In 1947, the United States War Department became the Department of Defense, as our nation was entering what would be four decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union, and taking its place as a global superpower.
On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing the original name back to the department created by George Washington in 1789. It brings with it a change that would have earned the hearty approval of our first president.
In the 78 years in which the United States has had a ‘Department of Defense,’ we never declared war a single time, but that didn’t stop thousands upon thousands of American soldiers from sacrificing their lives in Korea, Vietnam, and later, the Middle East.
During this time, the United States widely became known as the world’s policeman. Without actually declaring wars, we played a violent game of Twister across the globe, our Defense Department dipping its toes into conflicts across continents.
Too often, the role of our soldiers was not to kill the enemy, but to maintain order, and just as a police force is restrained from using total force against criminals, our military was too often simply not allowed to bring its full force to bear.
There is a fundamental and important difference between war and policing. Wars can be won, policing cannot. Policing is a never-ending struggle, and that is exactly what America’s military interventions felt like under the reign of the Department of Defense.
‘I want offense too,’ Trump has quipped about the name change. But what he really means is that he wants wars we can win, not endless nation-building boondoggles meant to maintain balance in a world full of conflagrations from Ukraine to Gaza.
Secretary of War, as he is now known, Pete Hegseth has made clear his priority is lethality, not just being a stick for diplomats to use. He wants an army, not a police force.
