Dancing to World Power - When the Army Hops Like Young Elves

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has gotten the American military into shape, and he chose a method no one before him had apparently considered. Where generations of strategists thought about weapons, logistics, training, and the toughness of soldiers, a dance now seems to be enough, one that resembles the hopping elves on a cereal box. Anyone training this way clearly finds winning much easier. The effects of this hard hitting hopping program have likely reached Tehran by now. One only has to imagine the Revolutionary Guard crouching in their basements hoping the elves do not come for them. An army that jumps in formation spreads a kind of fear against which tanks and missiles seem almost unnecessary.

At this point, a sober thought is worth considering. Strength and the appearance of strength are not the same thing, even if at first glance they can look almost identical. Anyone who truly wants to inspire fear must be able to provide the reason for that fear, and no amount of jumping in the world replaces what an army is actually capable of in a real conflict. Deterrence that consists only of an image of competence and not of the thing itself lasts exactly as long as nobody tests it. Hegseth, who prefers to be called Secretary of War rather than Secretary of Defense, has poured all of his experience into this project. Before commanding the armed forces, he hosted morning television on Fox. Now it appears that the ability to keep an audience entertained before their first coffee transfers surprisingly smoothly into leading an army. What ratings were in the studio has become military capability in the department, and the transition seems to have come naturally to him.

And so America is once again a world power, if one follows the story being told, and it owes this to one man named Pete Hegseth. Time will tell whether the world agrees with that judgment or whether it has the impolite thought of examining something before believing it. Until then, the pleasant saying applies that a force that looks good has already won half the battle. The other, less pleasant saying, that the second half is decided in combat and not in a training video, is not something anyone seems eager to say at the moment.