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US President Donald Trump Friday signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense (DoD) as the Department of War.
Trump first floated the idea in August, when he said that the Department of War sounded “like a better name”. “Defence is too defensive…and we want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be,” he said.
The move underscores “Trump’s efforts to reshape the military to align with his goals of projecting a more aggressive image by showcasing war-fighting capabilities,” The New York Times reported.
The DoD was formed as the National Military Establishment in 1947 under President Harry Truman to create a unified military command, which would eliminate wasteful military spending and interdepartmental conflicts. For the previous 158 years, the US Department of War was in charge of the operation and maintenance of the US Army.
Trump’s decision has been made with this history in mind. “We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,” he said, specifically mentioning World Wars I (1914-18) and II (1939-45).
The US Congress formally established the War Department in 1789 to oversee the operation and maintenance of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. The Cabinet-level Secretary of War — a civilian with responsibilities such as finances and a minor role in directing military affairs — headed it.
In 1798, oversight of the Navy was transferred to the new Navy Department. The Marine Corps was also transferred to it in 1834. The US Army Air Corps was raised under the War Department, which remained the most important arm of the military establishment till the 1940s, in 1926.
In the early 1940s, as the US was headed into World War II, the Army underwent sweeping reorganisation. Combat forces and logistics were grouped into new field organisations: Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces and Army Service Forces. But through the war, the Army and Navy remained two separate entities.
The US fought World War II on two main fronts: the Pacific front, where the island-hopping campaign against Japan was led by the Navy (and the Marines) under Admiral Chester W Nimitz, and the European front, where the land campaign was spearheaded by the Army under General (later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But post-War assessments found such an organisational setup to be sub-optimal. President Truman and several commanders believed that the fragmentation and rivalry among branches may have reduced the overall effectiveness. Truman thus sought to bring the national defence apparatus under a unified department.
Several proposals were drafted, and Truman secured enough Congressional support to pass the National Security Act in 1947. It established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency, and, crucially, the National Military Establishment (NME).
The Act merged the Navy and War Departments, and the newly independent Air Force into a single organisation, the NME, under a civilian Defence Secretary who also oversaw the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The NME began operations in September 1947 but changed its name to DOD less than two years later. The reason? The acronym NME sounded like “enemy”.
