In a striking speech this week, Secretary Pete Hegseth — now head of the newly renamed Department of War — addressed a rare gathering of top military officials in Quantico, Virginia. He laid out his vision for reform and announced directives aimed at restoring the fighting spirit of the U.S. armed forces.
Hegseth began by explaining why the Department of Defense has once again become the Department of War. “To ensure peace, we must prepare for war,” he said, reviving the older and more honest title abandoned in 1948.
Circumstances change, and tactics must adapt. But adaptation should always sharpen lethality, not serve social experiments.
That explanation drew from the Roman writer Vegetius, who coined the maxim si vis pacem, para bellum — if you want peace, prepare for war. But Hegseth’s reasoning also echoes St. Augustine, the Christian bishop whose writings helped shape just war theory.
In a letter written in 418 A.D. to the Roman general Boniface, Augustine commended the nobility of military service. He reminded him — and us — that the proper object of war is peace.
“Peace should be the object of your desire,” Augustine wrote. “War should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained.”
He concluded with a hard truth for every soldier: “Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.”
Peace through strength
Though peace may be war’s ultimate goal, necessity requires militaries to pursue their purpose without hesitation: engage and destroy the enemy. Only with that assurance can a nation’s people live free and fully.
That is the mission Hegseth intends to restore. “From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win,” he said Tuesday.
In practice, that means reversing the U.S. military’s long drift toward an agenda of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This ideology, a hybrid of HR jargon and academic postmodernism, demands that “marginalized” groups be elevated into power regardless of merit.
Corporate America and universities may tolerate such illusions. The military cannot. A fighting force depends on unity and unflinching standards, not favoritism. When leaders promote based on identity instead of ability, when they lower fitness thresholds or soften training to accommodate politics, they weaken the institution tasked with defending the nation.
Even basic training, once the crucible that broke down civilians and forged soldiers, has been watered down. Risk aversion replaces rigor. Cosmetic rules are relaxed. Officers signal more concern with optics than with readiness. None of this produces warriors.
If the United States wants to remain the premier fighting force in the world, those trends must end. The alternative is a military built for press releases and photo ops, not for victory.
Two north stars
To begin reversing these trends, Hegseth offered two simple tests for every new policy: the “1990 test” and the “E-6 test.”
The 1990 test asks: What were the military standards in 1990, and if they changed, why? That baseline matters. Since then — arguably even earlier — political agendas crept in and steadily displaced common-sense practices. Policies that once kept the force lethal and focused have been diluted or discarded.
Hegseth acknowledged that modern battlefields evolve. Circumstances change, and tactics must adapt. But adaptation should always sharpen lethality, not serve social experiments. Policies that weaken cohesion or cater to fashionable causes betray the mission.
By holding today’s standards up against those of 1990, the military can begin identifying what was lost — and whether those losses made the force deadlier or merely more compliant with political fashions. The answer, in most cases, is obvious.
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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Image
The E-6 test asks a blunt question: Will this policy make the job of an E-6 easier or harder?
In the Army, an E-6 is a staff sergeant. In the infantry, that usually means a squad leader. A squad is the smallest real tactical unit — second only to the four-man fire team. It’s the squad leader who carries the burden of leadership where it matters most: training, maintenance, discipline, and, in combat, life-or-death decisions under fire.
So the E-6 test forces policymakers to think from the ground up. Will a new directive help the staff sergeant lead his squad more effectively, hold his soldiers accountable, and keep them lethal? Or will it mire him in distractions, paperwork, and politically driven nonsense?
In other words, the test measures policy by its effect on the sharp end of the spear. If it makes the staff sergeant’s mission harder, the policy has failed before it begins.
Long-overdue change
For too long, Washington has imposed policies without regard for the men who actually lead soldiers in the field. Often those policies made their jobs harder, not easier. The simple discipline of asking whether a change helps or hinders an E-6 restores the right focus: The military exists to fight and win wars. Nothing else.
War will never be pleasant, but it remains necessary. Peace and human flourishing require strength — an armed force capable of deterring aggressors and defeating enemies who would sow chaos and fear. That is the first duty of government: to ensure the military is as lethal and effective as possible in defense of the people.
Hegseth understands this. His reforms strip away the distractions of ideology and return attention to standards, readiness, and the hard truths of combat. As he reminded his audience, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton, true soldiers fight not because they hate what is in front of them, but because they love what’s behind them.
That truth, often forgotten in recent decades, is the cornerstone of a warrior ethos worth rebuilding — an ethos that can win wars, safeguard peace, and keep the republic secure.
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