Hegseth had his first real test on the world stage yesterday.  It went about as well as his axe throwing career.

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— Pat Ryan (@pkryan.bsky.social) February 13, 2025 at 5:50 PM

Hegseth has attacked military leadership’s efforts to diversify the ranks, recently saying that the notion that “diversity is our strength” is the “single dumbest phrase in military history.”

He returned to this theme during his recent trip to the NATO summit in Brussels, telling reporters that “we can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can't shoot values.”

Hegseth at NATO summit: "We can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can't shoot values."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 13, 2025 at 3:59 PM

Trump has also embraced this “tough guy” ethos for much of his time in the public sphere, from his recently released glowering official portrait—compared to the traditional portraits of former Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even George W. Bush—to his repeated arguments that Americans need to be “tough.”

Trump even derided the purported weakness of the entire country with the ableist title of his 2015 book, “Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again.”

While campaigning for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, Obama poked fun at Trump and other Republicans for embracing “the fake macho thing.”

But this has been an issue among Republicans predating Trump.

Bush infamously dressed up in a flight suit and landed an aircraft carrier to prematurely—and incorrectly—declare victory in the Iraq War while his father, George H.W. Bush, claimed that victory in the first Gulf War meant that the United States “kicked the Vietnam syndrome.”

But that isn’t how modern superpowers win wars. Rather, it’s intelligence, coalition building, and strategic planning that end conflicts.

In World War II, the Allied nations did not simply throw military might at the Axis powers in a pure test of “manly” strength. In fact, until the Allies put together a coherent plan of attack in response to German and Japanese aggression, it was the Axis that had more raw firepower.

One of the most vital breakthroughs of that conflict didn’t come from the “warfighters” that Hegseth goes on about, but by a team of dedicated codebreakers at Bletchley Park in England.

Mathematician Alan Turing led the team that cracked the German “Enigma” code, which then allowed the forces on the ground to engage in a strategic fashion, leading to the liberation of Europe and victory in the war. Turing was gay and later persecuted by the British government for his sexual orientation despite his heroism, echoing the attacks on LGBTQ+ military service members that have been renewed by the Trump administration.

Modern military experts—not Fox News pundits—have studied the benefits of diversity in the armed forces, and unlike Hegseth, they know that it’s important.

Dartmouth College professor Jason Lyall analyzed the issue, which he wrote about in a 2020 article for the Washington Post.

“My research shows that inclusive armies fight harder, suffer lower rates of desertion and defection, and exhibit more creative problem-solving on complex battlefields than armies drawn from marginalized or repressed groups,” he wrote. “Victory on the battlefield over the past 200 years has usually gone to the most inclusive armies, not the largest or best-equipped ones. Inclusion, in other words, is good for military effectiveness.”

And despite Hegseth and Trump’s rhetoric, some of the most significant recent U.S. military victories and security advances have come under the leaders the right has attacked for insufficient masculinity.

Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, wasn’t caught because Bush donned his flight suit. Rather, he was apprehended and killed following Obama’s order in 2011.

Many believed that Ukraine would quickly fold when Russia invaded, but Biden stood behind Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Russia has been unable to triumph—though Trump is now pivoting away from that stance.

Conservatives like to talk tough, particularly when bolstering the image of straight, white men over women and ethnic minorities. But modern power is more often than not backed by strategic planning, diplomacy, and soft power. It’s what has been used by the United States and other nations in avoiding another calamity like the World Wars, which were tied to the notion that international conflicts were solely the domain of “warfighters.”

But figures like Hegseth and Trump are locked into the worldview that only people who look like them are legitimate, and everyone else must fall to the wayside. That has historically been the path that leads to unwinnable quagmires, claiming the lives of millions of innocent people.

History tells us that this time won’t be any different.