Broken windows national defense?

Posted on October 18, 2025October 18, 2025 by Mike

And you thought Broken Windows Theory was only applicable to urban crime.

Broken Windows at the Pentagon
On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech identifying the department’s bureaucracy as the nation’s most pressing adversary and asserting his determination to liberate the Department of Defense. Twenty-four years later, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered a comparable speech outlining revisions to military fitness standards and training requirements and declaring his intention to “liberate America’s warriors.”

Rumsfeld grandly characterized his reforms as transformation; Hegseth humbly characterized his changes as common sense.

Notably, Hegseth directly invoked a forty-year-old truism known as the Broken Windows Theory.

Introduced in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, an authority on public administration and a criminologist, respectively, the thesis argued that if a broken window is left unrepaired, then all the rest of the windows will soon be broken and the sequence from antisocial to criminal behavior will commence.

In particular, Hegseth elaborated on his two criteria for reinstituting past standards — the E-6 and 1990 tests.

Under the former, if a proposed change enables E-6s (or O-3s) “to get back to basics”, then the change is justified.

Under the latter, if a standard was in existence in 1990 and was modified for reasons other than changes to the battlefield, then the original is reinstated.

Curiously, Hegseth acknowledged he had no specific rationale for picking 1990 – “seems to be as good a place to start as any.”

Broken Windows Theory provides a clue.

I gotta admit, it does at that.

Y’all know already how much I like Hegseth; this article does nothing to alter that view one whit. Read the rest to find out why. I say again: SecWar Pete Hegseth is the right man in the right job at the right moment, no two ways about it.

1 thought on “Broken windows national defense?”

Barry says:

October 19, 2025 at 10:51 pm

“I say again: SecWar Pete Hegseth is the right man in the right job at the right moment, no two ways about it.”

Absolutely, 100%. And the best thing about him – he is fearless.

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