Power struggles in Washington DC are nothing new. The US capital is a one-industry town, and that industry is the politics of the single most powerful government in the world – so it is hardly a shock that it attracts ferociously ambitious people, nor that such people occasionally clash.
Against that backdrop, reports that the Secretary of the Army. Daniel Driscoll – a veteran who served in the Iraq War – is to step down from his role after clashing with Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, seem almost normal, when compared to the usual antics of the Trump administration.
Driscoll is believed to owe his job to a long-standing friendship with Vice President JD Vance – both men are part of tech-industry-related social networks organised in part by Palantir founder Peter Thiel – and has been staunchly in favour of modernising the US military to use tactics derived from the battlefields of Ukraine.
Hegseth’s priorities, meanwhile, have generally been elsewhere. He has focused on rules around soldiers shaving their beards, the introduction of testosterone testing for troops, blocking the promotion of numerous women and soldiers of colour and summoning senior officers from around the world to tell them the US military would now require the “highest male standards”.
US cabinet secretaries often mistrust senior officials who have a power base independent of their own, and with his direct line to Vance and other senior figures in the White House, Driscoll was exactly that – and disagreements between him and Hegseth had made their way into the media on more than one occasion.
Still, if Driscoll was the only high-profile departure in the ranks around Hegseth, this might just be yet another example of DC power plays at work. But the reality is that the top of the Pentagon is starting to have the kind of staff turnover more commonly associated with a failing bar. One or two senior departures look like cleaning house. More than that looks like carelessness. What has happened around Hegseth appears to be an exodus.
Early chaos around the self-titled “Secretary of War” as he made the transition from weekend Fox News host to the leader of the world’s most powerful military saw the departures of his chief of staff, his deputy, a senior adviser and a senior Pentagon spokesman. The Secretary of the Navy – a peer of Driscoll – abruptly departed in April this year.
Hegseth’s his wife, Jennifer, seen here with the President and her husband, is playing an increasingly influential role in affairs of military strategy and defence (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP)The mayhem hasn’t been restricted to the civilians within the Pentagon – those in uniform might even have experienced greater turmoil. Within Hegseth’s first three months, he had fired the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – America’s highest-ranking military officer – alongside the chief of naval operations and many of the military’s most senior lawyers. The head of US cyber command was summarily removed without explanation.
That initial flood turned into a steady trickle: senior officers, including the chief of staff of the air force, were abruptly removed without explanation or retired early, often with several years left to run on their terms of service. Beyond that, Hegseth has blocked the promotions of dozens of senior officers – an unprecedented move by a defence secretary, which has left the US military short of experienced officers to fill its top ranks.
The US is currently trying to end a complex war in the Middle East against Iran, which has drawn in almost every country in the region and led to the near blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil would usually pass.
At the same time, it is trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia – ending a shooting war in Europe – and between Israel and Hamas. The US also faces having to restock its key strategic missiles and interceptors, which have been depleted by more than two-thirds, and which would be vital for any future conflict between the US and Russia or China.
The defence chief – Hegseth himself – is central to all of these goals, and yet the team around him is in constant turmoil. Almost all of the joint chiefs are new in post, the army and navy secretary roles are in turmoil, and Hegseth’s own team of advisers has been in churn.
Thankfully, Hegseth seems to have one voice upon which he can rely: his wife Jennifer, who he met when she worked as a producer on his Fox News show, where she eventually rose to become a vice president.
Jennifer Hegseth has attended meetings with senators, sat in on Hegseth’s meeting with the UK’s then-defence secretary John Healey and reportedly weighs in on sensitive matters of military strategy.
Driscoll’s exit might just be the latest in a long line of departures, but it serves as a reminder of how the Department of Defence operates in Donald Trump’s second term. Where once the Pentagon was full of veterans and professionals, some fear the world’s most powerful military is currently being run by a Fox News daytime anchor and his wife.
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