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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to warn America’s military partners across the world that they will “face consequences” if they fail to act like “model allies.”
Hegseth is set to hammer partners in the NATO military alliance when he appears before Congress on Wednesday morning to make the case for the Pentagon’s massive $1.5 trillion budget request for the 2027 fiscal year.
According to written remarks obtained by Punchbowl News, the defense secretary will say the department is making “generational investments to rebuild our military” against the backdrop of an “increasingly complex threat environment across multiple theaters.”
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He is also expected to hit out at the “democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing, and feckless nation-building” of previous administrations.
Hegseth is also likely to renew the Trump administration’s condemnation of NATO members who have refused to get involved in the U.S. war with Iran as he calls for the alliance to return to its “warfighting roots.”
“Model allies that step up, like Israel, South Korea, Poland, Finland, the Baltics, and others, will receive our special favor,” Hegseth will say, per the written remarks. “Allies that do not — allies that still fail to do their part for collective defense — will face consequences.”
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