Trump's Military Meeting at Quantico and the Case Against Partitioning Sudan

About eight hundred American generals and admirals gathered in Quantico, Virginia last week to hear remarks from US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump and Hegseth gave two very different speeches, each revealing distinct priorities for the future of the US military. Meanwhile, the proposal to partition Sudan into two states based on the conflict’s current frontlines has been gaining traction ever since the Rapid Support Forces and their allies declared a parallel government in Darfur. Both developments carry serious implications for American force readiness and African stability, and both deserve careful scrutiny.

Hegseth’s Speech: Optics Over Warfighting

Hegseth gave a speech focused on his idea of American military exceptionalism, but what was most striking was his intended audience. Instead of having much to do with actual warfighting, Hegseth’s speech was focused on optics—really, really, really focused on optics. Hegseth spent a fair amount of his time railing against, quote, “fat generals and admirals”, and overweight American troops more broadly, explaining that the US military will adopt a single physical standard for both men and women, declaring an end to so-called “woke” culture in the military including, quote, “identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, climate change worship, gender delusion”, et cetera.

He also called for all military members to be clean-shaven. It is not very difficult to puzzle out the logic on how Hegseth came to equate those changes with an enhanced warfighting ability. Big, strong people make big, strong soldiers, and big, strong soldiers make a big, strong army.

But with some exceptions, those changes don’t really impact the combat-readiness of a modern military like America’s. Take the question of physical fitness, where, absolutely, you’d want troops to meet a very high physical standard if they were to be deployed into active combat. But for a military like America’s, only a relatively small proportion of troops are going to be tasked with fighting an enemy force, while hundreds of thousands of troops handle non-front-line tasks like logistics, equipment maintenance, military intelligence, drone and satellite operations, and more.

The proportion of troops with non-front-line roles is only increasing, as drone warfare becomes more and more common. In a full-scale war in the 2020s, it doesn’t matter how fit a soldier is on the front lines, if they get hit by an FPV kamikaze drone that’s being piloted by someone in an air-conditioned room three thousand miles away. That drone operator could be overweight, they could be a woman, or they could be someone who’s unable to meet the rigorous fitness standards that Hegseth described.

The same could be said for maintenance personnel attaching munitions onto the wings of a jet before it flies into battle, or drivers bringing their trucks through secure back lines. And it certainly could be said for admirals and generals; after all, in a modern military like America’s, if admirals and generals are physically fighting an enemy, then something has gone horribly wrong.

The Gap Between Fitness Standards and Actual Force Readiness

It was striking that Hegseth chose to spend so much of his time zeroing in on the optics and the physical presentation of the US military, emphasizing fitness and anti-DEI standards that those generals and admirals certainly know won’t really have much impact on the ability of non-front-line troops to do their jobs. Front-line troops, meanwhile, are already held to a higher standard, as those military leaders are aware. In fact, from a purely pragmatic lens, there’s a legitimate argument that taking non-front-line troops away from their duties to hit the weight room takes away the time that they can be training for their actual role and maintaining the US military’s force readiness.

But Hegseth knows all that, and in reality, his focus isn’t so much on actual force readiness as it is on shaping the American public’s perception of its fighting forces. Frankly, if an American service member is working in a role where their weight, their sex, or their decision to grow a beard doesn’t diminish their ability to do their job, then having them lose weight, shave the beard, or meet the men’s fitness standard doesn’t impact their readiness. But it does impact the perceptions of a strong military, if, and when, ordinary Americans with only a cursory understanding of the military’s role see people who fit their pre-conceived understanding of what makes an effective warfighter.

The same observation applies to informally rebranding America’s Department of Defense to the Department of War, and any number of other military directives that Hegseth has issued.

Trump’s Demand for a Loyal Military

On the Trump side of things, almost as soon as he took the stage, he began to drill in on an idea of America’s military as a Trump-loyal institution. Quoting Trump before he even settled into his speech: “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.

But you just feel nice and loose, okay, because we’re all on the same team.” Ahead of the address, Trump had told reporters, quote, “if I don’t like somebody, I’m gonna fire them right on the spot.” Trump didn’t fire anybody during the speech, but between outlining different achievements and relatively standard talking points of his administration thus far, he repeatedly returned to the premise that America’s generals and admirals should either back the preferred policies and military approach of the nation’s current administration, or step out of the way.

Purely from the perspective of continuity and continual force readiness for the American military, this approach has some serious drawbacks. Regardless of Trump’s plans in 2028, the broader reality is that America’s political system is built in a way to ensure that it’s constantly changing, while America’s military is structured so that it remains mostly unaffected by the push and pull of Washington politics. Is it a good idea for the entire command structure of America’s military to oscillate every four-to-eight years, cutting out some of the nation’s most experienced and qualified leaders because they disagree with the policies of whoever happens to be America’s commander-in-chief?

Definitely not, and quite frankly, Trump risks playing himself and his own country in the long term, if he initiates that cycle.

Training Grounds in American Cities and the ‘Enemy From Within’

There was the other notable part of Trump’s speech: a proposal to use left-leaning American cities, which Trump characterized as dangerous, as “training grounds for our military,” while establishing a quick-reaction force intended to deploy rapidly into American cities and combat the “enemy from within.” That enemy-from-within rhetoric has been a fairly standard part of Trump’s remarks during his second term, and it alternately describes migrants in the United States, members of America’s political left, people who disagree with or criticize Trump or his policies, or some combination therein. To some, that sounds like a great idea, while to others, it sounds like the death of American democracy.

When stepping outside the United States and observing this rhetoric in context with other political movements and other civil and military decisions around the world, it would be very unusual for an approach like that to end well. When a nation has a firmly enshrined set of principles that dictate that their military should not, and must not, be used against civilians on domestic soil, and then a new leader comes in, shakes things up, and sends the military to impose order, that invariably leads to public outrage, and quite often, it gives way to direct civil conflict. When a national leader is empowered to deploy the military against their own people, even for what they and their supporters believe to be righteous reasons, they invariably learn just how easy it is to start abusing that power to make their lives a little easier, or make their hold on power a little stronger.

In studying global conflicts and world governments, there has yet to be a situation where this ends well—and America is probably not the exception.

Why Partitioning Sudan Is a Terrible Idea

The splitting of Sudan in two is a legitimately terrible idea. On some level, partition seems to make sense. Since the military recaptured the capital Khartoum from the Rapid Support Forces in spring, the war’s frontline has effectively run from north to south, with the army holding most of the territory in the east, and the RSF holding most of the west, including Darfur.

The reality is messier than a simple straight line on a map, with other armed groups holding some areas, and the military still maintaining a single outpost inside the besieged western city of El-Fasher. But broadly the country has settled into two de-facto states, with the leader of the RSF even declaring a parallel government over the summer, based in the South Darfuri capital of Nyala. Given that the RSF originated in Darfur, it can be tempting to see this as a simple ethnic conflict, in which the nomadic Arabs of the west are trying to separate from the riverine elite of the great central cities and agricultural plains—much in the way that the Christians of South Sudan fought for and won the right to split off from their old overlord back in 2011.

The trouble with this view is that it assumes the whole of Darfur is united behind the paramilitaries against a distant oppressor. But not even the RSF themselves would claim that. Since the conflict broke out in April 2023, the group has made it its mission to expel all non-Arabs from the region, often through the use of extreme violence.

The result has been ethnic cleansing on a scale so great, the United States has deemed it a genocide. In the city of El-Geneina alone, some 15,000 members of the Masalit tribe are thought to have been slaughtered in targeted killings. The Zaghawa and Fur peoples have also been mass-murdered or enslaved, while many trapped in the besieged city of El-Fasher are today on the brink of famine.

Partitioning Sudan and leaving the RSF in charge of a new state centered around Darfur would mean leaving all non-Arabs at the mercy of a group that wants to destroy them.

Regional Instability and the Libya Precedent

While the Sudanese military are hardly angels—in previous decades they fought alongside the predecessor units of the RSF to suppress the local population—it’s telling that many of the Darfuri militias ultimately threw their lot in with the army against the paramilitaries. Cruel and crude the elites in Khartoum may be, but they’re at least not conducting a genocide. There are also reasons why a freshly partitioned Sudan would be a bad idea from a European or American perspective.

The obvious one is refugee flows. At a time when voters seem to be particularly against the idea of needy people showing up on their nations’ doorsteps, almost nothing would be guaranteed to generate more refugees than the collapse of Africa’s third-largest country. But there’s also the security angle.

Since Libya split apart after the death of Gaddafi, it has become an exporter of instability throughout North Africa. Fighters who got their spurs in the uprising against Gaddafi and the subsequent civil war have since contributed to conflicts in the Sahel, while weapons stocks that were looted when the regime collapsed have turned up in places like Chad and Mali. And Libya is a nation of just seven million people.

Sudan is home to fifty million people. It’s bigger than Libya, more strategically placed, and surrounded by fragile neighbors that have recently fought their own civil wars. A wrenching of Sudan in two would make the nightmare fuel Libya’s partition added to regional conflicts look like a wet fart against the eruption of Krakatoa.

A Permanently Hostile State on Sudan’s Borders

The question of whether the split might benefit the portion of Sudan currently under army control in the east also seems unlikely to yield a positive answer. Codifying RSF control of Darfur and parts of Kordofan would also mean establishing a permanently hostile state on Sudan’s borders—a hostile state run by a man, RSF leader Hemedti, who dreams of ruling the whole of Sudan. Remember, the RSF initially tried to conquer the entire country.

From the spring of 2023 until March of 2025, they held most of the capital, Khartoum. The agricultural heartlands fell to their forces. Prior to the army’s counterattack in the summer of 2024, most analysts thought they’d eventually seize everything.

So a Hemedti-run independent Darfur would always pose an existential threat to Sudan. From such a base, the RSF could potentially stage another attack on Khartoum at any time. That would mean the remnants of the Sudanese state would always have to be ready for war.

Such a tense settlement could break into open conflict again without warning, as has been seen multiple times this year—with India and Pakistan in the spring, and Thailand and Cambodia over the summer. In short, partitioning Sudan for the second time in two decades wouldn’t solve anything, and might make things much worse. While it’s tempting to look for simple solutions to this most-devastating of conflicts, carving up the country between warlords is absolutely not the way to go.

Nigeria’s Overlooked Crisis and the Complexity of Religious Violence

Nigeria’s ongoing crisis has also drawn significant attention and concern. A borderline genocide is happening in Nigeria right now, and many observers have heard next to nothing about it. The farmer-herder conflict, and the role of religion within it, is a lot more complex than social media would have observers believe.

The key question is how to define a Christian genocide. Is it when large numbers of Christians are being killed by non-Christians? Or when they’re being killed because they are Christian?

In this case, while religion is a handy pretext for a lot of attacks, it’s typically not the core reason that people are being killed. The situation remains largely unchanged and continues to demand serious attention from the international community. Anti-drone shotguns are also starting to become a thing on the defense technology front, with companies like Benelli and Farbam offering products to that effect.

The idea of mounting automatic shotguns to vehicles to shoot down drones as they close in on positions is a tactic that doesn’t yet seem to be mainstream, but represents exactly the kind of improvised adaptation that modern battlefields are increasingly demanding.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the main thrust of Hegseth’s speech at Quantico, and why is it criticized?

Hegseth’s speech focused almost entirely on optics — condemning “fat generals and admirals,” mandating a single physical fitness standard for men and women, banning “DEI offices” and “identity months,” and requiring all service members to be clean-shaven. Critics argue this emphasis misses the reality that the vast majority of US military personnel serve in non-front-line roles — logistics, drone operations, signals intelligence, equipment maintenance — where physical appearance has no bearing on combat effectiveness.

Why does Trump’s demand for a politically loyal military concern military analysts?

Trump told assembled generals that disagreeing with his policies would cost them their rank and future, and pledged to fire anyone he disliked on the spot. Analysts warn that restructuring the entire senior command to reflect the preferences of whoever holds office would cause the military’s leadership to oscillate every four to eight years, purging experienced commanders and undermining the institutional continuity that modern force readiness depends on.

What is Trump’s “enemy from within” proposal, and what are its risks?

Trump proposed using left-leaning American cities as military training grounds and establishing a quick-reaction force to deploy inside the United States against what he described as the “enemy from within” — a phrase he applies variously to migrants, political opponents, and critics. Analysts note that in countries where such rhetoric has been followed by military deployment against civilians, it has invariably generated public outrage and, in many cases, direct civil conflict.

Why would partitioning Sudan be a bad idea?

Partition would effectively hand control of Darfur to the RSF, a force that has already killed an estimated 15,000 Masalit in El-Geneina alone and conducted ethnic cleansing against Zaghawa and Fur populations. It would also create a permanently hostile RSF-run state on Sudan’s border under Hemedti, who originally tried to conquer the whole country. With fifty million people compared to Libya’s seven million, a Sudanese partition would generate refugee flows and regional instability that would dwarf Libya’s post-Gaddafi collapse.

What is the Libya precedent for Sudanese partition, and why does scale matter?

After Libya split following Gaddafi’s death, fighters from that conflict spread instability across the Sahel and looted weapons turned up in Chad and Mali. Sudan is vastly larger, more strategically placed on the Red Sea, and surrounded by neighbors that have recently fought their own civil wars. As the article puts it, a wrenching of Sudan in two would make Libya’s contribution to regional conflicts look like a wet fart against the eruption of Krakatoa.

Sources

1. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/read-hegseth-speech-generals-admirals/
2. https://www.sofx.com/president-trump-address-to-pentagon-leaders-at-marine-corps-base-quantico-full-transcript/