Just occasionally going down a rabbit hole allows you to make the most enjoyable discoveries. Sunday afternoon started with Six Armies in Normandy (the why will be for another post) and, by way of Alanbrooke’s Diaries and Churchill’s Generals, ended with On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman Dixon. 

By tea time I was deep into Part Two of Dixon’s book – and Pete Hegseth leapt off the page.

Dixon, who ended his career as Emeritus Professor of Psychology at University College, London, was writing some 50 years ago. His book may be a little dated (and there is a lot of Freud) but, even so, the analysis holds up. The section that caught my attention was his argument that anti-effeminacy – an obsession with military appearance, taboos on certain topics and pastimes, and a deep-rooted prejudice against women in traditionally male roles – is a typical trait of incompetence, not a sign of competence (and whereas Dixon was writing of women, I’d bring it up to date and add people of colour).

And all I could think of was Secretary Hegseth, the almost perfect exemplar of deep incompetence with his campaign for manliness and toughness, his espousal of the warrior cult, and his all too apparent submissiveness to higher authority.

After writing this post, I discovered Tobin Harshaw’s video on Bloomberg News: “How a Psychologist Warned of Military Incompetence”. It seems I am not the only person to have made the connection.