Inside US Defence Secretary Hegseth’s rocky first months at the Pentagon

WASHINGTON – Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Mr Hegseth, a former National Guard infantryman and Fox News weekend host, started his job at the Pentagon determined to “out-Trump” US President Donald Trump, Defence Department officials and aides said.

The US President is sceptical about the value of Nato and European alliances, so the Pentagon under Mr Hegseth considered plans in which the US would give up its command role overseeing Nato troops. After Mr Trump issued executive orders targeting transgender people, Mr Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.

Mr Trump has embraced Mr Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla. The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give Mr Musk a first-hand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessman with interests there.

In all of those endeavours, Mr Hegseth was pulled back – by congressional Republicans, the courts or even Mr Trump.

The US President made clear on March 21 that he had been caught by surprise by a report in The New York Times on the Pentagon’s briefing for Mr Musk, who oversees an effort to shrink the US government, but also denied that the meeting had been planned.

“I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Mr Trump said.

But Mr Hegseth’s latest mistake could have led to catastrophic consequences.

On March 24, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Mr Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he had been inadvertently included in an encrypted group chat in which Mr Hegseth discussed plans for targeting the Houthi militia in Yemen two hours before US troops launched attacks against the group.

The White House confirmed Mr Goldberg’s account. But Mr Hegseth later denied that he put war plans in the group chat, which apparently included other senior members of Mr Trump’s national security team.

In disclosing the aircraft, targets and timing for hitting Houthi militia sites in Yemen on the commercial messaging app Signal, Mr Hegseth risked the lives of American war fighters.

It was unclear on March 25 whether anyone involved in the Signal group chat would lose their jobs. Republicans in Congress have been wary of running afoul of Mr Trump. But Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, indicated on March 24 that there would be some kind of investigation.

Mr John Bolton, a national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said on social media that he doubted that “anyone will be held to account for events described by The Atlantic unless Donald Trump himself feels the heat”.

In his article, Mr Goldberg said he was added to the chat by Mr Michael Waltz, Mr Trump’s current national security adviser.

On March 25, Mr Trump defended Mr Waltz. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Mr Trump said in an interview on NBC.

The US President added that Mr Goldberg’s presence in the group chat had “no impact at all” and that the Houthi attacks were “perfectly successful”.

To be sure, some of Mr Hegseth’s stumbles have been part of the learning process of a high-profile job leading a department with an US$850 billion-a-year (S$1.13 trillion) budget.

“Secretary Hegseth is trying to figure out where the President’s headed, and to run there ahead of him,” said Ms Kori Schake, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute. But, she added, “he’s doing performative activities”. “He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.”

Dr Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades, said of the Signal chat disclosure: “(It) raises serious questions about how a new accountability standard might apply: How would he handle a situation like this if it involved one of his subordinates?”

Mr Hegseth’s stumbles started soon after he was sworn in to lead the Pentagon on Jan 25.

In his debut on the world stage in mid-February, he told Nato and Ukrainian ministers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia’s first invasion, was “an unrealistic objective” and ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine. A few hours later, Mr Trump backed him up while announcing a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to begin peace negotiations.

Facing blowback the next day from European allies and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr Hegseth denied that either he or Mr Trump had sold out Ukraine. “There is no betrayal there,” Mr Hegseth said.

That was not how even Republican supporters of Mr Hegseth saw it. “He made a rookie mistake in Brussels,” Mr Wicker said about the US Defence Secretary’s comment on Ukraine’s borders.

“I don’t know who wrote the speech – it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Mr Wicker said, referring to the conservative media personality and former Fox News host.

Mr Hegseth sought to recover later in the week, saying he had simply been trying to “introduce realism into the expectations of our Nato allies”. How much territory Ukraine may cede to Russia would be decided in talks between Mr Trump and the presidents of the warring countries, he said.

Last week, Mr Hegseth again got crosswise with Mr Wicker over reports that the Trump administration was planning to withdraw from Nato’s military command and reduce the number of troops deployed overseas in addition to other changes to the military’s combatant commands.

Mr Wicker and Representative Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that they were concerned about reports that the US Defence Department might be planning changes “absent coordination with the White House and Congress”. NYTIMES