Outside the Beltway

War Department Redux

A potentially costly rebrand and strange bedfellows.

James Joyner · Saturday, September 6, 2025 · 7 comments

POLITICO (“Pentagon officials fume over Trump’s Department of War rebrand“):

Pentagon officials grappled Friday with the Herculean task of fulfilling President Donald Trump’s executive order to remold the enormous, global agency into the Department of War.

Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.

The details of the order Trump signed Friday are still vague, but officials may need to change Defense Department seals on more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 states. This includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store.

“This is purely for domestic political audiences,” said a former defense official. “Not only will this cost millions of dollars, it will have absolutely zero impact on Chinese or Russian calculations. Worse, it will be used by our enemies to portray the United States as warmongering and a threat to international stability.”

[…]

Some Republicans, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, already are sponsoring legislation to change the name.

But the proposal took fire from the top Senate Republican overseeing Pentagon spending, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The former Senate majority leader reupped his criticism that Trump’s 2026 Pentagon budget request lags inflation.

“If we call it the Dept. of War, we’d better equip the military to actually prevent and win wars,” McConnell said on X. “Can’t preserve American primacy if we’re unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than Carter or Biden. ‘Peace through strength’ requires investment, not just rebranding.”

We’ve devoted significant resources, which could instead have been spent preparing for a fight against China, to symbolic gestures in the seven months since this administration took office. Everything from undoing the Congressionally-mandated renaming of Army bases named after Confederate generals to scrubbing websites of references that might be conceivably deemed “woke.”

And, again, this ostensible return to the name we used when we were winning wars is ahistoric. The old War Department was split into a Department of the Army and a Department of the Air Force. DOD was created out of whole cloth in 1949.

Somewhat surprisingly, the WaPo Editorial Board has come out “In defense of the War Department.”

Euphemisms distort thought, and no entities are more adept at producing euphemisms than governments. President Donald Trump’s rebranding on Friday of the Department of Defense as the Department of War is a worthy blow against government euphemism. Perhaps it can be followed by clearer thinking about the military’s role at home and abroad.

[…]

It is more delicate to say that the Pentagon’s mission is defense than war. But the former depends on the latter. The extent to which the Pentagon can defend U.S. interests around the world is tied to the expectation that the United States can fight and win wars. That expectation is what shapes the calculations of rival states. As Trump said Friday afternoon in the Oval Office: “I’m going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace.”

Concepts such as “defense” and “security” have a tendency for bureaucratic mission creep. The Biden administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy mentioned “climate” 19 times. Climate change is a problem, but fighting it is not the military’s job. Nor is nation-building.

Clarifying that the Pentagon is in the business of war-fighting could have other salutary effects. Congress has not declared war as the Constitution contemplated since World War II, even as U.S. troops have fought and died in wars large and small around the world. Renaming the Pentagon won’t cause Congress to suddenly change its ways, but at least it is a reminder that the powers the Pentagon exercises are subject to legislative oversight.

While I grant that “defense” and, especially, “national security” are subject to euphemism and, more importantly, being used to justify secrecy and lavish spending, it’s not obvious to me that calling it the “War Department” will change that. This, too, strikes me as wishful thinking:

The change won’t necessarily have the political effects Trump desires. He is making a point of using National Guard troops for domestic purposes — in D.C. and perhaps other cities soon. If those troops are commanded by the War Department, rather than the Defense Department, might it prompt more opposition to their deployment? By stripping away the euphemism, the name change bluntly highlights for the citizenry the power that these troops represent: They are not police officers but soldiers.

I don’t know that anyone doesn’t already understand that. For those who support using the military against domestic protestors or immigrants, that’s a feature, not a bug.