US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth meets with the National Guard at the Washington DC Armory, August 22, 2025. Photo courtesy Pete Hegseth/X.

“We became the woke department, but not any more,” said US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, “This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department… No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions, no more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”

In a speech to American generals and admirals last week, Hegseth laid out in the bluntest terms his vision of the culture that a successful military requires. What he seemed to mean by “social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage” was the following: first, that the US military had prioritized diversifying its membership and promoting women and people of colour and varied gender preferences at the expense of its core function of warfighting; and second, that the manner in which it had applied the laws of war had unreasonably bound the hands of America’s soldiers in combat.

Though Hegseth framed his diatribe in this consequentialist manner, one may doubt whether consequences were really the motivating factor. For Hegseth has been attacking diversity for years in contexts far removed from the military. As a student at Princeton, for instance, he wrote an article denouncing what he called the “gratuitous glorification of diversity,” and stating that, “I strive to defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity.”

This indicates a position based on ideology rather than consequences. And indeed, it is noticeable that in his speech last week, he provided no evidence to back up his claims that standards had been lowered in a way that harmed military effectiveness. A large section of his........

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