EDITORIAL: When loyalty replaces competence, the Pentagon becomes an empty chair that no one dares to name

A number that isn’t a statistic

Twenty-four. According to The New York Times, many appear to have been dismissed for no other reason than their background, gender, or closeness to officers whom the Secretary of Defense did not like.

This isn’t a reorganization. It’s a purge. And a purge based on who a person is rather than what they do isn’t defense policy. It’s something else.

Twenty-four careers. Zero operational explanation.

Half as many four-star generals

According to the same report, there are now half as many four-star generals as there were under President Joe Biden. The lowest number in decades.

We can debate the ideal number of generals. But we cannot debate this: these positions are not filled in a single quarter. They take twenty-five years, sometimes thirty. An entire career. You don’t create a theater commander with a press release.

You can’t cut down in a single season what has taken thirty years to grow.

An Army Secretary Who Quits in Public

Dan Driscoll, Secretary of the Army, publicly resigned in recent weeks. According to ABC News, he reportedly warned the White House several times before his departure.

His message, as reported by the media, was succinct: the Secretary of Defense is undermining the military and reducing the pool of officers available for future top command positions. This isn’t a settling of scores. It’s a technical warning.

When an ally resigns and explains why, listen to the reason, not the tone.

The Military Described as Rudderless

The word used in the reports is harsh. An army essentially without a rudder. A brain drain at the Pentagon.

A rudder isn’t just for show. It’s what keeps a ship from spinning in circles as the tide rises. And the tide is rising everywhere: in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the South China Sea.

Without a rudder, you don’t sink right away. First, you drift.

Three Months Into the Term, and Already Chaos

As early as April 2025, The New York Times ran a headline about the chaos reigning at the Pentagon. Three months. That’s how long it took for the chaos to make the front page.

A former Pentagon staffer wrote in Politico that the agency was in disarray under this administration. A former insider. Not a longtime political opponent.

When those who once served you write against you, it’s no longer just an opinion.

And since then, nothing has improved

The columnist’s assessment is clear: things have gotten worse. Not stabilized. Not corrected. Worse.

There’s a difference between a teething crisis and a structural drift. The former can be corrected. The latter takes root, then becomes the norm, then becomes invisible to those experiencing it.

Persistent disorder ceases to be an accident. It becomes a pattern.

A Conflict That Has Spun Out of Control

The U.S. military operation in Iran has turned into a disaster, according to analyses reported in the press. Deployments in the Middle East have been extended.

The Washington Post reported that high-ranking military officials had voiced objections to this extension. They issued warnings. Their warnings were ignored.

An ignored warning is the most costly form of silence.

Weeks of reporting on troop burnout

For weeks, journalists have documented the exhaustion of the soldiers and sailors caught up in these extended deployments.

Rotations are getting longer. Homecomings are being delayed. Families are counting down the months. None of this appears in a triumphant press release. All of this shows up in military hospitals, two years later.

Fatigue makes no noise. It shows up in the statistics—later on.

A personnel policy that shrinks the talent pool

The internal campaign targeting women, gay, and transgender service members began early in the administration. It was documented from the very first months.

Beyond the moral issue, there is a mathematical one. An army that excludes entire categories of qualified candidates does not become stronger. It becomes smaller, less experienced, and more vulnerable.

Reducing the talent pool during a war. That is the strategy.

The message sent to those who remain

An officer who sees a colleague sidelined for who they are—not for what they’ve done—learns a lesson. They learn that merit offers no protection.

So he stays silent. Or he leaves. And the institution loses twice: the person who was sidelined, and then all those who understood the message.

Every visible departure hides ten silent ones.

A simple rule, stated bluntly

The columnist puts it bluntly: being bad at your job isn’t enough to get fired in this administration. You have to become a public embarrassment significant enough that the president feels it reflects poorly on him.

That is the criterion. Not performance. The reflection. And a government that evaluates its ministers based on the president’s image does not have ministers. It has props.

We no longer serve a country. We serve a mirror.

Training photos while the country is at war

The Secretary of Defense continues to be mocked for his photo ops doing pull-ups and push-ups, while the United States is engaged in military operations.

We could smile. We shouldn’t. It’s not the vanity that’s the problem. It’s what it takes up: time, attention, and institutional bandwidth that should be directed elsewhere.

Every photo is a meeting that didn’t happen.

A weakened Pentagon is a less reliable ally

Ukraine depends on decisions made in offices in Washington. Deliveries, timelines, industrial priorities, and trade-offs between theaters of operation.

These decisions require people who know the issues inside and out. When those people leave, decision-making slows down. And a delay in deliveries—whether in Pokrovsk or Kharkiv—isn’t measured in weeks. It’s measured in lost ground.

A case that drags on in Washington becomes a trench that gives way elsewhere.

Moscow reads the American newspapers

The Kremlin doesn’t need spies to understand what’s going on. All it has to do is read the American press.

Every public resignation, every general sidelined, every warning ignored is free intelligence handed to an adversary. A superpower’s internal turmoil is strategic intelligence.

There’s no longer any need to steal secrets. They’re published.

A Careful Analysis of Institutional Decline

Beijing does not measure American power by the number of aircraft carriers. It measures it by the ability to make quick and sound decisions under pressure.

A chain of command stripped of half its most experienced generals does not make decisions quickly. It consults, hesitates, goes up the chain, then back down. This delay is a given. It factors into calculations.

Deterrence is not a matter of the amount of steel. It is a reputation for reliability.

Iran and North Korea are making the same calculation

Tehran has seen a U.S. operation get bogged down. Pyongyang has seen senior officers storm out.

These are regimes that test boundaries. They advance when the response is slow. And nothing slows a response more than a military leadership stripped of its memory.

Those who test limits know how to read an organizational chart.

A democracy is not judged by its rhetoric

It is judged by the way it treats its competent civil servants. By its ability to retain people who say no.

When saying “no” becomes a reason to leave, only those who say “yes” remain. And a room full of people who say “yes” is not a cabinet. It’s an echo chamber.

The most important counterbalance is the one that works for you.

Europe is watching and reassessing

European capitals have been observing this instability for months. They aren’t drawing conclusions out loud. They’re drawing up budgets.

Every tremor in Washington accelerates a debate in Berlin, Warsaw, and Paris. Not out of hostility. Out of basic caution.

You can’t build a continental defense on a wobbly chair.

The Reality of Mid-Level Officers

They don’t appear in any headlines. They shoulder the burden of the parties. They fill in the gaps.

An office hallway where no one knows who’s in charge anymore. A phone ringing with no one to pass it on to. It’s not a big deal. It’s just wearing, day after day, until someone else hands in their resignation.

The collapse doesn’t happen all at once. It builds up.

“Brain drain” isn’t just a figure of speech

News reports use the term “brain drain.” It’s not a figure of speech.

Military expertise consists of knowledge that can’t be written down: who to call, what to ignore, when to push. It’s not in any manual. It leaves with the person.

What we’re losing isn’t in the archives. It’s in the minds that are leaving.

I don’t know if this prediction will come true

A columnist is predicting a dismissal. He says so himself: making predictions in politics is unwise. I share that caution.

Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe the secretary will remain in office for months to come. That’s not the point. The point is that we’ve reached the point where we’re betting on the date of a departure rather than on the quality of a policy.

The real symptom isn’t the prediction itself. It’s that it seems reasonable.

A weariness I can no longer hide

I’ve been writing about these topics for a long time. And I feel something giving way. Not anger. Fatigue.

This weariness of writing the same text three times a year, with a different name. This unpleasant feeling that analysis is turning into a mere tally of departures. I don’t find that noble. I find it exhausting.

There’s a weariness unique to those who watch without being able to act.

A reshuffle corrects a course

It replaces people to change a policy. It follows a clear logic, with a before and an after.

Here, the policy doesn’t change. Only the faces change. That goes by another name.

Changing the driver doesn’t change the direction of the vehicle.

A purge protects a person, not an institution

When the criterion for retention is loyalty and the criterion for dismissal is embarrassment, the institution is no longer the focus. It becomes mere window dressing.

The country becomes secondary. Image becomes central. This is a complete reversal of the contract that binds a government to those it governs.

Serving an image is not the same as serving a people.

It doesn’t matter who’s next

Whether it’s Hegseth, someone else, or no one at all. The name of the next person on the list is just a footnote.

What matters is the system. A system that produces departures without making corrections. One that hires based on loyalty and fires based on shame.

You can’t fix a machine by replacing a single part.

The true cost is deferred

Nothing is falling apart today. That’s what makes it hard to get across.

The cost will become apparent in three years, during a crisis that no one has yet named, when a decision will have to be made in forty minutes and there will be no one left in the room who has ever been through this before.

The price for personnel mistakes is paid in times of crisis, never in times of peace.

Volodymyr Zelensky and the Opposite Lesson

A Ukrainian president who, in February 2022, could have left. But he stayed. He built a leadership team around people who disagree with him.

He kept those who say no. This may be the simplest reason for Ukraine’s resistance—and the one least often discussed.

Political courage begins with tolerating dissent.

An Army That Learns vs. an Army That Obeys

The Russian army has shown what a chain of command based on fear produces: orders carried out without question; massive casualties.

A Western army that adopted the reflexes of punitive hierarchy would not become more disciplined. It would become more blind.

Discipline without discussion is not strength. It is fragility in uniform.

Counting departures is not an analysis

Two secretaries fired. One resignation. An Army secretary who left after issuing a warning. Twenty-four senior military officials removed. Half as many four-star generals.

These aren’t just numbers from the political section. They’re gaps in a structure. And you only notice the gaps when you try to lean on them.

You gauge the strength of a framework on the day of the storm.

There will be no redemption in this text

I have no hope to offer. No turnaround to announce. The logic described here works; it produces its effects, and there’s no indication it will stop.

What remains is the refusal to accept this as normal. It’s not much. It’s all I have. When loyalty replaces competence, the Pentagon becomes an empty chair that no one dares to name.

By constantly dismissing those who get in the way, you end up alone in an empty room.

And you—at what point do you decide that a mess is no longer just a Washington anecdote but a risk that directly affects you?

Signed, Jacques Pj Provost, Columnist

Editorial Stance

I am not a journalist, but a columnist, analyst, and expert. My expertise lies in observing and analyzing the geopolitical, economic, and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work consists of dissecting political strategies, understanding global economic trends, contextualizing the decisions of international actors, and offering analytical perspectives on the transformations that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim to possess the cold objectivity of traditional journalism. I do, however, strive for analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation, and a critical examination of events—without on-the-ground presence or fabricated personal accounts.

Methodology and Sources

This text maintains a distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. Factual information comes exclusively from verifiable primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources: official press releases, public statements, institutional reports, reputable news wires, and verifiable data.

Secondary sources: reputable media outlets, specialized publications, analyses by established institutions, and sector-specific reports.

Statistical, economic, and geopolitical data are sourced from official institutions when available and cross-checked.

Nature of the Analysis

Analyses, interpretations, and perspectives constitute a critical and contextual synthesis based on available information, observed trends, and verifiable expert commentary.

My role is to interpret the facts, contextualize them, and give them coherent meaning within the framework of contemporary geopolitical, economic, and strategic dynamics.

Subsequent developments may alter the perspectives presented.