This week, Pete Hegseth, the current US Secretary of Defense, gathered hundreds of generals and admirals in Quantico. Most didn't know why they were there. He did. He told them they would no longer be called the Department of Defense. From now on, they would be called the War Department. "Nations are forged by waging war, not by avoiding war," he stated. "Strength commands respect. Peace does not."
Trump, naturally, applauded the move. It's not a one-time gesture. It's part of a strategy. Trump deploys the two most powerful tools of contemporary power: money and weapons. Both. And with complete conviction.
With Europe, he's tried everything from an economic standpoint. Tariffs, threats of sanctions, trade blackmail. With China, the same: measures against its companies, technological warfare, monetary pressure. In Israel, he enforced defense agreements and unconditional financial support. And against Russia, the clearest path: weapons. Military support in Ukraine. Strategic presence. Escalation.
It's not that he uses one thing when he can't use the other. He combines them. He alternates them. He applies them coolly according to the terrain. His motto Make America great again It's no longer just an election slogan. It's a principle of foreign action based on imposition.
None of this is new. What's disturbing is the form. The rawness. The casualness with which it's being accepted. We've come so far as humanity... and we keep coming back to the same thing. Through force. Through ambition. Through the law of the strongest.
I find it hard to believe. We live in a world where science has unraveled almost every mystery. We know how to cure diseases, produce food, find water in the desert. And yet, we continue to govern as in the 19th century: by domination, by fear, by subjugation.
More and more people believe in peace. They believe in coexistence. They believe in shared prosperity. But we systematically regress. Three steps forward, two steps back. This is how humanity advances. Always between hope and strength.
Will we ever be able, as a human species, to live and coexist according to the values of charity, otherness, and coexistence? Or will they always, systematically, return violence and destruction?
Nonconformity has taken us far as a species. But at the same time, it keeps us, as Hobbes said, like wolves to one another.
Trump is the reflection of that shadow that inevitably returns once again.
