A name change on a sign can be merely cosmetic. In Donald Trump's political practice – a televised saga in which he is the sole protagonist – symbols are an end in themselves. On Friday, September 5, the US president signed an executive order rebranding the Department of Defense to the Department of War. This marks a return to its original name, used from 1789 to 1947, when the different military branches were unified. For now, this change is purely a matter of communication. The National Security Act was amended in 1949 to officially create the Department of Defense. Only a Congressional decision can make the name change official.
This executive order – the 200th since Trump returned to the White House, an unprecedented pace – fits into a dual logic: the general restoration he promised the country, including a supposed lost economic, national, and military greatness, and the idea that the US military, in the billionaire's words, should no longer be forced to focus on "defensive capabilities." Surrounded in the Oval Office by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the chief of the General Staff, General Dan Caine, the president explained that this decision sent a message of "victory" and "strength." Trump claims the US military setbacks of recent decades had nothing to do with the adversary, deployment terrain, war aims, or strategic errors. "We should have won every war," Trump asserted. "We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct – or wokey. And we just fight forever." For historians who have studied the Vietnam War, this provides a novel cultural lens on the US military's quagmire.
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