US President Donald Trump last month pledged that his “highest aspiration” as president is to “bring peace and stability to the world,” as he hosted Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at the White House.

But a month later, he announced plans to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, contradicting his peace rhetoric dating back to the 2024 presidential campaign.

“We won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to go woke, and we changed the name to DOD. So, we’re going Department of War,” Trump said, at an Oval Office press conference last week to explain his reasoning for the renaming of the department. 

Edward Erickson, a former American army officer with extensive military experience and a retired professor of military history at the Department of War Studies at the Marine Corps University, says Trump’s renaming move is “a superficial political gesture that signals immaturity of thought about national defense”. 

As long as a nation’s defence and military capabilities are not supported by economic, political, and cultural forces and reinforced by regional and international partnerships, the word war alone cannot achieve much, according to Erickson.  

“President Dwight D Eisenhower reminded us back in the 1950s that national defense includes education, a strong economy, a healthy citizenry, international allies, and a social order ensuring opportunity for all. Trump and (Pentagon chief Pete) Hegseth don't seem to know or remember that,” Erickson tells TRT World. 

Eisenhower, the accomplished general who commanded Allied forces in Western Europe during WWII, never reduced defense to war alone. Yet, Erickson argues, a real estate magnate like Trump seems more eager than anyone to rebrand the Pentagon as the War Department.

Matthew Bryza, a former US diplomat, believes that Trump’s renaming might have to do with US military needs “to focus more on war fighting than bureaucracy”.

The US president has long argued against bureaucracy, signing various executive orders to reduce the federal workforce and streamline the bureaucratic process. 

But renaming the Department of Defence (DOD) as the Department of War might create even more bureaucracy, according to former and current Pentagon officials. 

Although it is unclear how the name change will affect the long-term operations of the Pentagon prior to the renaming, it could cost billions of dollars just to update DOD deals across more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 American states, according to a recent Politico report. 

“This includes everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store,” the report informed. 

‘Peace through strength’ 

Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth, a controversial figure whose removal of some top officials has caused upheaval across the corridors of the Pentagon, suggested that the renaming is related to a vision of “peace through strength”.

But other major powers, from China, whose recent military parade in Beijing signalled its demand for equal status with the US, to Russia, which has kept up drone attacks on Ukraine, appear unimpressed by the name change.

“Not only will this cost millions of dollars, it will have absolutely zero impact on Chinese or Russian calculations. Worse, it will be used by our enemies to portray the United States as warmongering and a threat to international stability,” said a former DOD official.  

But Bryza underlines that “to deter war, you have to be strong and ready to fight the war. As a result, he sees “no contradiction between renaming the Defense Department, the War Department, as it was called previously, and the pursuit of peace”.

The original War Department was formed by the first US President, George Washington, in 1789. 

Harry Truman, the Democratic president who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt at the end of WWII, renamed the War Department as the Department of Defense in 1947 to unify the armed forces under a single civilian leadership. ​​

The change came as the US, fully aware of the growing importance of military power, was reshaping the postwar world. 

Against this backdrop, historians found Trump’s renaming effort somewhat awkward, given the department’s history and symbolism.

“I understand that by calling something a department of war rather than defense sounds as if the new political military doctrine of the United States is more aggressive. 

“But again, President Trump would argue that he is trying to prevent war by preparing to fight and win a war,” says Bryza.