U.S. President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Sept. 5 to rename the Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” a White House official said on Thursday. It’s a move that would put Mr. Trump’s stamp on the government’s biggest organization.
The order would authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department, and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War“ in official correspondence and public communications, according to a White House fact sheet.
The move would instruct Mr. Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.
Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has set out to rename a range of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and to restore the original names of military bases that were changed after racial justice protests.
Department name changes are rare and require congressional approval, but Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party’s congressional leaders have shown little appetite for opposing any of Mr. Trump’s initiatives.
The U.S. Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War II. The name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the U.S. was focused on preventing wars, according to historians.
“We won WWI, and we won WWII, not with the Department of Defense, but with a War Department, with the Department of War,” said Mr. Hegseth in an interview on Sept. 3 with “Fox & Friends.”
Changing the name again will be costly and require updating signs and letterheads used not only by officials at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., but also by military installations around the world.
An effort by former President Joe Biden to rename nine bases that honored the Confederacy and Confederate leaders was set to cost the Army $39 million. That effort was reversed by Mr. Hegseth earlier this year.
The Trump administration’s government downsizing team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has sought to carry out cuts at the Pentagon in a bid to save money.
“Why not put this money toward supporting military families or toward employing diplomats that help prevent conflicts from starting in the first place?” said Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran and member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.
“Because Trump would rather use our military to score political points than to strengthen our national security and support our brave servicemembers and their families – that’s why,” she told Reuters.
Long time in the making
Critics have said the planned name change is not only costly but an unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.
Mr. Hegseth has said that changing the name is “not just about words – it’s about the warrior ethos.”
“As the president has said, we’re not just defense, we’re offense,” said Mr. Hegseth, in his interview with “Fox and Friends.”
“We’ve reestablished at the Department, the warrior ethos. We want warriors, folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy,” he said. “We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defense. We think words and names and titles matter. So, we’re working with the White House and the President on it. Stand by.”
This year, one of Mr. Trump’s closest congressional allies, Republican U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, introduced a bill that would make it easier for a president to reorganize and rename agencies.
“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that … Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be,” Mr. Trump said last month.
Mr. Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was originally changed to be “politically correct.”
But for some in the Trump administration, the effort goes back much further.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, current FBI Director Kash Patel, who was briefly at the Pentagon, had a sign-off on his emails that read: “Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense & the War Department.”
“I view it as a tribute to the history and heritage of the Department of Defense,” Mr. Patel told Reuters in 2021.
This story was reported by Reuters. Reuters reporters Patricia Zengerle and Ismail Shakil contributed.
