Donald Trump continues to announce the names of his appointees in the future administration. Most of them are in the ear of experts one way or another, but the candidacy of Pete Hegseth for the post of Secretary of Defense has caused heated discussions and even protests: aman from the media business, without any managerial experience. However, the real reason for concern lies in the goal that Trump has set for the new head of the Pentagon. About the plans of the 47th President of the United States - in the material "Izvestia".
Without the bottom
The primary tasks that Trump has set for his associates are audit, optimization and new budgeting rules. The Republican team realizes that the level of spending and its efficiency do not stand up to any criticism. Total defense spending in the FY 2024 budget is more than half of all spending - $886 billion.
As if confirming Trump's determination to purge personnel, the Pentagon failed its seventh consecutive audit. The audit, the report of which the Pentagon released on November 15, was conducted by 1,700 independent auditors. The event cost the agency $178 million and revealed 28 material weaknesses, two significant deficiencies, six instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations, contracts and grant agreements. It is noteworthy that U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael McCord, who is responsible for financial discipline in the agency, telling at a briefing about the audit results, said that such results are "not a surprise at all."
The U.S. Defense Department has $4.1 trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in liabilities. The level of internal controls at the Pentagon is such that officials once again admit that it is impossible to track transactions worth astronomical sums. This time we are talking about at least $2 trillion.
In addition, over the past two decades, Arlington has repeatedly reported "losses" of impressive sums allocated by Congress for various projects. In July, for example, the Pentagon discovered "errors" in financial documents to the tune of $2 billion, as a result of which the amount of ammunition and equipment sent to Ukraine rose to $8.2 billion on paper.
At the same time, the defense capability of the American army, according to the Republicans, continues to decline. First of all, we are talking about the technological lag, which seemed impossible 20 years ago. Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for Defense Secretary, has repeatedly stated that the US Armed Forces cannot stand up not only to the Russian, but also to the Chinese army - the most important opponents of the United States in accordance with the US National Security Strategy. "15 hypersonic missiles can destroy 10 of our aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of a conflict," Hegseth said in a recent interview.
Trump and his hoonweebies
However, the Trumpists question not so much the effectiveness of the expenditures made, but the competence and honesty of those who approved them. Moreover, the same people will be held responsible for military failures - the costly flight from Afghanistan or other unsuccessful operations abroad. NBC reports that Trump's staff is already preparing the relevant lists.
But what is probably even more important at this point is that those who failed to show proper loyalty to Trump at a time when he was counting on it will be punished, emphasizes Vladimir Vasiliev, a senior fellow at the Institute of the United States and Canada.
- Those responsible for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan may well go on trial or be quietly kicked out of the army in disgrace. The most important thing is the removal of people who got their positions by DEI quotas, such as Charles Brown (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. - Izvestia) and Lisa Franchetti (Chief of Naval Operations in this committee. - Izvestia). The officer corps in the U.S. is rotten. There are a lot of parquet generals, people who are absolutely incompetent in their business, who are more engaged in politics than in their direct duties. Trump remembers how the Pentagon leadership let him down in his first term, and its then head, Mark Esper, a Trump appointee, rejected the idea of using Army units in suppressing BLM actions. And later we saw how the top of the Army did not support Trump after the events of January 6, 2021," recalls the Izvestia interlocutor.
Another crucial aspect is the leftist agenda promoted by the Democrats, which included not only the ideological treatment of the cadre, but also its renewal through a special quota system. Under the DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) system, which is widespread in the United States, appointments to senior positions in the military and ministries were made on the basis of gender, race, and sexual orientation.
The Democrats have done a lot to turn the U.S. Army into a kind of "patsy troops," says Vladimir Vasiliev, a senior fellow at the Institute of the United States and Canada.
- I think this was undertaken in order to eventually use it as an instrument of domestic political struggle. Now Trump is probably planning to do something similar, but in his own way. First, however, it is necessary to conduct a large-scale personnel purge," the expert points out.
Trump and his team of young and loyal comrades are very frightening for the American bureaucracy. Right-wing conservative resources write about a "state of panic" in the Pentagon and hasty attempts to seize documents and any other information about the implementation of the "rainbow" and racial-gender agenda.
Pete Hegseth has made no secret of his intentions to "purge" the ranks of anyone he believes has degraded the U.S. military to its current state. "I've talked to dozens of men and women now serving in the armed forces, and I've taken into account my own experience, and they all say, 'This is not even remotely like the armed forces we used to have.' Once the emphasis was on bringing out the best, on maximizing striking action; now we have a social experiment: the commanders just want to avoid hurting anyone, standards are lowered, and people are not held accountable. It can't go on like this," he wrote in his recently published book, "Wars Against Warriors." Hegseth is as loyal to Trump as possible, and this is his main advantage, emphasizes Kirill Benediktov, an Americanist and author of a political biography of Donald Trump.
- The first Pentagon chief after Trump's election to his first term, James (Mad Dog) Mattis, subsequently failed his boss on numerous occasions. This concerned Trump's policies both at home and abroad, such as the story of free missile defense systems delivered to South Korea (Trump insisted on selling them). Mattis' replacement, Mark Esper, literally betrayed Trump during the BLM protests when he refused to use the army against the rioters. So the importance of Hegseth is that he has never once given any reason to question his loyalty. Hegseth hates the leftist ideology of "wokism" and has made no secret of his plans if his nomination is confirmed by the Senate, Benedictoff notes.
Illegal with illegals
If opinion polls are to be believed, illegal immigration is the most important issue for American voters. Over the past few months, Republicans have proposed variously grandiose options for its solution. However, whichever scenario is ultimately chosen, it will require a critical strain of justice, law enforcement (where Trump plans equally revolutionary changes) and, of course, defense.
It's not just a matter of stemming the flow of illegal migration, but also deporting everyone who is in the US illegally. According to various estimates, this ranges from 6.5 million to 20 million people. In the history of the United States, the government has repeatedly resorted to similar measures, but never even approached such a scale.
It would be impossible to carry out such an operation with the National Guard and without a national emergency. And this almost certainly means the need to redeploy large army formations. And, in all likelihood, from abroad as well. At the moment, about 160,000 American soldiers and officers are serving outside the country at 716 installations in 159 countries. It's too expensive and ineffective, the Trumpists believe. Regardless of the unpredictable humanitarian consequences, this operation will require enormous expenditures, some of which are supposed to be offset by a massive streamlining of the bureaucracy.
There is also no 100 percent clarity on what Trump and his associates call the war on drug cartels. Against the backdrop of the ongoing "fentanyl epidemic" in the U.S., the American right-wing conservatives are making increasingly bold proposals for solutions to the problem. At the beginning of 2023, Trump promised to use "all necessary military means, including the U.S. Navy" to conduct an operation directly in Mexico, where the drug shipments come from. Already on the campaign trail, he repeated his thesis in ultimatum form. When asked by Fox News if he was considering strikes against drug cartels, Trump answered in the affirmative. "Mexico is going to have to settle this very quickly or the answer will be unequivocal," he said.
But even then, the Pentagon will have to ensure a massive and very costly redeployment of forces. And Hegseth, unlike his predecessors, will fulfill the president's order, Kirill Benediktov notes.
- Redeployment is indeed implied. In South Korea, the American contingent reaches almost 25,000 people. If the task of deporting illegal aliens and even more so the potential war with Mexican cartels will be set, I am sure: Hegseth will take under his visor and go to fulfill, - shared the expert.
Remember everything
Trump has not forgotten how the top Pentagon officials successfully sabotaged his initiative to use the army against BLM, and afterward - actually betrayed in January 2021. In the current environment, where Democrats will join forces and counter Trumpists at the local and federal levels in a variety of ways, the 47th president obviously envisions negative domestic scenarios developing. Simply put, this time Trump is preparing to use the military on U.S. soil. This has never happened in the country's history, but under certain circumstances it is quite possible, notes Vladimir Vasiliev.
- Army units have never been used inside the country, which means that they will have to be redeployed from outside the country to be used as a police force. Such an operation would cost tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. That's exactly what Hegseth is designed to do. Another important detail: the position of the Democratic states, which promise to consolidate and prevent the deportation of illegals," the expert emphasizes.
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