Donald Trump will sign on Friday the executive regulation amending the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War. This is part of the wider actions aimed at presenting the world a more aggressive and victorious character of the US Army.
The high -ranking Trump administration official confirmed these plans. In order for the change to come into force, the congress will probably have to pass the appropriate law. According to another person familiar with the meeting, the White House is looking for other options for action that will avoid voting. Not everyone supports the US President's proposal.
The Department of War existed from 1789 to 1947. At that time, the Truman administration divided the army and the Air Force into separate types of armed forces and joined them with the then Independent Navy, creating a new agency. Two years later, the Congress Act gave it the name Department of Defense of the United States.
The Secretary of Defense Pete HegeSth published a short and eloquent entry on Thursday evening: “Department of War”.
Changing the names of hundreds of Pentagon agencies, their office materials, emblems, tablets and other signals in the defense department, as well as in bases around the world, would probably cost billions of dollars. This expenditure could seriously harm the efforts of the Trump administration, who promised to reduce the expenses and waste of the Pentagon.
Trump's actions aimed at changing the name of the department are part of the wider process of reorganizing the federal administration – covering tens of thousands of federal employees to the distribution of the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington.
This move is part of the rapid transformation of most of the elements of the national security structure by Trump after World War II created by former President Harry Truman. The Trump administration radically limited the activities of the National Security Council, created in the late 1940s and liquidated many defense department agencies.
Not only defense
After taking office, Trump raised the issue of this change several times – he did it, among others In this during a press conference with allies during the June NATO summit in Hague. Since then, his desire to change the name of the agency only gained strength.
– As the Department of War, we won everything. We won everything. We will have to come back to this – said Trump last month, referring to two world wars.
HegeSeth repeated Trump's words in a Wednesday interview for Fox News. – We won World War I and we won World War II, not thanks to the Defense Department, but thanks to the war department – he said. – As the president said, we do not only deal with defense, but also an offensive.
Trump believes that Congress will support him in this matter. – Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but if the need arises, we also want to be offensive. That is why it seemed to me that this is a better name – he said last month.
Democrats quickly criticized this decision. Darren Soto from Florida and several others drew attention to the irony of such an aggressive action on the part of the president, who apparently wants to receive the most prestigious peace prize in the world.
“Trump begs for the Nobel Peace Prize. This should provide him with victory, right?” – he wrote sarcastically on X.
This decision, however, will probably meet with a positive reception of some Trump's close allies on the Capitol. Greg Steube from the Republican Party presses the official change in the name in the Defense Act, which will probably go to the Chamber of Representatives next week.
And Senator Rick Scott of Florida – a sponsor of the Act on the change of the name of the Defense Department together with Senator Mike Lee and Steube – called the legislators to vote for its adoption.
“The American army is the most dangerous combat force in the world, and the restoration of the name Department of War reflects our true possibilities of winning wars, and not just reacting to them” – he wrote on the website X.
