Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Convocation, the Warrior Ethos, and Our Military’s Covenant with American Society

It is likely that many Americans were perplexed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s September 30 convocation of all military flag officers (generals and admirals) to speak mainly about a topic that may seem esoteric: the warrior ethos. The warrior ethos is foundational to combat effectiveness and ethical conduct in war. But it is important to view Hegseth’s call to strengthen the warrior ethos in context of the American military’s role under the Constitution. While the Secretary is correct in rejecting and correcting the Biden Administration’s effort to push reified, post-modernist philosophies on the military that are destructive to combat effectiveness, it will be important for civilian and military leaders to understand that the warrior ethos is, in part, a covenant between our citizens and those who serve in their name to “support and defend the Constitution.” And that covenant depends largely on keeping a bold line in place between our military and partisan politics.

I have long been concerned about the erosion of the warrior ethos. In 2014 I had the privilege of giving a speech at Georgetown University commemorating Veterans Day. In that speech, I defined the warrior ethos as:

a covenant between the members of our profession comprised of values such as honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. But our warrior ethos also depends on our military’s connection to our society. That is because when we are valued by others we value ourselves. Ultimately, as Christopher Coker has observed, it is the warrior ethos that permits servicemen and women to see themselves as part of a community that sustains itself through “sacred trust” and a covenant that binds us to one another and to the society we serve. The warrior ethos is important because it is what makes military units effective. It is also important because it is what makes war “less inhumane.”

I believed that the warrior ethos was at risk because fewer Americans were connected to our professional military; fewer Americans understood what was at stake in the wars in which we were engaged; some were arguing that victory over an enemy or winning in war was an old idea that is no longer relevant in today’s complex world; some were advocating for simple, mainly technologically based solutions to the problem of future war, ignoring war’s very nature as a human and political activity that is fundamentally a contest of wills; and popular culture had watered down and coarsened the warrior ethos.

In the ensuing years, I grew more concerned about the erosion of the warrior ethos especially after the disastrous self-defeat and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Biden Administration’s advocacy of post-modernist and various critical theories that are destructive to the warrior ethos. In 2021 I wrote an essay for National Review in which I argued that “If ensuring the ability to fight and win is not the focus of the Defense Department, confused priorities threaten to dilute the warrior ethos and create uncertainty about what the military is for.” I observed that, “As it was conducting the humiliating retreat from Kabul, the Pentagon was developing a climate strategy in response to the president’s guidance to “prioritize climate change considerations.” That argument and observation was consistent with Hegseth’s call to focus on the military’s mission. I warned how the postmodernist and critical theories that the Biden Administration civilian appointees were pushing would “valorize victimhood” in a way that “robs warriors of their agency, cedes the initiative to the enemy, and stifles the bold action, creativity, and innovation that are essential to winning battles at the lowest possible cost.” Ultimately, practices such as judging people by identity category would “weaken the bonds of sacred trust among warriors” in a way that is destructive to combat effectiveness. That is why much of Hegseth’s message to the convocation resonated with me.

But there are causes for concern in the content of the Secretary’s speech, in particular the line that seemed to threaten a purge of the flag officer corps based on a subjective assessment to determine which “leaders simply did what they must to answer the prerogatives of civilian leadership and which leaders are truly invested in the woke department and therefore incapable of embracing the War Department and executing new lawful orders.” Such an approach risks pulling the military leadership into partisan politics and eroding the covenant that our military has with our society.

Keeping the military out of partisan politics while focusing on the mission and rejecting the reified philosophies that are destructive to combat effectiveness were the main recommendations of the March 2023 Report of the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness convened at The Heritage Foundation under the direction of then-Congressman Mike Waltz. The panel, on which I served, emphasized the critical need to:

ensure that servicemembers are unified in a sense of mission and national purpose that, to the extent possible, they should be protected from the impact of political factions in civilian American society. Many Americans across the political spectrum understand this special status and that servicemembers should not be used to further domestic political objectives. Politicization of the U.S. military risks dividing groups into factions while detracting time, resources, and focus on the priority mission: to prepare and train the force to fight and win in combat.

The panel warned that “the Biden Administration’s imposition of progressive social and environmental agendas is distracting the military from its primary mission and undermining readiness” and warned that “appointed Pentagon political leaders are dragging divisive progressive social justice ideologies into an institution that, for 248 years, has sought to remain apolitical and neutral.” As Secretary Hegseth applies a corrective to what those Biden Administration political appointees were pushing, he and other Pentagon officials might ensure that their policies and actions are consistent with the panel’s call for leaders to “commit to strengthening the warrior ethos, ensuring unit cohesion, and defending the impartiality and nonpolitical nature of the fighting force.”