The Secretary of War

If Hegseth is Patton, who is Eisenhower?

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s current rhetorical framework prizes lethality, unilateralism, and audacity, which is why he refers to himself as the Secretary of War. Key statements from official briefings during the opening week of the Iran conflict match this idea:

3/2: “America... is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history... No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win... War is hell and always will be.” Source

3/5: “We set the tempo, we set the timeline... Our munitions are full up, and our will is ironclad.” Source

3/10: “We’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance and an unbreakable will to accomplish the president’s objectives on our timeline.” Source

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic notes Hegseth mirrors General George S. Patton, who was even more straightforward in his rhetoric.¹

This reminded me of a letter from Dwight Eisenhower that uses Patton’s ferocity to make a different point: leadership in war takes ferocity and stability of judgement.

In a 1943 letter to General George Marshall, Eisenhower, then serving as commander of Allied Forces in the Mediterranean, describes why Patton, who was so good at one kind of leadership, would not be good at another kind:

Patton’s strength is that he thinks only in terms of attack…the man has a native shrewdness….Personally, I doubt that I would ever consider Patton for an army group commander or for any higher position [but] under a man who is sound and solid, and who has enough sense to use Patton’s good qualities without becoming blinded by his love of showmanship and histrionics, he should do as fine a job as he did in Sicily.²

Patton represented controlled ferocity inside a larger framework. Eisenhower represented strategic restraint. The tipping point happens structurally when bold action is considered inherently superior to restraint. What happens when decisive violence as a tool of strategy outruns the strategy it is supposed to serve?

If the violence becomes detached from the objective, it begins to produce strategic drift. Examples:

• Vietnam War: U.S. forces inflicted enormous casualties and delivered overwhelming firepower. Yet the political objective—creating a stable non-communist South Vietnam—remained elusive. Tactical lethality did not translate into political success.

• Iraq War: The invasion phase demonstrated overwhelming military lethality and speed. But the destruction of Iraqi state capacity created a political vacuum that the military campaign had not solved.

• Ukraine: As Paul Boyd points out, the Russian superiority was supposed to make this a several day— not several year— invasion of Ukraine.

Excessive direct force can produce the opposite effect of what it intends:
it mobilizes the adversary’s population. Examples:

• The Blitz: German bombing was lethal but politically counterproductive; it hardened British resolve.

• Strategic bombing of North Vietnam: Massive bombing did not compel North Vietnam to capitulate and arguably strengthened nationalist resistance.

Wars drag on when force is used too cautiously. Political constraints produce stalemate. Swift and overwhelming violence shortens wars and reduces total casualties. But the central issue is not the level of violence but alignment. Is the violence serving a strategy which serves a political purpose? If not, or if the violence is driving the strategy and the politics, even the most effective battlefield performance produces strategic confusion. Eisenhower's question wasn't whether Patton was effective, it was who was holding the leash.

1. The rhetorical model currently employed by Secretary Hegseth draws a direct parallel to the aggressive, “unfiltered” archetype of General George S. Patton, specifically as expressed in his May 31, 1944, “Speech to the Third Army.” This philosophy is characterized by an unapologetic focus on winning, as seen in Patton’s assertion that “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser... Americans play to win all the time” (Source). This is paired with a prioritization of extreme lethality, with Patton famously vowing, “We’re not just going to shoot the enemy, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks” (Source). Such rhetoric acknowledges the brutal nature of combat—“War is a bloody business, a killing business... hit them in the gut, tear them open” (Source)—while maintaining a commitment to an aggressive tempo: “We are advancing constantly... we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose” (Source).

2. In Sicily, Patton commanded the U.S. 7th Army in a historic campaign, though it is also where he suffered a serious blow to his reputation: he slapped two soldiers suffering from shell shock in separate incidents at U.S. Army evacuation hospitals, accusing them of cowardice. He was forced to issue a public apology and earned a sharp reprimand from Eisenhower.