Order From Within – Pete Hegseth’s Power Test With America’s Generals

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, has thrown the American armed forces into a state of shock. On the minister’s orders, dozens of generals and admirals from around the world are to gather next week at a base in Virginia – at short notice, without any apparent reason. What sounds like a routine meeting in truth carries the character of a show of force. Four senior government officials confirmed the meeting, scheduled for September 30 in Quantico. No one has been able to explain why it is necessary to recall commanders from active theaters in the Middle East, Africa or Europe.

The order comes at a time when Hegseth is reshuffling the top ranks of the army like a chessboard. He has already fired more than a dozen top officers – including strikingly many women and members of minorities. General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was dismissed, as was Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to head the US Navy. General David Allvin, chief of the Air Force, and Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the US representative to the NATO military committee, also had to go. Officially, Hegseth justifies the dismissals with efficiency: he wants to reduce the number of four-star generals by 20 percent and cut the general officer corps by 10 percent overall. But behind the formula of “streamlining” lies a ruthless restructuring that deliberately pushes back ethnic diversity and institutional balance in the armed forces.

t the same time, a new defense doctrine paper is being prepared in Washington, the explosive power of which can hardly be overstated. The draft of the “National Defense Strategy” is already on Hegseth’s desk. It marks a radical departure from the decades-long priorities of American security policy. While previous administrations – Democrats as well as Republicans – treated China as the greatest strategic challenge, Hegseth is shifting the focus inward: homeland defense and securing the Western Hemisphere are to be placed at the top. In fact, evidence is mounting that Hegseth’s course change is based not only on internal directives but also on targeted influence from conservative think tanks. An internal nine-page interim memo that he signed bears the stamp “secret / no foreign national” and shows almost verbatim parallels to papers from the Heritage Foundation – proof of how closely politics and ideology are intertwined here. In parallel, there exists a memorandum from the Department of Defense dated May 2, 2025, which set in motion the development of the National Defense Strategy and clearly stipulated “America First” and “Peace Through Strength” as guiding principles, and that the draft places homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere above the previous focus on China and Russia, while Defense News emphasizes that China remains in view but in a shifted strategic framework. This picture is supplemented by comments in the very right wing conservative Washington Times, which interpret the new line as a return to an “America First” structure, and by analyses of the EU Institute for Security Studies, which, based on leaked interim documents, already notes an “assume risk” posture in Europe and the Middle East – a clear indication that Hegseth’s Pentagon is preparing a tectonic shift in the American security architecture.

This shift is not just a semantic emphasis. It has long since taken concrete form. Thousands of National Guard troops have been stationed in Los Angeles and Washington, officially to support the police. Several warships and F-35 fighter jets patrol the Caribbean, supposedly to intercept drug shipments. In international waters, the US Navy recently attacked a boat and killed eleven suspected members of a Venezuelan gang – an operation that sounded more like an extrajudicial execution than a regular military engagement. In addition, a “militarized zone” has been established on the border with Mexico, where soldiers are allowed to detain civilians – a task traditionally reserved for the police.

History will mark this September 2025 as a turning point. As the moment when the painstakingly constructed international legal order after World War II began to die. Not with a big bang, but with the silence of the decent while the unscrupulous murder. There are no drug packages floating in the Caribbean. The corpses of international law are floating there. And with them the hope that humanity learned from the catastrophes of the 20th century. Trump did not just kill fourteen people. He killed the idea that law is stronger than power.

What is sold as “reorientation” in truth means a militarization of domestic politics. The Pentagon now again calls itself the “Department of War” – a symbolic step that reveals the mindset of the new leadership. The US is not only withdrawing from international commitments, it is reversing the relationship between foreign and domestic security policy. In place of global alliance loyalty comes an obsession with national sovereignty, in place of international deterrence the militarization of streets in Los Angeles or the waters off Puerto Rico.

The invitation to Quantico is in this context more than an organizational detail. It forces the commanders who still bear responsibility in theaters of operations to return home – a process that senior officers describe as unprecedented. Security concerns associated with such a concentration of decision-makers in one place are being ignored. Instead, the impression arises of a purge, a summons under suspicion. It seems as if Hegseth not only wants to inform the generals but also to bring them into line, intimidate them, control them.

The consequences reach far beyond the borders of the US. Allies in Europe and Asia are faced with an America that questions the “old order” of joint deterrence. In confidential circles there is already talk of a “departure of the US from its role as guarantor of stability.” “The old, trusted US promises are suddenly in doubt,” reads an internal memo from a NATO diplomat. Pete Hegseth, the television commentator, book author and right wing culture warrior, acts in the Pentagon like a man on a mission. He breaks with conventions, he disempowers his critics, he replaces long-proven doctrines with national battle cries. But in this radicalism lies a dangerous contradiction: while he claims to make the “defense of the nation” the top priority, he weakens the international network that has stabilized America’s security for decades. He isolates the US by throwing it back on itself.

So what will happen in Quantico? Officially it is only said that the minister wants to “address his top military leaders.” But the context suggests it will be more: a kind of loyalty test, a turning point, perhaps even the beginning of a new hierarchy in the American military. For the officers who must appear there, it will be a moment of decision: will they submit to a political course that undermines the institutions of their own armed forces? Or will they offer silent resistance, knowing full well that even the slightest deviation ends their careers? America’s army stands at a crossroads. The dismissals, the purges, the strategic reorientation – all this forms the picture of a defense secretary who no longer sees the armed forces as an international protective power but as a domestic tool. A tool that is to strike not only at the borders but also within. For the world it is a signal of mistrust, for the US itself a descent into uncertain territory. Quantico will not just be a meeting – it will be a signal that American democracy is placing its army at the service of a policy that no longer creates security but fear.