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OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
2:51 PM – Saturday, December 6, 2025
United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered a keynote speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum, outlining the Trump administration’s vision for “peace through strength.”
On Friday, speaking to U.S. military leaders and officials, Hegseth defended President Donald Trump as the legitimate successor to President Ronald Reagan.
“Like President Reagan, President Trump is dedicated to both sides of the peace through strength coin, not just using that phrase as a thin veil for war mongering,” he argued.
He said that the Trump administration is reviving Reagan’s approach after post-Reagan Republican “hawks” abandoned the former president’s policies of disciplined and limited use of military for “grandiose, nation-building, moralistic and rudderless wars.”
The perpetual post-Reagan wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq inform Trump’s strategy, Hegseth said, focusing on clear and achievable objectives, and building up the military to negotiate peace from a position of strength.
“Out with Utopian idealism, in with hard-nosed realism,” was the key phrase of Hegseth’s address.
The Trump administration is also aiming to rebuild after four years of the Biden administration, which Hegseth argued was characterized by “wokeness, weakness, war.” During the years between Trump’s two presidential terms, war broke out between Ukraine and Russia and between Israel and Hamas.
Beyond maintaining peace in foreign countries, the Trump administration has put a heavy emphasis on strengthening its borders to create peace within the country.
“Border security is national security and we are prioritizing it accordingly,” Hegseth stated.
He emphasized the Department of War’s support for its law enforcement partners from the Department of Homeland Security in securing the southern border and deporting illegal aliens.
Hegseth declared that the fight against “narcoterrorism” under the Trump administration would be dealt with rigorously.
“These narcoterrorists are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda,” the secretary stated. “We are tracking them, we are killing them. And we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning people with narcotics so lethal that they are tantamount to chemical weapons.”
“In our hemisphere there is no safe haven for narcoterrorists,” Hegseth added.
The U.S. military has thus far conducted 22 strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean since the Trump administration launched the campaign against the “designated terrorists” in September.
Hegseth announced the acceleration of a project signed into law in an executive order a week into Trump’s second term that would create a missile defense system. This “Golden Dome” would continue a canceled project initiated by President Reagan with today’s technology and should be completed before Trump’s term ends.
Hegseth defined America’s nuclear deterrent as “the foundation of our nation’s defense.” He said that the administration would work to modernize and regularly test the Nuclear Triad, the system of delivery methods for nuclear weapons, and promised to “never allow this nation to become vulnerable to nuclear blackmail.”
Hegseth also stressed the importance of allies in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific to accept more responsibility for global defense instead of the U.S. shouldering the burden.
Along these lines, the Pentagon reportedly set a 2027 deadline for European allies within NATO to begin building up conventional defensive capabilities.
“The Department of War at the president’s direction is laser-focused on advancing America first, peace through strength, common sense efforts,” Hegseth declared.
The war secretary concluded his speech by committing to following President George Washington and Reagan in appealing to Jesus Christ to “grant us the wisdom to see what is right and the courage to do it.”
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