Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump surveyed his top military commanders about the possibility of war with Iran. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine urged restraint, warning that escalating hostilities could prompt Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz. But Pete Hegseth, Trump's self-styled "Secretary of War," was eager for battle.
"Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up," Trump recalled at a press event. "And you said, 'Let's do it, because you can't let them have a nuclear weapon.'"
Americans join the military for many reasons: service, stability, community. For Hegseth, a thirst for martial victory and a desire for masculine transformation seemed paramount. Yet his career as an army officer coincided with a series of failed campaigns—Afghanistan and Iraq—which he later defended relentlessly in essays, speeches, and as a Fox News host.
The Roots of a Personal Crusade
Hegseth's rhetoric on those wars long mirrored mainstream Republican talking points, papering over chaos and death with promises of stable democracies. But his zeal betrayed something deeper: a desperation to extract personal validation from his time in uniform. As Adam Weinstein, a Marine Corps veteran and deputy director for Middle East policy at the Quincy Institute, told this outlet, "The rank and file, and even some of the officers, have accepted the gravity of the war's failures. There's a deep sense of sacrifice and loss for nothing."
Rather than confront that reckoning, Hegseth pivoted to darker themes: Islamophobia, misogyny, and a toxic version of masculinity. He argued the Pentagon was weak-willed, insufficiently lethal, and overrun by incompetent leaders—many of them women or minorities. His remedy was blunt: fight harder in the Middle East until "Islamic extremism" was eliminated. As one former co-worker noted, "I never got the feeling that he wanted to abandon the Middle East."
Weinstein, reflecting on his own 2012 deployment to Afghanistan, observed that Islamophobia was "right on the surface." He added, "But what do you think the World War II generation was saying about the Japanese? Dehumanization is a natural outgrowth of war."
A Personal History of Insecurity
Growing up in Minnesota, Hegseth appeared the perfect American male: religious, athletic, well-spoken, handsome. But he was ashamed of his perceived softness. "I didn't get in fights as a kid and shied from confrontation because, frankly, I was scared of it," he wrote in his 2016 book In the Arena. He praised his father's integrity but resented not being taught the masculine art of aggression. "Confrontation isn't necessarily his forte," Hegseth wrote.
Military service, he believed, would imbue him with missing manliness and offer a path to class mobility. He applied to West Point and Princeton, choosing the latter for its ROTC scholarship. At Princeton, he was deemed a man with "many faces," loudly endorsing the Iraq war and attacking feminist groups. His trajectory eerily paralleled that of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, another Minnesota native who attended Princeton, bristled at elitism, and joined the Army. Both struggled with alcohol and women, though Fitzgerald was more reflective about his vices.
Hegseth's ambition was clear: "If you want something, you go after it—you're willing to sleep a little less, put up with more, put up with a little insanity and do things you don't want to do," he said in a 2015 interview. This drive now fuels his push for war with Iran, a conflict that could have profound implications for the Indo-Pacific region, particularly through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global oil shipments affecting economies from Tokyo to New Delhi.
For an informed audience in Asia, Hegseth's personal crusade is not just a US domestic story. It is a reminder of how individual psychology can shape foreign policy, with ripple effects across the region. As Hegseth defends the Iran war as a 'gift to the world', the consequences for energy markets and food security in Asia are already being felt. Meanwhile, five miscalculations in the Iran war are prompting a reckoning for Washington's strategy, and Iran's downing of a US Reaper drone underscores the escalating risks.
Ultimately, Hegseth's desperate search for masculine validation through war may be a personal tragedy, but its costs are borne globally. As the US pushes deeper into conflict, Asian nations must navigate a volatile landscape shaped by one man's unresolved insecurities.
