[[link removed]]

BULGING BICEPS DON’T WIN MODERN WARS  
[[link removed]]


 

Paul Krugman
October 1, 2025
Paul Krugman Substack [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Hegseth’s speech was vile. It was also stupid. _

A Ukrainian drone operator,

 

Why did Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary — he may call himself
secretary of war, but Congress has not, in fact, voted to change his
department’s name — summon 800 top generals and admirals to
Washington? I admit that I feared the worst — that he would demand
that they pledge personal fealty to Donald Trump. But no: They were
summoned to listen to a speech
[[link removed]] about
“lethality,” followed by a highly political speech by Trump
himself.

How do you achieve lethality, according to Hegseth? By telling the
military that it’s OK to engage in hazing, sexual abuse and bigotry
— he didn’t say that explicitly, but that was his clear message.
Also, war crimes are no big deal. And members of the military,
including the top brass, must shave their beards, lose weight and do
pullups.

Hegseth’s speech was morally vile. It was also, however, profoundly
stupid. Hegseth seems to have gotten his ideas about what an effective
military looks like by watching the movie _300_.

I am, of course, by no means a military expert myself. But I read and
talk to people who _are_ military experts, and think I have some
idea about how modern wars are fought. Furthermore, there’s a clear
family resemblance between Hegsethian stupidity about modern war and
Trumpian stupidity about economic policy. Modern nations don’t
achieve prosperity by emphasizing “manly” jobs; they don’t win
wars by having big biceps.

War still requires extraordinary courage from the men and women
engaged in combat — courage that, according to officers I’ve
spoken with, is rooted in a sense of honor, not swaggering machismo.
Combatants also have to be physically fit enough to endure incredible
hardship.

But they don’t have to look like bodybuilders — and anyway, only a
small fraction of a modern army engages directly in combat. These
days, war is conducted largely with machines and ranged weapons, and
most of an army’s personnel are employed, one way or another,
keeping those machines and weapons in action and providing the
intelligence that makes them effective. These noncombatants are every
bit as essential to victory as front-line troops.

Actually, this has been true for a long time, at least since World War
II. I very much doubt that Hegseth would consider the team led by Alan
Turing, which broke Germany’s Enigma code, or the group led
by Joseph Rochefort
[[link removed]],
which broke Japan’s naval code, warriors — even leaving aside the
fact that Turing was gay. Yet they contributed as much to victory as
any front-line soldier.

And the “warrior ethos” Hegseth touts is even less sufficient, on
its own, to win wars today.

We don’t have to speculate about what a 21st century war would look
like, because there’s ferocious, dare I say lethal, combat happening
in Ukraine as you read this.

Some readers may recall how impressive many politicians on the right
found Russia’s army before it tried to conquer Ukraine:

 
[A screenshot of a social media post</p> <p>AI-generated content may
be incorrect.]
[[link removed]]
 

But it turned out that the Russian army was much better at looking
tough than it was at actually waging war. All that non-woke
masculinity didn’t prevent Russia’s initial attempt to seize Kyiv
from becoming an epic disaster.

And while the war goes on, and on, and on, it’s now waged largely
with drones and cruise missiles, not well-groomed guys with six-pack
abs. As the military historian and analyst Phillips O’Brien wrote in
a recent Substack post
[[link removed]],
technology has turned large parts of the Ukraine battlefield into
“kill zones” — sort of like No Man’s Land in World War I, but
40 or more kilometers wide. Sending men into these zones, no matter
how tough they look, is just a way to throw their lives away.

The Ukrainians, although outnumbered, have held their own in this new
kind of war, not by being tougher than the Russians — although they
are awesomely, almost inconceivably tough — but by being smarter,
more flexible and more innovative, virtues I doubt loom large in
Hegseth’s concept of lethality.

But Hegseth and Trump, not surprisingly, have learned nothing from
this story. Here’s how O’Brien summarized it in a note
[[link removed]] yesterday:

 
[A screenshot of a social media post</p> <p>AI-generated content may
be incorrect.]
[[link removed]]
 

I’d add that a military rife with sexual abuse and bigotry isn’t
going to attract the best minds — many of which, although people
like Hegseth will never believe it, reside in female and nonwhite
bodies.

As I said, all of this is of a piece with Trumpian policy in other
domains. _Of course_ a regime that believes it can make America
great by defunding science and destroying higher education believes
that it can make our military more effective by making it prejudiced
and stupid.

The good news is that America’s officer corps _isn’t_ stupid, at
least not yet. The stony silence with which the assembled generals and
admirals greeted Hegseth’s and Trump’s rants was eloquent.

But you can now add the military to the list of great American
institutions that MAGA is, in effect, trying to destroy.

_Paul Krugman is a Professor, CUNY Grad Center, Nobel laureate and
former columnist, NY Times. Also, according to Donald Trump, a
“Deranged BUM.”_

* Pete Hegseth
[[link removed]]
* bigotry
[[link removed]]
* Ignorance
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]