Timothy Snyder On Hegseth's Announced Meeting With All US Military Generals

Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2025, 03:49 PM - Edit history (2)

... I do not think anyone at least in recent history has done what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about to do: put all of the American generals and admirals from around the world into a single room (next week, in Virginia) just to say something to them.

There is no practical reason to do this: he has easier and more secure ways to communicate with the commanders. And there are obvious risks: the entire armed forces of the United States, spread around the world, will be without its leaders. Given that the government could well shut down the next day, the separation of commanders from their command might be indefinite...

... which means that the entirety of the American command structure will be more vulnerable, physically, than in any conceivable military scenario, including nuclear war...So why might Secretary Hegseth do such an extraordinary thing?
Only four solutions to the puzzle come to mind.

1. He has some trivial thing to say and does not understand the risks.
2. He wishes to endanger the lives of the generals and admirals.
3. He will stage a purge, perhaps involving a loyalty oath or something similar that requires personal presence.
4.He will tell the commanders that henceforth their assignment will be to oppress American citizens (“homeland defense”).
This could be combined with the third scenario: those who refuse will be fired.

One might wonder why no effort was made to keep this secret.
Perhaps Hegseth wants the senior officers to worry.
Perhaps the news was shared because reasonable people in the Pentagon fear that the meeting is part of a plan to remake the American military as a domestic political police force.
This would be in conjunction with other efforts, such as yesterday’s terror memo, to pursue regime change in the United States. Making known that there will be such a meeting is the one way to begin a conversation that might prevent its taking place, or at least alter its purpose.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/hegseth-puts-us-all-at-risk


The thing that Snyder doesn't mention, but that Americans should never forget is just how superior military education and training really is over any other education available to humans.
This is something that Snyder either doesn't recognize, or doesn't appreciate.

Not only do commanders have university PhD levels of education, but they have the entire of human history to learn military science. US Military generals are among the most educated elite of the world. What the worst US Military general knows is a universe more than anything Hegseth has learned since the day he was born and recently had access to know through classified access.