SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — President Trump is the true heir to Ronald Reagan when it comes to championing the former president’s policy of “peace through strength,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Saturday.
Mr. Hegseth, in a major speech to the Reagan National Defense Forum, also defended the Trump administration’s deadly missile strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels, including a controversial secondary attack Sept. 2 that Mr. Hegseth said killed two “narco-terrorists.”
Speaking at the picturesque Reagan Presidential Library inside its Air Force One Pavilion where the late president’s Boeing 707 hangs from the ceiling, Mr. Hegseth criticized what he said is a generation of post-Cold War “neoconservatives” who “touted Reagan’s name, but didn’t govern like him.”
“This generation of self-proclaimed neo-Reaganites abandoned Reagan’s actual wise policies in favor of unchecked neoconservatism and economic globalism,” said Mr. Hegseth, who now uses the title secretary of War, a change not yet formally approved by Congress.
The neoconservatives dismantled the U.S. industrial base and shipped it overseas, he said. The defense and diplomacy actions “swore off the clear eyed, flexible realism of Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower,” Mr. Hegseth said.
Faux Reaganites, he said, instead set about trying to make the United States “the policeman, the protector, the arbiter of the whole world of democracy.” Cases like Afghanistan showed that not all people want democratic societies.
For U.S. allies, the defense secretary said neoconservative policies turned allies in Europe into dependent states that subsidized their defense with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
“The self-described neo-Reaganites sought global military hegemony under the auspices of peace through strength,” he said. “Instead, we got rudderless wars in the Middle East, land war in Europe, and the economic rise of China.”
Mr. Hegseth said he finds it remarkable that neoconservatives are allowed to speak in public, including on the same stage where he spoke.
The comment was a criticism of the library located on a scenic mountaintop that includes a museum and think tank.
Mr. Trump is restoring Reagan-style peace through strength that places a high priority on U.S. interests and the American people in ways that are practical and leave the country’s population and U.S. allies better off, the secretary said.
Like Reagan, Mr. Trump is willing to talk to rivals like Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Mr. Hegseth said.
Part of following the Reagan policy of peace through strength means the Trump administration seeks leverage while negotiating with rivals, and U.S. military power is key to that strategy, he said.
“The War Department is the sword and the shield of peace through strength,” Mr. Hegseth said. “We are the strength department and we stand ready to wield that sword as President Trump directs.”
Mr. Hegseth criticized the Biden administration and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for producing what Mr. Hegseth said is “war through weakness. He cited as an example the Ukraine-Russia war that began on the previous administration’s watch.
The American and Israeli bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June was an example of Mr. Trump’s Reagan-style peace through strength, he said.
The operation code-named “Midnight Hammer,” was modeled on the doctrine espoused by Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger — decisive focus applied in a clear-eyed way that advances U.S. interests without causing a protracted war, Mr. Hegseth said.
The Trump administration’s approach to defense avoids the neoconservative distractions Mr. Hegseth described as interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, and woke, moralizing and feckless nation building.
“We will instead put our nation’s practical, concrete interests first,” he said. “We will deter war. We will advance our interests. We will defend our people. Peace is our goal, and in service of that objective, we will always be ready to fight and win decisively if called upon as part of this mission.”
The Pentagon is adopting four lines of efforts, including defending the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere and secondly deterring war with China.
The approach to China was described by the secretary as “deterring China through strength, not confrontation.”
Two other efforts include prompting U.S. allies and partners to increase defense burden sharing to reduce costs for American military commitments. Last is rebuilding the U.S. industrial base.
On China, the secretary said the administration’s policy is deterrence from a position of national strength. Mr. Hegseth said relations with Beijing are “better and stronger than they’ve been in many years.”
The administration is seeking a stable peace, fair trade and respectful relations with the emerging communist superpower.
A breakthrough in trade negotiations after a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi last month created what Mr. Hegseth said is a strong pathway to better ties that could be improved with mutual summits in 2026 of the two leaders.
“The War Department is committed to the same approach, opening a wider range of military-to-military communications with the People’s Liberation Army aimed at deconfliction and deescalation,” he said.
The new policy is called “flexible realism, not naivete,” he said, It’s an effort that is aimed at creating a balance that will allow peace to prevail with free trade.
“That’s the world that we seek in the Indo-Pacific, and that is what our approach is designed to produce,” Mr. Hegseth said. “We will be strong, but not unnecessarily confrontational. To quote another great Republican president, we will speak softly and carry a big stick.”
The administration does not seek to dominate or humiliate China or change the fragile status quo in the Taiwan Strait, he said, adding that U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific are significant but “scoped and reasonable.”
“This includes the ability for us, along with allies, to be postured strongly enough in the Indo-Pacific to balance China’s growing power,” he said.
“This is what we mean by deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, not dominating China, but rather ensuring they do not have the ability to dominate us or our allies … It’s our job to make sure Beijing sees unquestionable U.S. military strength that, if necessary, can back up our national interests, even as we make clear our peaceful intentions.”
As the U.S. is a Pacific power, China must respect longstanding American interests in the region and the Pentagon will maintain a clear-eyed approach to Beijing, he said.
Mr. Hegseth said U.S. military forces will maintain the capability to project power along the so-called first island chain stretching from Japan through the South China Sea where China is making sovereignty claims over international waters.
“That means being so strong that aggression is not even considered and that peace is preferred and preserved,” he said. “This is deterrence by denial.”
On the administration’s high profile military strikes on boats suspected of transporting illegal drugs, Mr. Hegseth said the days of “narco-terrorists” — designated foreign terrorist groups — operating freely close to U.S. shores are over.
“These narco-terrorists are the al Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al Qaeda,” he said. “We’re tracking them, we’re killing them, and we’ll keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics so lethal that they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.”
Regarding boat strikes on suspected cocaine shipments, Mr. Hegseth offered a detailed explanation regarding two Sept. 2 missile strikes on a suspected drug vessel that included a follow-up attack that killed two survivors.
The secretary had a warning for people working for a designated terrorist organization and attempting to bring drugs into the U.S.: “We will find you and we will sink you.”
Mr. Hegseth said he initially took direct responsibility for decisions to attack the boats before delegating the authority to military commanders.
Intelligence reports prior to all strikes detail where the boats originate, who is piloting them and what is aboard.
“At the top of all this, the president has designated these as terror organizations, poisoning and threatening the American people, making them a target, just like al Qaeda,” he said.
On the Sept. 2 strike, that Democrats have labeled a “war crime,” Mr. Hegseth said he was satisfied that all legal requirements were met before ordering the attacks.
“Yes. I saw the strike itself, which all of you have seen. It was probably 30 or 40 minutes,” he said, and then moved on because the rest was a “tactical operation” for the military.
“A couple hours later, I was told, ‘Hey, there had to be a re-attack because there were a couple folks who could still be in the fight. Access to radios. There was a link up point of another potential boat. Drugs were still there. They were actively interacting with them. Had to take that read.
“I said, ‘Roger, sounds good.’ From what I understood then and what I understand now, I fully support that strike. I would have made the same call myself.”
Mr. Hegseth said military officials involved in 20 years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere know that such restrikes of targets of combatants on the battlefield take place often.
“In this particular case, it was well within the authorities of Admiral Bradley, who’s an incredible American or American hero, and 22 or 23 strikes since have followed a similar protocol of ensuring you meet the criteria, the decision is not at my level anymore, and then we take the strike,” he said.
The secretary was referring to Adm. Frank M. Bradley, commander of the Special Operations Command, who is in charge of the counter-drug operations.
Mr. Hegseth said the Pentagon is current reviewing video of the Sept. 2 secondary strike to protect intelligence sources and methods before possibly releasing the video to the public.
