Pete Hegseth shows off his Crusader tattoo.
This is an updated version of a piece that first appeared in The Journal of Uncharted Blue Places
Over the weekend, it transpired that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had in a July 2 memo unilaterally stopped shipments of some weapons to Ukraine. This in the midst of the largest Russian offensive since Vlad Putin’s invasion in 2022 and a Ukrainian counter-offensive that has included missile and drone strikes against military targets deep in the Russian heartland. But President Trump seemed on Monday to reverse Hegseth’s move. He talked about sending additional weapons to Kyiv. “We have to,” he told reporters. “They have to be able to defend themselves.”
Yes, they do. But as Tom Nichols at The Atlantic asks, who the hell is running U.S. defense policy?
It’s not the president, at least not on most issues. Trump’s interest in foreign policy, as with so many other topics, is capricious and episodic at best. He flits away from losing issues, leaving them to others. He promised to end the war in Ukraine in a day, but after conceding that making peace is “more difficult than people would have any idea,” the president has since shrugged and given up..
When the July 2 memo was revealed last week by NBC News, the excuse given for the halt was that U.S. stocks of certain weapons were critically low and needed to be tallied. This was said to be part of a larger “capability” study, one that Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s under secretary for policy, had initiated. According to the Daily Beast, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said at a briefing on the matter last week, “We can’t give weapons to everybody all around the world. Part of our job is to give the president a framework that he can use to evaluate how many munitions we have and where we’re sending them. And that review process is happening right now and is ongoing.”
This claim was delivered despite Hegseth’s having in hand before writing his memo a Pentagon review saying munitions stockpiles had not fallen below critical thresholds necessitating a cutback in shipments to Ukraine.
As Putin was hitting Ukraine in a massive attack hours after a July 3 phone call with the U.S. president that Trump characterized as no “progress made with him at all,” Rep. Adam Smith, the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News, "We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three-and-a-half years of the Ukraine conflict." His staff had “seen the numbers.” He characterized Hegseth’s halt as “disingenuous.” That’s accurate, but dishonest, deceptive, devious, sly, shifty, and sneaky also apply.
Three congressional aides and an unnamed U.S. official told NBC the secretary had taken the action on his own. Twice before, since February, Hegseth had stopped weapons shipments to Ukraine but was swiftly reversed. For his part, contradicting both the Pentagon and reporting, Trump denied on Friday that the U.S. had paused shipments. "We haven't. We're giving weapons."
My-oh-my ... who, who, who to believe?
Reportedly included in the shipment that was — [you choose] 1) halted, or 2) not halted — were dozens of Patriot interceptors, Hellfire missiles, 155mm artillery rounds, Stingers, AIM air-to-air missiles, and grenade launchers. Now, apparently, maybe, those weapons, some of which had already been loaded for shipment when Hegseth stepped in, are again on the way to help Ukraine defend itself. Hard to be sure until they actually arrive.
Shankar Narayan wrote at his Concis Substack on Friday: “Elbridge Colby — yes, that Colby guy — the Under Secretary of Defense, quietly diverted multiple weapons shipments en route to Ukraine. It was a tactical move designed to block the national security wing of the GOP from nudging Trump closer to a balanced position between Russia and Ukraine. The pro-Putin lobby always has a trick up its sleeve around the time of Trump-Putin calls. This one was their biggest play yet.”
Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who was previously the House Armed Services Committee chairman, pushed the Trump administration to rescind the halt. In a post on Xitter, he wrote Friday: “Senior U.S. military officials have concluded that providing these critical weapons to Ukraine will not endanger U.S. readiness, so I urge the administration to quickly get the pipeline back up and running” adding “Pentagon officials halting weapons only weakens President Trump’s noble attempts at peace.”
Narayan gave McCaul credit for ensuring weapons shipments to Ukraine got out the door faster in last six months of the Biden administration.
I’m not given to conspiracy theories, but when a subordinate does something he supposedly wasn’t supposed to do on his own for the third time in four months, you have to consider that perhaps he wasn’t doing something on his own. After all, our Outlaw Prez has hardly been in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s corner. Remind me how long it’s been since he was saying the Ukrainian president started the invasion of his own country. Maybe Trump thought dangling the possibility of a weapons cut-off or long delay at a critical moment would help him extract 10 more percentage points of advantage for the U.S. in the minerals deal signed with Ukraine in April. But, as Shankar and Nichols point out, Trump is capricious and, as an ignoramus on foreign policy, can and has been alternately influenced by those in his administration with a pro-Putin agenda, not that they’d call it that, and those in Kyiv’s corner.
All this doesn’t mean Hegseth isn’t a loose cannon.
More Republicans than just McCaul have registered concern. But we haven’t heard squat from the Senate Armed Services Committee whose Republican members all recommended Hegseth be approved for the nation’s second or third most important Cabinet post. Committee Democrats all gave him a resounding no.
Like all the committee’s members, these Republicans are supposed to be our guardians. They’re supposed to gain the expertise over the years to watchdog the Pentagon and work diligently to ensure our military is well led and our national security is secured. They are supposed to have good judgment about matters of defense, matters of national protection and survival. And yet they picked this guy they knew was not up to the job, emotionally or by experience.
The booby prize goes to committee Chairman Roger Wicker. He has 28 years of military service, including 24 in the Air Force Reserve. He has been on the committee for 15 years. He not only knew about Hegseth’s fatal-to-the-job inadequacies, he also publicly raised some “concerns” weeks before the vote. He could have been the crucial fourth Republican vote against Hegseth’s confirmation. Maybe he could have talked Trump into giving Hegseth a job as Ambassador to the Manosphere.
Knowing what he knew, Wicker nevertheless wound up praising the guy. Other Republicans on the committee with military service who did likewise are Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, and Tim Sheehy. Did they really think this guy was even close to having the temperament and experience for the job? Or did they just tremble and fold before Dear Leader the way they have done on so many other matters, including the Kid Killer Bill they just helped deliver to the man’s desk?
Maybe Hegseth did call this halt on his own without telling the boss. If so, did he get a post-memo scolding in the Oval Office like the one Zelenskyy got? Or was there maybe a wink-wink, nudge-nudge between them as a little more chaos and uncertainty was added to Ukraine’s existential struggle? If Eldridge Colby was pulling strings, who pulls his?
Maybe if Sen. Wicker were really on the job at the committee, he could call Hegseth in for some under-oath questions such as: “Did the president tell you to halt weapons shipments to Ukraine?” “Did he chew you out the last two times you did that?” “Did Eldridge Colby tell you to halt shipments?” Of course, Hegseth is never so combative, so into strutting as the warrior’s warrior, as when he’s dodging questions from Congress.
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