Trump’s push to change Department of Defense to ‘War Department’ would turn back the clock to WWII

President Donald Trump’s push to rename the Department of Defense goes beyond subjective word choices about whether to change a name that’s been in place since 1949.

On one hand is Trump’s argument that the historical name – War Department – more plainly reflects the bottom-line mission. Yet the idea, which still requires action by Congress, also would continue Trump’s flouting of the international order established after World War II.

And, besides highlighting the president’s branding proclivities, the issue exposes tensions between Trump’s and many of his predecessors’ platitudes about peace even as the U.S. has spent much of its existence on battlefields.

“Military tasks are directed not toward war—not toward conquest—but toward peace,” President Harry Truman insisted in 1947, when Congress first jettisoned the “War Department” label.

Explaining his post-war approach in 1947, Truman noted the U.S. had ratcheted down its wartime mobilization.

He promised that a robust, war-ready military would remain. He nodded to NATO and the U.N., saying the U.S. would “support a lasting peace, by force if necessary.” But he argued that even for the military, the priority was to avoid fighting.