By Winslow Myers
The disconcerting speeches of Hegseth and Trump to an assembly of silent, stone-faced military leaders at Quantico on September 30, 2025, revealed three intertwined visions of how armed force should be used to ensure security in our moment. All are familiar, but all three are becoming obsolete. Hardly extinct, but completely outmoded by current and future conditions. A fourth vision of what the mission could be for both our own and our adversaries’ militaries includes a radical consideration of looming climate effects upon military mission and strategy.
The first vision, from Hegseth, was a reversion to the idea that modern wars can be won by a ferociously male fighting culture. The major flaw in this vision of future glorious patriotic wars (setting aside that no one can “warfight” and win a nuclear war) is revealed by stalemates such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, which became standoffs not from lack of U.S. ferocity, but because we failed to look more deeply into the political and cultural interests of our adversaries. The leaders of North Vietnam admired Thomas Jefferson, loathed and feared the Chinese, and wanted out from the colonialism both of the French and of the Americans–who tried unsuccessfully to administer an updated version of what the French failed to achieve.
The second vision of war, from President Trump, was that our country can become peaceful if its own citizens are pacified, or forcefully suppressed, by using our own military against them. American constitutional government is designed to prevent just such a regression into civil war, whose story we should want, from painful experience, not to revisit. Mass violence between American citizens who are awash in numbers of guns, motivated by hate and fear, and basically indistinguishable from each other, would not be pretty.
The third vision of security, deterrence, is presently administered by that very group of trained, intelligent, professional, dedicated military leaders that made up Trump’s and Hegseth’s command-performance audience. It is the establishment vision of war prevention through strength, about which Hegseth discoursed at length before going on to harangue the crowd about physical fitness and the prohibition of beards.
Hegseth declared that the military will no longer get involved with climate change issues, even though there are whole books about how the U.S. military is already having unavoidable encounters with the effects of global warming, including more ferocious storms and rising sea levels affecting bases at home and abroad. Setting aside that the militaries of the world are responsible for more pollutants and carbon output than any other human institution.
The problem is that deterrence, given an unstable, headlong arms race, will eventually and inevitably break down. It already has. We came all too close to doing ourselves in with the Cuban crisis, way back in 1962. Our vast array of nuclear weapons did not prevent the 9-11 attacks, nor Vietnam.
But in our own time deterrence has an even deeper flaw; it addresses the wrong war. While we spend trillions updating our nuclear weapons, global temperatures keep rising at faster rates. In another 10 years, we will learn to our considerable regret how stupid it was to spend 1.5 trillion dollars on projects like the Lockheed Joint Strike Fighter, instead of using those funds to build a stronger electric grid and hasten the transition to clean sustainable energy sources.
Left unaddressed, the follow-on effects of the global climate emergency will accelerate new tensions, as the refugee challenge intensifies and countries have to cope with mass deaths from excess heat, flooding, fires, droughts, and storms.
The militaries of the world are not about to wake up, shed their weapons, and magically pursue the arts of peace. Yet it is worth asking what militarism does to address climate constructively. Sadly, the answer is, at the moment, nothing. Our grandchildren will be asking tough questions about who encouraged and who obstructed the great transition into sustainable energy and earth-regeneration.
In contrast to the Hegseth/Trump/establishment vision which leads to mass death, imagine the militaries of the world gradually redirecting their resources, prowess, and logistical efficiency toward addressing the regeneration of Earth’s biosystems. It would be a very different conception of military strength—because authentic strength that leads to real security for all from now forward will be whatever contributes to the health of the whole planetary organism. We’re all in a leaky boat together, including the military.
Looking at the totality of world conflict, it may feel as if such a refocus would be a long time coming, if ever. The military brass sitting silently in Mr. Hegseth’s come-to-Jesus meeting are caught between a dying mission and what will become an inescapable new one. They know that the climate effects which are going to cause shortages, chaos, mass migrations, and wars are not a long time coming. They’re here.
Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is the co-author with Libby Traubman of One: One Humanity, One Earth, One Future, and serves on the Advisory Board of the War Prevention Initiative.
This article was sent to peacevoiceeditors on Oct. 5, 2025, by Tom Hastings on behalf of Winslow Myers.