Welcome to The World in 10.
In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security.
Today with me, Tom Noonan and Toby Gillis.
Pete Hegseth's first months in charge of the world's most powerful military have been described by critics as chaotic and shambolic,
as the US Secretary of Defence fends off questions over missteps like the Signal group chats and suggestions of a purge inside the Pentagon.
But Mr Hegseth insists he's getting on with the job,
saying he aims to ensure the lethality of the US military and weed out what he calls woke ideology.
But what if his war on woke backfires and makes the Department of Defence weaker?
Recently, that's been the focus of today's guest, Professor Bethan Greener,
who's an international security specialist and the head of school at Massey University in New Zealand.
Beth,
it's fair to say that you disagree with Pete Hegseth's decisions and the rationale behind them.
Just start us off by explaining some of the changes that he's made at the DoD.
It's been an extraordinary few months.
I kind of characterize March as being removing various things.
So the abolishment of certain words may not agree with,
but we can see the rationale around words like gender or diversity,
perhaps, but also removing words like tolerance and most notably respect, which is.
effectively supposed to be one of the US Army's seven core values.
So the reach of this has been quite astounding.