[TT] Donald Trump has his toy soldiers now. His little men, lined up just so. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job is to promise the fat ones stay in the box.
Prior to his “State of the Force” speech at Quantico this week, Hegseth asked commanders to nominate service members who meet waist-to-height requirements, exhibit “impeccable” grooming, and demonstrate leadership and professional character. From the enormous American military, in other words, find him the shiny ones.
“As the president says to me,” Hegseth cackled at his playthings, “‘Pete, central casting. I want central casting.’ The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”
The chosen troops get a Pentagon tour and an opportunity to work out with Hegseth. Even tin soldiers were spared doing push-ups with the kid who owned them.
The joke would be merely another specimen of Washington weirdness if the stakes were not so high. Hegseth likes military readiness, but he especially likes its visible signs: haircuts, waistlines, and push-ups. Earlier he told senior officers he wanted “no more beardos” and “fat generals.”
There is something almost too perfect about Hegseth inspecting waistlines while artificial intelligence is learning to break into computer networks.
And this would merely be America’s problem if America were Freedonia, where the Marx Brothers beta-tested the Trump Administration as slapstick in “Duck Soup.” But much of the world still runs through systems the U.S. built, protects, or dominates: NATO, the dollar, global technology, intelligence networks, disease surveillance, and the diplomatic architecture that keeps heavily armed countries talking instead of shooting.
When confidence in those systems weakens, the cascade begins. Adversaries probe, allies hedge, investors reprice risk, middle powers cut side deals, and local leaders discover new reasons to ignore Washington. A little dysfunction can become a miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait, a cyberattack in Europe, or another dangerous afternoon over Syria.
Türkiye has a front-row seat for the slapstick, except Ankara can’t afford to laugh.
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