Defense Department to War Department: What’s in a Name?

Over hill, over dale
As we hit the dusty trail,
And the Caissons go rolling along.
In and out, hear them shout,
Counter march and right about,
And the Caissons go rolling along.

Then it’s hi! hi! hee!
In the field artillery,
Shout out your numbers loud and strong,
For where e’er you go,
You will always know
That the Caissons go rolling along.
—Major Edmund L. Gruber

Just before the murder of Charlie Kirk drove it off the front pages, President Donald Trump’s latest way of annoying his foes was announced: the change of name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. This was declared in an Executive Order of September 5, 2025, in which the purpose of the change was explained:

On August 7, 1789, 236 years ago, President George Washington signed into law a bill establishing the United States Department of War to oversee the operation and maintenance of military and naval affairs. It was under this name that the Department of War, along with the later formed Department of the Navy, won the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, inspiring awe and confidence in our Nation’s military, and ensuring freedom and prosperity for all Americans. The Founders chose this name to signal our strength and resolve to the world. The name “Department of War,” more than the current “Department of Defense,” ensures peace through strength, as it demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our Nation at a moment’s notice, not just to defend. This name sharpens the Department’s focus on our own national interest and our adversaries’ focus on our willingness and availability to wage war to secure what is ours. I have therefore determined that this Department should once again be known as the Department of War and the Secretary should be known as the Secretary of War.

When signing the document, Trump declared that the change was part of a shift away from a “woke” ideology within the department; it would bring in a period of military victory. The president added, 

So we won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to Department of Defense. We should have won everywhere. We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or woke. And we just fight forever. We wouldn’t lose really. We’d just fight. Sort of tie. We never wanted to win—wars that, every one of them, we would’ve won easily with just a couple of little changes.

The newly redubbed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said the change was part of “restoring the warrior ethos” and that 

The War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not not to lose. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.

Of course, as might be expected with anything that Trump does, there was an immediate adverse response. Typical was that of Judith Levine in The Guardian: 

Trump’s Department of War burnishes his vanity, but it is not just a vanity project. It is extravagantly expensive. It will occupy US cities. And now, in word as in deed, it celebrates the nation and the president as aggressor, conqueror, unrestrained international lawbreaker and flouter of anything so “woke” as peace. 

Certainly, estimates of the expenses the change shall require ran as high as one billion—although this cannot seem that high to a government that, regardless of administration, has thrown around billions for decades.

Given that—as is usual today—both sides are dealing in hyperbole, is there in any reality an individual who is neither a devotee nor a hater of Trump to garner? There is, but we must go back to when the name change started—and most particularly to Harry Truman. The War Department had been responsible for the United States Army since 1789, as Trump’s executive order rightly recalls. In 1798, a separate and equal executive department was formed to deal with maritime defense: the Department of the Navy. 

The beginnings of the Air Force as part of the Army and under the War Department go back to 1907; its focus was on aviation itself. It became, successively, the Army Air Corps and then the Army Air Force. It was as part of this formation that my late father served as a tail gunner with the 444^th Bombardment Group against Japan. Dad was still in the reserves when, in 1947, Truman decided to separate the Air Force from the Army, create a new executive department for it, and then, as Dad described it, place another tier of bureaucracy on top of the three existing ones to create the Department of Defense.

Now, leaving aside for the moment President Trump’s assertion that this was a sort of proto-woke move, let us look at what actually happened. In 1950, the North Koreans invaded the South and came close to winning. Only quick and overwhelming reinforcement saved the situation. However, war was never declared; this conflict was declared to be a “police action” under executive authority. Moreover, it was eventually under United Nations command. 

In time, after the Soviet Delegation returned to the U.N. (they had walked out in protest at the international body considering the Korean conflict, which turned out to be a mistake), the United Nations decided that, actually, they had nothing to do with it. This anomaly is reflected officially online. United Nations Command Korea, under which our and a few other countries’ forces serve in South Korea and Japan, describes its own history thusly: 

Following North Korean aggression against South Korea, United Nations Command (UNC) was established on July 24, 1950. UNC signifies the world’s first attempt at collective security under the United Nations system. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 83 and 84 provided the international legal authority for member states to restore peace on the Korean Peninsula, and they designated the United States as the leader of the unified command we know as UN Command. From 1950 to 1953, twenty-two countries contributed either combat forces or medical units to support South Korea under the United Nations flag. Today, UNC continues its unbroken commitment to secure a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula by enforcing the Armistice Agreement, facilitating diplomacy with North Korea, and serving as the integrator for multinational forces during crisis or conflict.  

But it does not do so as an agency of the United Nations. As U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote to the North Korean Foreign Minister in 1994: 

the Security Council did not establish the unified command as a subsidiary organ under its control, but merely recommended the creation of such a command, specifying that it be under the authority of the United States. Therefore, the dissolution of the unified command does not fall within the responsibility of any United Nations organ but is a matter within the competence of the Government of the United States. 

There has been no such cover for our subsequent police actions in Vietnam and elsewhere.

This country has not fought a declared war since 1945; nor has it won any of the conflicts it did fight, in the long run. Col. Joseph Posz, my military history instructor at dear old New Mexico Military Institute and a distinguished Vietnam vet, used to grimly joke back in 1979 that the difference between a war and a police action was that one doesn’t really get killed or wounded in a police action. But in a more serious vein, addressing the indisputable fact that the U.S. Army had done rather poorly after World War II—with the exception of elite units like the Special Forces and Rangers—he called the class’s attention to a book titled Crisis in Command, by  Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage. 

The authors blamed the decline in the Army’s performance on the importation of the careerist corporate executive mentality into the Officer Corps in the wake of World War II (one might argue that it also made its way into other areas it did not belong, such as the priesthood, but that is another issue). In the decades since, there have been sporadic attempts—especially under President Reagan—to address these issues. But in recent years, this enervating influence, combined with attempted politicization and wokery, have weakened the forces even further. But addressing the latter—which Trump clearly means to do—without tackling the former, will leave the problem intact.

As to whether the change in name will accomplish anything, I cannot say. I would like to hope that the reversion to War Department will also mean an end to unconstitutional “police actions” waged on executive authority with occasional congressional cartes blanches applied, rather than legal wars. But that would require a major rethinking about a return to constitutional government—a feat of which it may be doubted that either party is capable. At the very least, we might come up with a more realistic description than “police action.”

It reminds this writer of George Carlin’s observation about a common battlefield condition. Dubbed “Shell Shock” in the First World War, its sobriquet was softened to “Battle Fatigue” in the Second. In Vietnam, in turn, it was further euphemized to “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” As Carlin caustically observed in conclusion, “Maybe if we still called it Shell Shock, the poor SOBs could finally get the care they deserve.” In similar wise, perhaps we should call Police Actions “Extralegal Warfare.”

Thinking beyond all of this, there is also another new item which leads me to wonder about the financial acumen of those currently running the armed forces under this administration. As reported in Military.com for July 9, 2025: 

The Army is moving to dismantle the bulk of its horse units, part of a broader push by service planners to eliminate programs they see as peripheral to the core mission of fighting and training for wars.

The Army will begin phasing out five horse-mounted ceremonial units stationed at Fort Irwin, California; Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Fort Cavazos Texas, Steve Warren, a service spokesperson, told reporters Tuesday.

The decision impacts 141 horses currently used for ceremonial events and other pageantry, traditions that trace back to the Army’s cavalry roots but have no operational role in today’s force. All of the horses are expected to be placed for adoption.  

The Army Times quoted the same spokesperson as saying, “The Army estimates that closing down the units will save about $2 million a year, and the changes are being made as part of its overall warfighting realignment.” 

While Military.com did admit that it had been necessary to throw together scratch horse units for combat in Afghanistan, the emphasis was on the lack of utility of the horse in modern war. The enormous impact on morale in both the army posts affected and their local communities was completely ignored. Beyond that, as many mounted police units—whether ceremonial or practical—have experienced, there is something stirring, something reminiscent of chivalry and valor in mounted cavalry that is present nowhere else. The fact that these units are being disbanded is evidence that the corporate mentality derided by Gabriel and Savage back in 1979 is alive and well in 2025. 

If the powers that be in Washington think that one billion dollars is not too much to spend on a venture that may or may not raise morale and help instill a “warrior ethos” but that two million is too much in supporting a program that has shown repeatedly its efficacy in promoting those very things, what are we to think of their overall competence in military matters in general? At the very least, they are showing themselves to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.