Department of War

Concerns about the fitness, battle-readiness, ethos and composition of America's fighting forces date back to George Washington, writes Giles Whittell

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Last week about 800 American generals and admirals were summoned from bases around the world to the US Marine Corps' headquarters in Virginia for a pep talk from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on lethality, fitness, the warrior ethos and the corrosive menace of political correctness.

There were no sackings or restructurings. The closest thing to a policy announcement was the unofficial rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War. There was no obvious reason for the meeting, which might easily therefore be looked on as an aberration staged by an aberrant administration. Yet it was more than that.

Hegseth was reading from history. His main topics were US soldiers' condition, image and relationship to civilian life, and these have been central themes of America's national story since George Washington took command of the Continental army to fight the British.

Two hundred and fifty years on, Hegseth told his flummoxed audience: "We lost our way. We blame the woke department." If so, the roots of woke run deep.

Washington's first impression of the soldiers he was to lead into the battle for independence was that they were "exceedingly dirty and nasty" - a far cry from the prime athletes Hegseth wants (all meeting physical standards that must be "uniform, gender neutral and high").

But Washington set great store by the idea of a volunteer force committed to, and part of, the republic: "When we assumed the soldier we did not lay aside the citizen." The modern citizen soldier was born.