The Limits of 'Killing People and Breaking Things'

Trump and Hegseth want the military to kill people and break things for the sake of the killing and breaking.

Paul Poast identifies one of the many flaws in Trump’s military campaigns:

Both the drug cartels in Venezuela and the Houthis in Yemen point to a broader lesson about the limits of wielding the military as an instrument that, in the words of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “kills people and breaks things” as its primary purpose. The problem is that, while using the military to kill people and break things may be effective in conventional wars against the armed forces of other states, it doesn’t work well against the much smaller-scale operations of nonstate groups.

Poast is right that there are limits to what military action can do, but for this administration I fear that the destruction is the point. That is, Trump and Hegseth want the military to kill people and break things for the sake of the killing and breaking. As the boat attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific prove, the more senseless and unnecessary the violence is the more that the president and his allies like it.