A new age of American sycophancy: Pete Hegseth’s speech, dissected

Peter Hegseth

US Secretary of Defence

Sunday 22 June 2025

Flattery

One of the standard techniques of rhetoric is to flatter your audience. Hegseth’s audience here is not so much the public watching the press conference live, or those who will see it reported. They are eavesdroppers to the relationship which matters here, which is between Hegseth and his hero and boss, President Trump. And this is a world of binary distinctions and primary colours. The action against the Iranian nuclear facility was “an incredible and overwhelming success”. And that unequivocal victory derives directly from the “focused”, “powerful” and “clear” commander-in-chief.

Remember too that this relationship – Trump watching Hegseth on television – is exactly how Hegseth came into office. During Trump’s first term, the president liked to watch, and sometimes cite, Fox & Friends, the show that Hegseth hosted on Fox News. Now Hegseth is not slow – even when he has such news to impart on the rolling news channels – to repay the compliment. The unequivocal rhetoric is misleading though, which Hegseth will later concede. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who followed Hegseth on the podium said that, though the bombed sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction”, a full assessment would take time and Iran would probably try to rebuild its nuclear facility.

America the beautiful

The language here is extraordinary. The lapses into colloquialisms (“not even close”. “No nukes”). The claim to complete certainty about events that are inevitably provisional. To some extent, this is designed to reassure the popular audience – not all of whom will relish this challenge – that success is inevitable, but the hostage to fortune is obvious. The more usual pattern in war rhetoric – Churchill in the House of Commons in May 1940 is the classic example – is to begin in sober fashion by conceding that the times are grave and success will be hard won but that there is no alternative to victory which will come if we maintain resolution. No such fine-grained pussyfooting around for Hegseth. He simply asserts that America is beautiful and great and cannot be messed with.

Note too that he has not yet attempted to persuade anyone of the justness of the attack, only its overwhelming power and brilliance. The mark of memorable war speeches down the ages – starting with the funeral oration of Pericles, which invents the genre – is that the focus shifts quickly from the battle itself to the purpose of the battle, from the conflict to the glory that will settle on the city. Here Hegseth finds the American glory in the action itself, and the fact that our guns are bigger than your guns. “American deterrence is back” will be the phrase that resonates from this speech, but Hegseth makes no argument for why it might be needed.

The warrior culture

In his difficult confirmation hearing before he became Defence Secretary, Hegseth said he wanted to bring back “the warrior culture” to the department. So here he is quoting himself back. The culture of the warrior is, in Hegseth’s vocabulary usually contrasted, as it was in his confirmation, with the woke diversity initiatives which he believes threaten to corrode the integrity of the armed forces. Hegseth makes a lot of his own service in Afghanistan and Iraq. He often says that it is high time America had a Defence Secretary “with dust on his boots” even though there have, in fact, been plenty before him (Lloyd Austin, Jim Mattis, Chuck Hagel). The praise for the action of the combatant is standard practice, but note again that their action is not linked to any noble purpose. A more effective speaker would describe this action as the finest hour of the warriors and that means their action needs to be pivotal in accomplishing a noble end. Hegseth seems to think that the mission explains itself and he has no need to do so.

Virtue signalling

It is hardly historic to keep an attack secret. The exaggeration once again rather gives off a flavour of insecurity. Why claim that something so routine as military secrecy is a historic achievement? It is probably because Hegseth has form on the issue. Earlier this year, Hegseth was caught sharing detailed confidential information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen in two private Signal group chats. He dare not risk a reference to that as any levity at all, or admission of weakness, would break the spell of unanswerable power that he is trying to cast. So, he over-reaches again.

Limited specifics

Then, after the repeated exaggerations and professed certainties, the tension in his remarks is revealed. Hegseth has been gung-ho in talking to the Iranian regime and in praising his boss, but he knows that Trump supporters are split on the action. He therefore at the last has to acknowledge that peace is the better option. Hegseth is in an awkward position here which his rhetorical bluster has not wholly disguised. Nothing about the attack on Iran is final. What happens next is a known unknown, to quote one of his predecessors. That is why, in response to a question about whether he was prepared for a protracted war, Hegseth said that “the scope of this was intentionally limited. That’s the message we’re sending”. Well, not really, not so far. And then that final telling remark in which Hegseth, who told his confirmation hearing that he would have to surround himself with clever people, hands over – or “throws”, as he would have said in his old job – to General Caine “for specifics”. The devil, no doubt, was in the detail, but the Defence Secretary was here to praise Caesar and, on that at least, he has done the job he came here for.