Trump Pentagon leadership shakeup aims to recapture ‘warrior ethos,’ expert says

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire several high-ranking military leaders is a first step in helping the president achieve his goal of a military more focused on lethality.

“It’s a bold move… you could even say it’s fairly aggressive,” William Ruger, the President of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and a former Trump nominee for ambassador to Afghanistan, told Fox News Digital. “There’s a sense that I get that this isn’t merely a challenge to one or two individuals, but that there needed to be a greater push to change the direction the Pentagon has been going… in terms of lethality, warrior ethos.”

Ruger, who serves as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, was “a prominent advocate for ending America’s participation in the Afghanistan War,” according to his AIER profile page.

The comments come after Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, as well as several other top military officers over the weekend, a list that also included the U.S. Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead one of the military branches.

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U.S. Air Force Gen. CQ Brown served under President Biden as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was dismissed from that role recently by President Trump. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The dramatic move reportedly caused “upheaval” at the Pentagon, according to a Reuters report, while critics were quick to pounce on Trump’s decision.

“Firing uniformed leaders as a type of political loyalty test, or for reasons relating to diversity and gender that have nothing to do with performance, erodes the trust and professionalism that our service members require to achieve their missions,” the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, told Reuters, whose report called the firings “unprecedented.”

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed back against that characterization, arguing during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump “deserves to pick his key national security advisory team.”

“Nothing about this is unprecedented,” Hegseth said, noting that there have been “lots of presidents who made changes,” specifically citing Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama, who Hegseth argued “fired or dismissed hundreds” of military officials.

("Nothing about this is unprecedented," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, noting that there have been "lots of presidents who made changes," specifically citing Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama.)

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In the most recent example, Obama made the decision to relieve Army Gen. David McKiernan as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan five months into the president’s term in office in 2009, marking the first time a wartime commander had been dismissed since 1951.

According to Ruger, the main point of the firings will be to allow Trump to have trusted military advisors to carry out his vision for the future of the force.

“The president had good reason for trying to do this, believing that the military was not led by the admirals and generals that were necessary to implement his vision of our defense structure,” Ruger said. “We should have some caution here in thinking that there’s anything amiss.”

Ruger also noted that the moves align more closely to Hegseth’s vision for the military, which he believes will “focus on lethality and the warrior ethos, as opposed to some of the more… identitarianism that we had seen creeping into the military.”

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talks to the media during his visit to the headquarters of U.S. European Command and Africa Command at the Africa Command at Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart Germany, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.  (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

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Perhaps more importantly, Ruger stressed that Trump’s ability to shake up military leadership as he sees fit is critical to the U.S.’s time-tested tradition of civilian leadership over the military.

“It’s important that for good civil military relations purposes, that it’s clear who is the decision maker, and that should be the civilians, and that what they say will be faithfully implemented,” Ruger said. “That’s the hallmark of good civil military relations.”