The Dress Rehearsal for the Culture War: How Hegseth Politically Reshapes the US Military - and Trump Exhorts His Generals

It was a power demonstration with prior announcement. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had hundreds of the highest-ranking officers of the United States flown in on Tuesday to dictate to them - personally, without intermediaries, without diplomatic polish - the new course. An end to “political correctness,” an end to “woke culture,” an end to everything that in his eyes weakens the troops. From now on “gender-neutral” standards will apply, which are normalized to a male performance level; the disciplinary code will be loosened; protective mechanisms against harassment will be rolled back. Whoever does not support this should “do the honorable thing and resign.” The sentence did not fall by the wayside. It was the message. Trump also made it unmistakably clear that day that he does not see the army only as a shield against external threats, but as an instrument inside the country - against migrants, against crime, against political opponents. When he summarily declares “dangerous cities” under Democratic leadership to be training grounds for soldiers and announces deployments in Chicago, a logic is revealed that merges military power and domestic disciplining. It is less the defense of the nation than the militarization of social conflicts - a threat that penetrates deep into democratic substance.

Hegseth used the stage to serve up an entire tableau of enemies: from previous fitness and appearance standards to environmental regulations to transgender soldiers. What previous administrations understood as strength - diversity, inclusion, verifiable rules - he declared an “insane false claim.” He mocked DEI requirements and LGBTQ guidelines, saying that the armed forces had been told that “women and men are the same, or men who thought they were women are completely normal.” And he set a tone that does not aim at balance but at humiliation: from now on every member of the Joint Force will be subject to strict height and weight requirements; “it is tiring to see fat soldiers in combat formations, actually in any formation.” In addition, new battlefield tests are to be introduced, modeled on Army expert tests and Marine combat fitness. What the troops understand as their mission - national defense in the 21st century - is reduced to the image of a box made of steel and will.

At the same time Hegseth announced a radical cure for the Pentagon inspector. The Inspector General had been “weaponized,” that is, politically instrumentalized, so the procedure would be “reset.” He baptized the course “no more walking on eggshells.” - no more tiptoeing. What is piquant is not only the sound, but the context: while the oversight body is conducting an ongoing review of Hegseth’s environment and the use of encrypted Signal chats, the secretary declares war on oversight. In the future, he promised, anonymous and in his view “reckless” submissions would be treated differently. What compliance law requires in the language of due diligence is downgraded to a disruptive factor in the language of party politics.

This ideological wrecking ball was not limited to the secretary. Shortly afterwards the president appeared before the generals and admirals - an auditorium that in American democracy avoids demonstrative partisanship and cultivates its political neutrality. Trump played his repertoire, but he played it before an unusually silent backdrop. No chants, no rewarding laughter, no stadium measure of applause. The military leadership sat, as is tradition, motionless and stony. Trump, however, meandered through his standards: he complained about Joe Biden’s autopen signatures, lamented that he would probably not receive a Nobel Peace Prize, raved about tariffs that he loves, and fantasized aloud about new battleships - a weapons system that experts have considered obsolete for decades. “Some say that is old technology,” he said. “I don’t know, I don’t believe that when you look at those guns.”

Between the culture-war mantras, world politics appeared as a punch line. When Trump mentioned his planned missile defense system “Golden Dome,” with which the US is to be protected, “Canada” came to his mind. Ottawa had asked whether it would also be protected. His answer, sold as a punch line, was a political threat in the guise of a joke: “Just become our 51st state, then you get it for free.” At the beginning of the year he had already put pressure on Canada with the tariff club. Ottawa made it clear: the country will not join the United States. That the president plants such pinpricks in front of the top military is no slip, but method - foreign and trade policy become the backdrop of a domestic loyalty test.

Pete Hegseth called hundreds of America’s highest-ranking military leaders from all over the world to a conference to overwhelm them with tirades about DEI and the “gender delusion.” It is not about keeping America safe. No more dudes in dresses. No more worship of climate change … we are through with this shit.

Hegseth’s rhetoric lowered the bar once again below the floor of objectivity. “No more dudes in dresses. No more worship of climate change … we are through with this shit.” - that was the subtext, vulgar and deliberately uninhibited. This is not a catalog of administrative reforms, this is the transformation of the Department of Defense into a stage for the culture war. The shift of fitness norms to a male-coded ideal, the devaluation of minority rights, the announcement of loosening disciplinary rules and weakening protective mechanisms against harassment - all this does not aim at readiness, but at selection along ideological lines. It sends a clear signal to women, to trans and non-binary soldiers, to all who understand service as a contract between individual and state: your rights are negotiable if they stand in the way of the new dogma.

The actual core message to the assembled officers, however, was simple and total: “We are a team. I stand by you, I support you, I have your back 100 percent. You will not see me waver even a little.” Added to that the casting formula, that one sees here “incredible people,” straight from “central casting.” It is the language of a boss who understands loyalty as a one-way street and reduces the institutional pluralism that the military embodies by constitution to obedience. Whoever does not clap is suspect. Whoever voices contradiction should go.

The staging of the “strong state” lives on two crowbars. The first is the devaluation of rule-of-law control. Whoever thins out the Inspector General process in his own house while being the subject of reviews himself does not show efficiency but fear of transparency. The second is the personalization of the nation. When Trump says that the refusal of a Nobel Prize would be “a great insult to our country,” then a president is speaking who confuses the “we” with the “I” and reinterprets international awards as a yardstick of domestic power fabrication. The sentence “I don’t want the prize, I want the country to get it” - only to immediately emphasize that he himself should actually receive it - is not a modesty cliché but the pattern.

That these messages were delivered before an audience that traditionally does not cheer is no obstacle but calculation. The silent hall becomes the screen onto which a play is projected that is produced for other target groups: his own base, the culture warriors on the congressional benches, the influencers who translate every taboo break into meme readiness in ten seconds. The armed forces, which in recent years have recruited at the margins of society, form the backdrop for this. When the top political leadership tells them they are too diverse, too soft, too “woke,” then that is not management feedback but the attempt to turn the command structure into an ideological filter.

One can misunderstand this hour as an administrative act: new tests, new tables, new slogans. In fact we are witnessing the attempt to build from defense policy a stage for loyalty tests in which legal protection, minority rights and independent oversight are considered luxury problems. The price for this is not paid in headlines but in the units where trust evaporates and in which those who need protection learn that the state humiliates them if it serves the narrative. Female soldiers and male soldiers are not props in a culture war act. Whoever makes them into that does not weaken “woke culture” but the operational capability, the morale and the integrity of the armed forces.

At the end of this conference there is no modernized military but a threat: the mission that is written in the constitution is bent until it fits into a talk show. Hegseth commands that whoever objects should leave. Trump promises he will never waver. It is the logic of a movement that confuses strength with harshness and responsibility with party loyalty. Whoever takes that seriously recognizes the core: there is no leadership here, here things are pushed - turning the institution into a tool, the law into a minor matter, the army into a resonance chamber. That is exactly what does not make a country safer but more vulnerable.