NYT (“Trump to Sign Order Renaming the Defense Department as the Department of War“):
President Trump will sign an executive order on Friday renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the White House said, fulfilling the president’s pledge to realign the mission of the armed forces by reverting to a name used for over 150 years until shortly after World War II.
The measure, which has been expected for some time, underscores Mr. Trump’s efforts to reshape the military to align with his goals of projecting a more aggressive image by showcasing war-fighting capabilities.
As Mr. Trump has sought to show strength, rather than the “wokeness” that he and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claim clouded the military’s morale and mission under former President Biden, he has often referred back to the country’s dominant role in global conflicts and complained that it has not been celebrated enough.
Mr. Trump’s plan to sign the executive order was first reported by Fox News.
Mr. Trump first floated the idea in August in the Oval Office, saying it sounded “like a better name” and that he believed “we’re going to have to go back to that.” He said the name change would be a reminder of the country’s record of military victories under the old name, citing World War I and II.
Fox News (“Trump to rename Pentagon, restoring historic ‘Department of War’ in latest military move“):
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday to alter the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, reverting to the agency’s former namesake, Fox News Digital has learned.
Both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have recently indicated they want to change the name of the agency. It is one of several initiatives the Trump administration has spearheaded as part of its “warrior ethos” campaign within the Pentagon.
A White House official confirmed to Fox News Digital Thursday that Trump would roll out the name change Friday. The executive order calls for using the Department of War as a secondary title for the Department of Defense, along with phrases like “secretary of war” for Hegseth, according to a White House fact sheet.
The order also instructs Hegseth to propose both legislative and executive actions to make the name permanently U.S. Department of War.
Likewise, implementing the order will require modifications to public-facing websites and office signage at the Pentagon, including renaming the public affairs briefing room the “Pentagon War Annex,” according to a White House official. Other longer-term projects also are in the works, the official said.
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols (“Pete Hegseth’s Department of Cringe“) is not impressed.
Last month, when the plan was still just a hypothetical, the president was asked why he favored it. He said that Department of War “just sounded better” and that it would be a callback to the name under which U.S. forces fought in the two world wars. But the change is also a reflection of how much Trump and Secretary of Defense (his title for now) Pete Hegseth think of themselves as tough guys, real fighters who will no longer trifle with silly names about “defending” things. Hegseth in particular is obsessed with “warfighters”—a clunky Pentagon term that’s been around for far too long—who will engage in “warfighting” with great “lethality.”
[…]
It is almost impossible to overstate the inanity of this move. The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”
These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.
As he rightly notes, pretty much every country—allies and adversaries alike— has ministries of defense, not war, at this point.
For what it’s worth, the Defense Department was never the War Department. DOD did not exist prior to its creation in 1949.
During the War for Independence and under the Articles of Confederation, military affairs were run by legislative committees. Under the Constitution, we had two executive agencies, the War Department (which housed the Army) and the Navy Department (which housed the Navy and Marine Corps).* Coordination problems during World War II led President Truman to propose consolidation of the services under one department.
After two years of wrangling, and a rear guard effort by the Navy and Marine Corps to undermine their commander-in-chief, Congress instead created a four-headed monster via the National Security Act of 1947. The War Department was separated into a Department of the Army and a Department of the Air Force. The Navy Department remained intact. Additionally, a Secretary of Defense was put in charge of something called the National Military Establishment. The four secretaries, naturally, were co-equal.
Surprisingly, it only took two years for everyone to realize this was idiotic. A 1949 amendment to the National Security Act created the Department of Defense, led by the Secretary of Defense, and made the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force subordinate agencies.
*As a technical matter, the War Department managed both army and naval matters before the 1794 creation of the Navy Department. The difficulty of doing so was mitigated substantially by the fact we had neither a Navy nor any warships. The forerunner of what would become the Coast Guard was under the War Department, though.
