In a speech delivered at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Decem­ber 6, US Sec­ret­ary of Defense Pete Heg­seth expan­ded on the need for the United States to adopt a real­ist approach in shap­ing its global strategy.

The first prin­ciple of such an approach, he argued, is a dra­matic enhance­ment of Amer­ican mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­it­ies. No polit­ical achieve­ments, he main­tained, are pos­sible without robust power. Equally import­ant, however, is a clear under­stand­ing of how – and for what pur­poses – Amer­ican power should be employed.

Heg­seth out­lined four prin­ciples gov­ern­ing the legit­im­ate use of US force:

• Force is used only to defend vital interests.

• Force is used only with the inten­tion of

achiev­ing vic­tory.

• Force is used only when goals are clear,

lim­ited, and attain­able.

• Force is used only as a last resort.

Accord­ing to Heg­seth, many past pres­id­ents aban­doned the real­ist doc­trine cham­pioned by Ron­ald Reagan. They weakened Amer­ica’s mil­it­ary pos­ture, and turned the United States into “the police­man of the world.” These admin­is­tra­tions, he argued, ini­ti­ated mil­it­ary mis­sions that were either uncon­nec­ted to core national secur­ity interests or were fun­da­ment­ally unachiev­able – such as efforts to export demo­cracy across the globe.

In the name of hol­low ideo­lo­gies, they embroiled the United States in futile wars around the world. Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump, Heg­seth asser­ted, is now revers­ing this course and restor­ing a stra­tegic approach rooted in national interest and mil­it­ary strength.

Accord­ing to the sec­ret­ary of defense, the prin­cipal object­ives guid­ing Amer­ican policy today include:

a. Defend­ing the home­land, includ­ing secur­ing US bor­ders and devel­op­ing advanced defens­ive sys­tems against mis­siles and drones.

b. Deter­ring China through strength – main­tain­ing mil­it­ary superi­or­ity to avoid dir­ect con­front­a­tion.

c. Rebal­an­cing the divi­sion of defense bur­dens with allies, thereby redu­cing strain on the US defense budget.

d. Accel­er­at­ing the devel­op­ment of the Amer­ican defense industry, ensur­ing that the United States remains the world’s premier mil­it­ary power.

Heg­seth’s remarks, and the broader stra­tegic world­view they reflect, require Israel to under­take a fun­da­mental rethink­ing in its approach towards the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Israel must recog­nize that repeated ref­er­ences to its unique status – phrases such as “We are the only demo­cracy in the Middle East,” “We alone pro­tect human rights in the region,” or “We are a nation emer­ging from the Holo­caust” – carry far less weight in the eyes of a US admin­is­tra­tion guided primar­ily by real­ist prin­ciples. Moral argu­ments, his­tor­ical nar­rat­ives, and appeals to shared val­ues play a more lim­ited role in this stra­tegic envir­on­ment.