Last week President Trump took steps to re-name the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” The President explained his rationale for the name change: “It used to be called the Department of War and it had a stronger sound. We want defense, but we want offense too … As Department of War we won everything…and I think we…have to go back to that.”
At first it sounds like a terrible idea. A “Department of War” may well make war more likely – the “stronger sound” may embolden the US government to take us into even more wars. There would no longer be any need for the pretext that we take the nation to war to defend this country and its interests – and only as a last resort.
As Clinton Administration official Madeleine Albright famously asked of Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell when she was pushing for US war in the Balkans, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
So yes, that is a real danger. But at the same time, the US has been at war nearly constantly since the end of World War II, so it’s not like the “Defense Department” has been in any way a defensive department.
With that in mind, returning the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all – as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our warmaking.
If we return to a “War Department,” then we should also return to the Constitutional requirement that any military activity engaged in by that department short of defending against an imminent attack on the US requires a Congressional declaration of war. That was the practice followed when it was called the War Department and we should return to it.
Dropping the notion that we have a “Defense Department” would free us from the charade that our massive military spending budget was anything but a war budget. No more “defense appropriations” bills in Congress. Let’s call them “war appropriations” bills. Let the American people understand what so much of their hard-earned money is being taken to support. It’s not “defense.” It’s “war.” And none of it has benefitted the American people.
Trump misunderstands one very important thing in his stated desire to return to a “War Department,” however. A tougher sounding name did not win the wars. Before the name change, which happened after the infamous National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA and the permanent national security state, we won wars because for the most part we followed the Constitution and had a Congressional declaration of war. That way the war had a beginning and end and a clear set of goals. Since World War II the United States has not declared war even though it has been in a continuous state of war. It is no coincidence that none of these “wars” have been won. From 1950 Korea to 2025 Yemen and everything in between.
So go ahead and change it back to the “Department of War.” But let’s also stop pretending that maintaining the global US military empire is “defense.” It’s not.
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