Since the September day when President Donald Trump symbolically renamed the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the U.S. military has conducted at least 21 strikes on Venezuelan boats, killing 83 people allegedly suspected of drug trafficking. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth convened an unprecedented and widely mocked pep rally of military generals and flag officers during which he pledged his commitment to the “warrior ethos.” And Hegseth has continued to fire or demote military generals and admirals, purging at least two dozen of them during his tenure, the New York Times reported.
Last Wednesday, an NBC News report found an official Department of War rebrand, which could only be completed by an act of Congress, could cost taxpayers as much as $2 billion for updates to signage, personnel items like placards and badges, and technology changes.
Steve Yates, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and previously a national security advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney, says Trump’s name change holds real significance. Yates told TPM it is just one aspect of a broader shift to deflate the DoD’s bloated bureaucracy and bring the department back to its original, George Washington-ordained ideals of warfighting and away from “nation building” and “peacekeeping.”
But a closer look at the history of the department, historians told TPM, shows that a return to Washingtonian war ethos doesn’t make sense for a modern nation. The ways and means of warfare have changed completely, and George Washington’s America was not the global superpower the U.S. is today.
“It’s a different America that comes out of World War II,” said John C. McManus, professor of military history at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. A country once built on isolationism had transformed. “The America that comes out of World War II can’t quite afford that anymore. It’s a world-leading nationalist structure.” The new DoD structure fits that, he said.
As with his previous directive that all new federal structures be built in the “classical” style, President Donald Trump appears to be using symbols to literally take the country back in time. Restoring the Pentagon’s original name is a wink to his reestablishment of an American era where civil rights were weak and women’s roles were limited. From his elimination of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to his militarized anti-immigrant campaigns, Trump is harkening back to the origins of George Washington’s Department of War.
“They see this within their own very limited prism — of this narrowness of blaming it on political correctness,” said Kyle Longley, director of the War, Diplomacy, and Society program at Chapman University.
Trump and Hegseth, he said, want to go “back to the good old days before 1947 and ‘48. They look and go, Wow desegregation of the military didn’t help. That’s when the political correctness set in. They won’t say that outright but that’s what they’re implying.”
Trump’s war department is “refocused on readiness and lethality,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in an emailed statement. “The White House is working hand-in-glove with the Department of War on implementation of the Executive Order.”
‘Just Look at the Purges’
U.S. leaders in the late 1700s structured the nation’s Department of War after those in Britain and other European countries. The department was responsible for the Army and non-naval forces, while the Navy remained independent. WWII and the Cold War meant the department’s responsibilities grew and evolved until, as America’s global superpower status emerged and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency formed, the Department of Defense was created to consolidate the various military and intelligence arms that had emerged over the previous 150 years.
Trump and Hegseth have branded the 20th century name change “woke” and are pushing an aggressive, gleefully violent vision for U.S. national security policy. In December, Hegseth told reporters his DoD would be about “lethality, lethality, lethality. Everything else is gone.” During his January nomination hearing, Hegseth said he was selected to “bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense.” Trump, during a press conference at the NATO summit in June, revealed his inclination to return the department to its colonial name.
“Used to be called secretary of war…,” Trump said, flanked by Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Then we became politically correct and they called it Secretary of Defense. I don’t know, maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it.”
Longley doesn’t think Trump, or Hegseth have any idea of the military history of the bygone War Department.
That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re not coming eerily close to recreating some of those policy dynamics, especially on domestic soil.
“For Washington and the early presidents, the Department of War was related primarily to waging war against the Native American peoples,” Longley said. He also noted the thread between the 18th century war on Indigenous Americans and Trump’s violent anti-immigration campaign.
“There’s dramatic crossover with the militarization of American forces to be able to be used against immigrants right now but also against American citizens,” said Longley.
High-ranking Black people and women in the armed forces have also been targeted by the administration. White men comprise the vast majority of military generals and admirals. Women make up about 8% of generals and flag officers. Just 6.5% of generals are Black.
Yet “just look at the purges of the military officers,” said Longley. They have been disproportionately women and people of color.
In response to an inquiry from TPM, Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that the department is committed to making the name change permanent. Parnell said the shutdown has delayed the “final cost estimate” for the name change and blamed the shutdown on Democrats.
“A nod to our proud heritage, this change is essential because it reflects the Department’s core mission: winning wars,” Parnell said.
Who even cares?
Foreign conflicts or terrorism aren’t among the top three most important issues to Americans, according to the most recent ACP/Ipsos survey results released Monday. A November AP voter survey also found the economy is Americans’ top concern. In a nation where economic issues still reign supreme, it’s hard to imagine the average voter cares or even notices that the DoD’s name has been symbolically changed.
Yates of the Heritage Foundation, however, said there’s a consistent electorate in states like Idaho, where he served as chairman of the Republican Party, who care about defense issues. And it’s a place, said Yates, where the symbolism of the Department of War or perceived DoD reforms could be “red meat for campaigning.”
“If I was still a chairman trying to market back to the grassroots,” said Yates, “this is something that we could and should talk about in the midst of things that I think households would care about in rural Idaho.”
Yates also proposed military personnel and their families would care about the change as it coincides with structural changes at the department. Current and former defense professionals, however, have raised concerns about Trump’s national security policies — from using an obscure, mid-20th century immigration law to target pro-Palestine protesters to bombing Venezuelan people on boats — from the outset.
“If we’re just average service personnel doing our thing, does it really impact our lives that much? Arguably not that much,” said McManus.
“The question, I suppose, is whether a name change…has enough support,” he continued. “I think it’s fair to say that in the 40s a name change probably did. I think that’s more debatable now.”