President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have suggested using American cities as training grounds for the armed forces, making vague references to an "invasion from within" that could warrant "overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy."

Despite the US. military being designed to address foreign threats, Trump outlined his vision of deploying it on American soil. He and Hegseth, a former Fox News pundit, addressed hundreds of top military officials who were hastily summoned from around the globe to Virginia.

Here, they were lectured on troops' physical fitness and their loyalty to the Trump administration's anti-DEI initiatives.

"I told Pete [Hegseth], we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," Trump stated. "It's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control," he added, allegedly referring to criminals and immigrants.

These dual messages underscored the Trump administration's efforts not only to reshape contemporary Pentagon culture but also to enlist military resources for the president's priorities and decidedly domestic purposes.

This includes quelling opposition to his administration's often baseless shows of force on Democratic cities he claims are plagued by "out of control" violent crime.

"We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms," Trump declared.

Hegseth summoned hundreds of military leaders and their top advisers from around the globe to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, without publicly disclosing the reason. According to The Associated Press, his speech primarily revolved around well-worn talking points that depicted a military hindered by "woke" policies, and he suggested military leaders should "do the honourable thing and resign" if they disagree with his new approach.

While meetings between military brass and civilian leaders are not uncommon, this particular gathering sparked intense speculation due to the urgency with which it was convened and the secrecy surrounding it. The fact that admirals and generals from conflict zones were called for a discourse on race and gender in the military demonstrated the extent to which the nation's culture wars have become a primary agenda item for Hegseth's Pentagon, even amidst widespread national security concerns worldwide.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Centre for Defence Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, commented that the Secretary of Defence's speech on Tuesday seemed more aimed at generating public relations content than "aligning the leadership around a set of ideas that the Trump administration is going to pursue."

Clark revealed there had been considerable anticipation that Hegseth would discuss budget priorities, military investments or the forthcoming national defence strategy, which the Pentagon is set to unveil in the coming weeks.

Clark suggested the message failed to match the significance of an occasion that brought hundreds of senior military leaders together in one venue.

"You'd think that the purpose of that would have been something more dramatic and important than grooming standards and physical fitness standards," he said.

Janessa Goldbeck, a former Marine who now serves as CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, described the defence secretary's Tuesday address as being more focused on "stoking grievance than strengthening the force."

She argued that Hegseth's proposal to relax military discipline regulations mistakenly conflates abuse with toughness and represents the "mark of someone who's never seen the real thing.

"It takes no strength to hit a recruit - it takes real strength to teach one," she said.

"I had a front-row seat every day to the extraordinary training our recruits receive from the most disciplined, professional Marines in the fleet," Goldbeck said of her experience at Marine boot camp in California, whilst Hegseth "never served as a drill instructor and never trained a recruit."

The secretary "has a cartoonish, 1980s comic-book idea of toughness he's never outgrown," she said. "Instead of focusing on what actually improves force readiness, he continues to waste time and taxpayer dollars on He-Man culture-war theatrics."

Trump, for his part, has already tested the limits of a nearly 150-year-old federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act, that restricts the military's role in enforcing domestic laws.

He has sent National Guard and active duty Marines to Los Angeles, threatened to do the same to combat alleged crime and illegal immigration in other Democratic-led cities, including Portland and Chicago, and surged troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

National Guard members are generally exempt from the law since they are under state authority and controlled by governors.

But the law does apply to them when they're "federalised" and put under the president's control, as happened in Los Angeles over the Democratic governor's objections.