Will the real Pete Hegseth please stand up?

Chameleons change the color of their skin according to circumstances, as so do some humans.
Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has alternated between expressing skepticism about Europe’s alleged overdependence on America for its defensive needs and insisting that the details of U.S. military attacks are not classified, while also lavishing praise on the country's allies in East Asia.
Which one of these is the real Pete Hegseth?
On Feb. 13, shortly after taking office, during a news conference following the NATO defense meeting in Brussels, Hegseth stated, "NATO is a great alliance, the most successful defense alliance in history, but to endure for the future, partners must do far more for Europe’s defense." While this sentiment coming from someone high ranking in the Trump administration was not unexpected by some, for others in the European security community, it must have come as a bit of a shock.
Then, in late March, The Atlantic published a bombshell report revealing that senior national security officials in the Trump administration used the Signal app — which can be downloaded for free — to discuss details of the U.S. military's attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen just two hours before it began a week or so earlier. Signal is relatively secure and I use it myself, but I never imagined that advisers to the president, the secretary of defense or the secretary of state would be discussing top-secret information on such an app.
What was particularly interesting in the exchange between the vice president and the secretary of defense was this: JD Vance said to Hegseth, "I just hate bailing Europe out again." In response, Hegseth told the vice president, "I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic."
Whether this reflects the true position of the Trump administration or is just Hegseth's personal view remains unclear. In any case, Europe’s U.S. allies must have thought things couldn't get any worse. Then, on March 27, Hegseth tried to refute the report on X, "So, let me get this straight. The Atlantic released the so-called war plans, and those plans include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information." Given Hegseth's post was made just before his official visits to the Philippines and Japan, one can only imagine that officials in those governments were on tenterhooks.
Yet, the words and actions the secretary of defense expressed and showed regarding the two U.S. allies in Asia were more practical.
In the Philippines, at a joint news conference, Hegseth stated that cooperation between the two countries “reflects the strength of our ironclad alliance, particularly in the face of communist China's aggression in the region. And our partnership demonstrates our commitment to peace and security in the Indo-Pacific.” He referred to the threat from China by name.
In Japan, he expressed similar sentiment: “America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the communist Chinese,” noting, “We have a robust alliance agenda that will strengthen our deterrence posture, keep the enemy guessing, creating dilemmas for them and ensure that we achieve peace through strength.”
The differences between Hegseth's words and his actions are astonishing. It's hard to believe they are coming from the same person, raising the question: Which one is the real Pete Hegseth?
Certainly, his reputation as secretary of defense comes from a mix of praise and criticism, but my answer is that they all stem from the same person, for the following reasons:
Pete Hegseth, born in Minneapolis in 1980, is of Norwegian descent. He graduated from Princeton University in 2003 and completed a master’s course at the Kennedy School in 2013, so he has a respectable academic background. After graduating from Princeton, he joined the Minnesota National Guard and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan after first serving in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 2014, he joined FOX News as a commentator.
He was appointed secretary of defense after a split vote in Congress, with the vice president casting the tie-breaking vote. Prior to his confirmation, he had been accused of sexual assault and alcohol abuse while also being criticized for his lack of experience. However, his words and actions in the Philippines and Japan are consistent and may reinforce the following hypothesis that I wrote last month:

• The enemy that truly threatens the current U.S. hegemony is not Russia or Iran, but China, but now that the U.S. can no longer fight a “two-front war”, the U.S. should end the futile war in Europe by making a deal with Russia and leave European security to the Europeans.
• Similarly, rather than resolving the Palestinian issue, the U.S. should focus on achieving normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and leave deterrence against Iran and stability in the Middle East to the Middle Easterners.
• If the U.S. has any extra capacity, it should be invested in maintaining the status quo in the Indo-Pacific and deterrence against China.
  
  

As he said at the joint news conference in Tokyo, Hegseth's visit to Japan was “a great success.” There was no open and provocative pressure to increase the country’s defense spending, unlike in Europe, and there seems to be no change in the plan to upgrade the combat command of U.S. forces in Japan.
However, Tokyo should not be complacent. As expected, the infamous “reciprocal tariffs” were announced on Wednesday. The chameleon-like nature of the Trump administration is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
The same fears remain in terms of security. Even if the Trump administration seeks to deter China, it is unlikely to shift its policy of so-called pacifism, or a reluctance to intervene militarily. This policy suggests that security in Asia should primarily be the responsibility of Asian countries and that the U.S. should not automatically commit to military intervention.
As long as his boss is a chameleon, Hegseth will also remain a chameleon. What U.S. allies in Asia, including Japan, can do now is create a situation in which the chameleon changes its color to a preferable one for the Indo-Pacific region, while continuing efforts to convince the U.S. — no matter how long and painful the task may be — that if Washington abandons its allies, such as South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, it will no longer continue to be a Pacific power.