Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s hearing offered a glimpse into the pro-militarist features of Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, and a firsthand look at the agreements and disagreements of a divided U.S. ruling class. 

As Pete Hegseth walked the floor before the Senate Armed Services Committee, a background chorus of “USA!” chants rang out from his supporters in the room. The committee’s Chairman, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, opened the day with inflated endorsements for the nominee.

Wicker prioritized the potential for military escalation with China – a position which Donald Trump escalated during his first administration. Joe Biden’s administration amplified Trump’s targeting of China by implementing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and computer chips, providing arms to Taiwan and by strengthening an alliance network in the region through both the America-Japan-South Korea trilateral pact and the less formal “Quad” alliance of Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. An “axis of aggressors” consisting of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea had emerged during the Biden administration, according to the Mississippi Senator. Wicker posited Hegseth as an ideal candidate — albeit “outside the box” — to spearhead a future military escalation with the aforementioned axis.

Describing the current era as “the most dangerous security environment since World War Two,” Wicker outlined the potentiality for “maximum danger” surrounding “great power competition,” which the remnants of the Biden Department of Defense is not prepared for.

The senior Senator from Mississippi stressed Hegseth’s “warrior ethos,” a term that Hegseth would bring up repeatedly during the hearing. While Hegseth never outright said what the “warrior ethos” is, it appears to include a combination of hyper masculinity, a dismissal of anything feminine, and a refuting of anything perceived to be “woke.” The “warrior ethos,” ultimately, seems to be guided by a desire for lethality, killing, and violence, and these desires may be influenced by Christian fundamentalism.

Hegseth’s opening address provided a frightening look under the hood of Donald Trump’s plan for the Pentagon. As if pulled directly from the screenplay of a Top Gun knockoff, Hegseth ranted about returning a “warrior culture” back to the Department of Defense. He emphasized lethality and war fighting as his, and Trump’s, focus du jour and stated that his job was simple: “returning the Pentagon back to war fighting.” Specifically, to restore the “warrior ethos”; rebuild the military and modernize nuclear capabilities to match foreign threats (presumably China); and reestablish deterrence to defend the “homeland, borders, and skies” while working with allies to deter “Communist China” in the Indo-Pacific.

During his opening statements, protestors, including anti-war veterans and the anti-war organization CODE PINK, interrupted Hegseth multiple times. One protestor called him a Christian Zionist (something he and Senator Tom Cotton would later bond over). Some time later, when speaking with Senator Cotton, Hegseth disturbingly said, “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”

From the Republican camp, the hearing progressed as one would expect. GOP senators switched back and forth from commending Hegseth’s religious faith, his commitment to “lethality” (a word which was uttered over two dozen times), and his military service. Some senators took their time to critique Biden’s woke military, like Senator Tommy Tuberville, who took time to chastise transgender bathrooms.

Others focused on naval ship building, expanding the nuclear program, and waging war on multiple fronts against the aforementioned “axis of aggressors”.

One Senator, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, presented the most interesting glimpse into the GOP’s objectives for the next Donald Trump administration. Like others, Sullivan fear mongered about “menacing moves” made by China and Russia in the Pacific Ocean. In addition to the standard cold warrior rhetoric, Sullivan elaborated a desire to militarize Alaska by positioning the Arctic as a crucial setting for any upcoming conflict with China. The Senator asked Hegseth if he would “reestablish deterrents in the Arctic and in the Indo-Pacific.” Hegseth, after pledging to do so, highlighted the significance of U.S. hegemonic control over Arctic shipping lanes.

Sullivan then went on to criticize Biden’s Navy Secretary for focussing too much on climate change and not enough on ship building. Hegseth vowed to never prioritize climate change in his Pentagon.

As the climate crisis is further exacerbated, causing ice to rapidly melt, the Arctic region will continue to emerge as a crucial source for energy and rare-earth minerals — which the U.S. capitalist class, once again represented by Donald Trump, is impulsively eager to expropriate, commodify, and convert into profit. 

From the Democratic Party side, questions followed a consistent trend of scolding and raised voices primarily focused on Pete Hegseth’s past comments on women in the U.S. military, his history of financial mismanagement of various veteran-based organizations, and accusations surrounding sexual and workplace misconduct.

None of the Democratic Party senators took umbrage with Hegseth’s commitment to entertain confrontation with China, and at times lectured him for not being up to the task of leading the most “lethal” military in the world. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, in particular, presented an outlandishly out of touch perspective when arguing against Hegseth’s misogynist views. Playing up the lethality of mothers, Gillibrand appeared seemingly obsessed with the notion that mothers are the ideal killing machines to be recruited for the military. Senator Gillibrand used the words “lethal” or “lethality” about a half dozen times during her seven-minute portion of the hearing.

The Democratic Party senators rarely, if ever, challenged the foreign policy plans stated by either Trump or Hegseth himself. In fact, their goals for the Pentagon appeared mostly in lockstep with that of the incoming administration, though some Democratic Party senators did express displeasure with Trump’s position on the U.S. role in the Ukraine proxy war. It was abundantly clear that the Democratic Party shares a desire for military build up with their Republican counterparts. These aspirations have arisen at a time in which the U.S. is facing a decline in its decades-long period of global hegemony — a crisis for the U.S. ruling class that is in part driven by both Chinese economic and military growth and a decline in U.S. military recruitment. Where the political class diverges is on strategy: neither party seems keen on asking whether or not military expansion is necessary or even desirable. 

As we have seen for over one hundred years, imperialist policies have benefited the capitalist class. However, the imperialist stage of capitalist development has weakened the global working class, subjugated it to abject inequality, stripped its most vulnerable members of basic human rights, and forced us all into the crosshairs of a climate crisis that, because of the capitalist system, is developing rapidly and furiously.

We, the diverse and multi-racial working class, must refuse to go along with the imperialist schemes of the capitalist class. We must rid ourselves of the crushing malaise that we’ve all come to know during the current epoch of imperialism. When asked “what is to be done?”, our answers lie within a collective struggle for socialism that is led with the working class itself at the forefront. The fight against imperialism — whether represented by Trump or Biden, or by Pete Hegseth or Lloyd J. Austin — is central to this fight.