Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last week ordered the “disestablishment” of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and the “development of a plan to rebuild it in alignment with the department’s strategic priorities.” Its personnel will be reassigned to “mission-critical roles.”

Even by Hegseth’s confrontational and iconoclastic standards, this is a narrow-minded, vendetta-driven act of self-harm.

The Office of Net Assessment was set up in 1973 during Richard Nixon’s presidency to assess U.S. military capabilities and readiness and anticipate potential threats and scenarios that could emerge over the long term of 20 to 30 years. It was effectively designed by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to be the Pentagon’s think tank, and he chose eminent RAND Corporation strategist Andrew Marshall as its first director. Marshall went on to hold the position until 2015, retiring at age 93.

Killing the Office of Net Assessment is part of Hegseth’s deliberately confrontational and disruptive approach. During his confirmation hearing, he stated that his task was “to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense” and to create “a Pentagon laser-focused on warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards........

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