{"id":70196,"date":"2025-01-28T18:05:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T18:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2025\/01\/28\/in-trumps-pentagon-a-growing-skepticism-about-us-military-power\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:18:09","slug":"in-trumps-pentagon-a-growing-skepticism-about-us-military-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/pentagon\/2025\/01\/28\/in-trumps-pentagon-a-growing-skepticism-about-us-military-power\/","title":{"rendered":"In Trump\u2019s Pentagon, a growing skepticism about US military power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To understand how the second Trump administration may use the U.S. military, the best clues aren\u2019t written in the pages of Foreign Affairs or sussed out during panel discussions at Washington think tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, they\u2019re found in the chatter on X, formerly Twitter, where a handful of officials now entering top positions in the Pentagon have posted their takes on defense policy for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This group is highly confident, highly online and scornful of Washington\u2019s foreign policy consensus. It thinks America\u2019s military is overstretched in wasteful areas of the world, like Europe and the Middle East. And rather than call for a bigger defense budget alone, its members argue the United States should do less \u2014 or reprioritize its scarce resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur self-righteous establishment has led us to the brink of World War III, a weakened and overstretched military and deindustrialization. We desperately need a change,\u201d tweeted Elbridge Colby<\/a>, one of the group\u2019s leaders, now nominated to lead Pentagon policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call it the rise of the anti-Vulcans, a clique of similarly assured foreign policy wonks in the George W. Bush administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new group refers to itself as \u201crestrainers\u201d or the slightly different school of \u201cprioritizers\u201d and often uses the Bush administration as a foil. Now helping lead Pentagon affairs from Asia to the Middle East, the officials signify a break in Republican foreign policy, from a party that called for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to one far more skeptical of using the military abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concentrating so many of these officials in the Pentagon will almost certainly set up fights with more hawkish members of the administration at the State Department and National Security Council. Which group wins, analysts and administration officials said, could spell radical change for how the U.S. uses its military power, and where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re clearly seeing a struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican party,\u201d said Brad Bowman, who studies defense policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways, the rise of the Pentagon\u2019s new group of leaders traces the arc of America\u2019s foreign policy over the last 30 years. Many are relatively young, in their 30s and 40s, much like Pete Hegseth, the Fox News personality and former Army officer sworn in Saturday as secretary of defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than watch America triumph over the Soviet Union in the 1990s, they came of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Several of them, such as Hegseth or Vice President JD Vance, even served in those wars.) The result, for some, has been a pressing sense of American decline, especially relative to a more powerful, more assertive China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you grew up with Apollo missions, you believe we can \u2018do anything.\u2019 But for those shaped by Iraq, Afghanistan and the \u201808 [financial] crisis the view\u2019s a bit more jaded,\u201d posted Vivek Ramaswamy<\/a>, a Republican adviser and presidential candidate, after debating Trump\u2019s former National Security Adviser John Bolton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colby pointed to this exchange while discussing his own views in a podcast late last year<\/a>, where he critiqued more establishment figures like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who wasn\u2019t invited back into the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Colby and two of his proteges \u2014 Austin Dahmer and Alex Velez-Green, both now temporarily helming top policy roles in the Pentagon \u2014 cast the U.S. as a strained, distracted superpower. To avoid losing a conflict with China, they argue, America needs to redirect its military resources from supporting Ukraine and the Middle East and let its allies in both regions shoulder a heavier load.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a sharp pivot from traditional Republican policy, especially in Congress. Lawmakers like Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, agree the military is too weak to accomplish its expansive goals. But they argue the best remedy is higher defense spending \u2014 close to the 5% of GDP that Trump has said European allies should budget.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A separate but related group of \u201crestrainers\u201d argues that, in today\u2019s world, the U.S. military should do less abroad regardless of its strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2023 essay<\/a>, Dan Caldwell, an adviser to the Trump Pentagon\u2019s transition team, wrote the U.S. should dramatically reduce its military presence in Europe and withdraw nearly all its forces from Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael DiMino, a former colleague of Caldwell at Defense Priorities \u2014 a think tank that advocates restraint \u2014 now runs the Pentagon\u2019s Middle East policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics of this group argue it exaggerates America\u2019s constraints and has too narrow a view of the country\u2019s interests abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s alarming that people can clear vetting after claiming U.S. interests in the Middle East are \u2018minimal to nonexistent,\u2019\u201d Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense, told Jewish Insider for a story on DiMino.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of their presence in the Defense Department \u2014 already famous for its inertia \u2014 the restrainers can\u2019t reshape American national security policy without the White House\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Pentagon\u2019s not a solitary actor,\u201d said Richard Fontaine, head of the Center for a New American Security think tank, and a former colleague of Colby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the top two officials at the department, Hegseth and Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire investor nominated to be the Pentagon\u2019s deputy secretary, are unknown quantities when it comes to implementing national security policy. Officials across Washington are now trying to shape their views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence of this ambiguity can be found in the president\u2019s preferred national security slogan: \u201cpeace through strength.\u201d<\/a> Ronald Reagan used the same line to justify a massive defense buildup in the 1980s. Now, officials across the Republican party are saying it can mean everything from higher defense spending<\/a> to an American military more involved in immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Colby, Caldwell and the officials who share their arguments, defining the slogan on their terms will take more than convincing other parts of the U.S. government. It will also take a sustained effort in the face of a chaotic, dangerous world. Even more peaceful times have upended the priorities of past administrations pledging drastic change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the campaign trail in 2000, George W. Bush argued the U.S. shouldn\u2019t entangle itself in foreign wars that were far from the country\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe we\u2019re overextended in too many places,\u201d Bush said of the military while debating Vice President Al Gore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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