and the position of national security advisor. Essentially, there are two types of national security advisors. There’s the so-called honest broker; the person who judiciously and dispassionately brings different viewpoints to the president and lets the president have all the available information required to make his decision.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have national security advisors who have a definite agenda they want to push, and they use their proximity to the president to advance that specific agenda. John Bolton is a good example of this kind of national security advisor. Where on the spectrum do you see Mike Waltz landing?
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