Newt Gingrich: America Needs Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon

January 17, 2025

This piece is by WWSG exclusive thought leader, Newt Gingrich.

I have spent a lifetime studying national defense. I can say with absolute certainty that America needs Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense.

The Defense Department, like all bureaucracies, has grown self-protective and skilled at avoiding change. In too many cases, it makes decisions out of cronyism rather than the requirements of war.

My father served 26 years in the infantry. I grew up as an Army brat. In fact, I reached Georgia through his assignment to Fort Benning. I wrote my first paper on national defense in 1958 using the Seventh Army Command library as a source of sophisticated material.

In Congress, I helped found the Military Reform Caucus in 1981. I testified in favor of the Goldwater-Nichols reform bill in 1986. And I have worked with general officers at the National Defense University and the Joint Warfighting Course for more than 40 years. Working with President Bill Clinton in 1998, we created the Hart-Rudman Commission. It was the most thorough review of national security since the 1947 reforms.

The Defense Department has grown steadily more bureaucratic. This is partially due to congressionally imposed micro-management and the natural pattern of bureaucracies. It has become steadily less concerned with war fighting and more concerned with other values.

I have said for years that the Pentagon was built in 1943 to hold 26,000 people to manage a worldwide war with manual typewriters, carbon paper, and filing cabinets. Today, we have smart phones, tablets, laptops, and the same number of people. I really believe we would be better off if we reduced the Pentagon into a triangle and turned the other two-thirds into a museum of national defense.

Clearly, no one who is an insider in the defense establishment will upset the apple cart, tick off friends, and radically change patterns and institutions which have been around for a half-century or longer.

The current Pentagon may not be good at defending America, but it is good at defending itself.

If President Donald Trump had appointed a traditional defense establishment personality, we would simply have gotten more of the same buddy-buddy, bureaucratic Defense Department routine.

In this situation, Hegseth is a breath of fresh air. He is the best hope we have for really modernizing and refocusing the defense establishment.

First, Hegseth understands what the focus of a defense department should be. As he said in the Senate hearing, “[Trump], like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, war fighting, accountability, and readiness.”

I really admire Hegseth because he is willing to testify to things that are sensitive in the culture of military bureaucracy. For example, he said:

“We won World War II with seven four-star generals. Today, we have 44 four-star generals. There’s an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield. We don’t need more bureaucracy at the top. We need more warfighters empowered at the bottom.”

The shift to warfighting rather than bureaucratic maneuvering is desperately needed. As Hegseth asserted: “We’re going to be focused on lethality and defeating our enemy.”

Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., who will serve as Trump’s National Security Advisor, pointed out to the Senate Armed Services Committee that Hegseth has a unique background as a nominee who is not already part of the DoD system. “It seems like every major weapons system is costing too much, delivering too little, and taking way too long,” Waltz said.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman, who has worked with Hegseth, told his former colleagues that it was time to think outside the box in modernizing the Pentagon.

Senator Tommy Tuberville explained: “Pete’s the perfect guy for us. We don’t need a general. We need a drill sergeant.”

I have worked with many fine, patriotic, hardworking, and courageous people in our military. Generally, they are remarkable people who devote their lives to defending America. When needed, they risk their lives in that duty. However, too many today are trapped in a system which has grown so bureaucratic and intellectually-stale that the system is dramatically less than the sum of the individuals who work in it.

Hegseth may be our best hope to bring an informed combat veteran with deep convictions, great courage, and a solid work ethic to tackle our greatest government management challenge.

We need him. Everyone should let their senators know he is the right man at the right time. This job may mean life or death for America’s survival.

For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

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