What’s In a Name? The ‘Defense’ Department Has Always Been About War

['Eric Ross', 'Tom Engelhardt', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar'] Antiwar.com 2025-09-22 00:00:00

The renaming of the Defense Department should have surprised no one. The recent rechristening of the Department of Defense as the Department of War was certainly a culture-war stunt like Trump’s demand that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America. The Department of Defense has always been the Department of War. It was in such a climate that American officials moved to abandon the title of the Department of War in 1947, rebranding it as the Department of Defense two years later. The reversion of the Defense Department to the War Department should be seen less as a rupture than a revelation.