Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former Press Attaché to Malaysia
Former MD, SRBC | Macomb, Michigan, USA
War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent address to defense-industry leaders began not with warnings about China or Russia, but with a stark admission that the gravest threat to American military readiness comes from inside the Pentagon itself — not the people, he stressed, but the entrenched acquisition bureaucracy that governs them. He described this culture as one of centralized planning and rigid five-year cycles that choke innovation, punish initiative, and turn paperwork into a substitute for performance. For a moment it sounded as though he were describing the old Soviet system or the Chinese Communist Party — until he delivered the line that made the room fall silent: the adversary, he said, is the Pentagon’s process.
Hegseth’s critique echoed a warning first delivered a generation ago by Donald Rumsfeld, who argued that the Pentagon risked becoming so slow, so complex, and so resistant to change that it could no longer respond to the real world. Two and a half decades later, Hegseth believes the problem has not evaporated — it has deepened. Deadlines are missed. Costs escalate. Layers of oversight multiply. And somewhere between offices, committees, forms and reviews, wartime urgency is lost. Worse still, the defense industry adapts to this environment, finding profit in delay rather than delivery, and learning that risk-taking is punished while caution is rewarded.
Yet the real story here is not simply about dysfunction. It is about something profoundly American — the willingness to confront problems openly rather than hide them. Hegseth’s speech is not merely a complaint about slow systems. It is the latest expression of a structural truth about the United States: this country remains powerful not because it is flawless, but because it possesses built-in mechanisms of reform, criticism and self-correction. When processes fail, leaders say so. When systems slow, they are publicly challenged. When institutions fall behind reality, the political and administrative machinery eventually pushes them forward again.
That culture of internal inspection is loud, messy and often uncomfortable. Democrats reform institutions in one way, Republicans in another. They criticize each other, undo each other’s work, and reshape systems again. But the result, over time, is not paralysis. It is continuous institutional evolution. That is why the U.S. military still fields the most capable force in the world. That is why the defense-industrial base, despite its flaws, still produces unmatched innovation. And that is why American universities, laboratories, companies and alliances continue to set global standards.
Hegseth followed his words with action, signing directives to streamline acquisition, break bottlenecks inside each service branch, expand surge manufacturing capacity, and unify arms-transfer authorities so that U.S. weapons reach allies faster when approved. The message was clear: process must once again serve readiness, not the other way around. Capability must matter more than compliance. And the system must be restored to wartime speed, not remain trapped in peacetime ritual.
Your central observation sits at the heart of this development. The United States has something many other nations lack — the courage and institutional space to admit fault and correct course. Authoritarian states bury failure, silence critics and falsify results. America argues, audits, investigates, legislates and reforms. This is not weakness. It is the only strength that survives history. It is the reason the country remains at the top of science, technology, defense, education, finance, diplomacy and culture, despite the demands and contradictions of global leadership.
Yes, American weapons feature in conflicts around the world — and that reality sparks intense ethical, strategic and humanitarian debate. But unlike systems that suppress dissent, the United States allows these debates to unfold in Congress, the press, universities, think tanks and courts. Excesses are scrutinized, decisions questioned, policy direction contested. It is an open-loop feedback system — sometimes slow, sometimes painful, but always alive.
In that sense, Hegseth’s speech is not an admission of decline. It is a reminder that a nation remains strong only as long as it remains honest with itself. When the machine jams, it must be repaired. When culture hardens into ritual, it must be shaken. When systems fall behind events, they must be dragged forward — not once, but repeatedly, across generations. The United States has done this again and again. That is why it still leads.
If America’s greatest adversary sometimes lies within its own bureaucracy, then its greatest strength lies there too — in the constant habit of self-examination, internal checks and balances, and relentless renewal. Other powers deny failure. America fixes it. And as long as that instinct endures, the nation will remain — loudly, imperfectly, but decisively — at the top of the world.
