President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order directing the Department of Defense to revert to its old title of Department of War and for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s title to be changed to secretary of war. The order states that the name change is aimed at emphasizing the armed services’ dynamic offensive capabilities with the goal of “projecting power and resolve,” as well as their role in defending the United States and its interests.
“The name ‘Department of War’ conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve compared to ‘Department of Defense,’ which emphasizes only defensive capabilities,” the text of the order states. The change is necessary to “sharpen the focus of this Department on our national interest and signal to adversaries America’s readiness to wage war to secure its interests.”
However, the Pentagon will only be able to use the new title as a “secondary” name for the time being because creating new Cabinet-level departments is a power reserved for Congress, although the administration can make the switch for official communications. The order directs Hegseth to initiate legislative and executive actions to formalize the renaming in law.
From War Department to Department of Defense
It is important to understand that the old Department of War was very different from the new one. In 1789, Congress established the Department of War during the presidency of George Washington. The War Department originally supervised the Army and the Navy until Congress established a separate Navy Department in 1798.
During the 19th century, the U.S. Army fought four wars: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War (although this conflict was the “War of the Rebellion”; for a variety of reasons, it was conducted as though the Confederacy was a foreign foe), and the Spanish-American War. But despite the name, the War Department carried out many tasks besides warfighting over the years. From 1824 to 1849, the War Department was responsible for Indian affairs. During the 19th century, the Army administered territories gained during the Mexican-American War, managed the states of the Southern Confederacy during Reconstruction, and did the same in Cuba and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. It supported white settlement in the West and mediated between settlers and Indians. It was involved in domestic labor disputes.
The Department of War was not involved in developing strategy. Warfighting remained the domain of generals in the field. Americans rejected the creation of a general staff along Prussian lines, deeming it too militaristic. Although the U.S. prevailed in the war against Spain, many recognized the necessity of reforms in response to serious operational and logistics failures.
Influenced by the brilliant Army officer and innovative Civil War leader Emory Upton, Secretary of War Elihu Root began the long-overdue process of reforming the Army. He created an Army staff with a chief of staff responsible for war plans. During these years, the War Department was riven by a struggle between Gen. Leonard Wood, who wished to implement Root’s reforms, and Adjutant General Fred Ainsworth. Wood eventually prevailed, laying the foundations for a modern professional army. The performance of the U.S. Army during World War I represented a vast improvement over the war with Spain, but it wasn’t until Gen. George Marshall became chief of staff on the eve of World War II that the general staff triumphed over the bureaus. This was the system and organization that helped the U.S. prevail during World War II.
After World War II, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which created the National Security Establishment, merging the departments of the Army and Navy and the newly established Air Force under a single civilian secretary. Two years later, in August 1949, Congress amended the National Security Act, changing the title from the NSE to the Department of Defense and bringing the Army, Navy, and Air Force secretaries under the defense secretary and establishing the role of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Additional reforms followed over the years aimed at reducing interservice rivalry and increasing “jointness.” These culminated in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which strengthened the regional warfighting commands at the expense of the services and made the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rather than the corporate Joint Chiefs of Staff, the principal adviser to the president and defense secretary. Critics remain divided over the efficacy of the Goldwater-Nichols Act.
Why the name change?
Trump and Hegseth have justified the name change by arguing that the leadership of the armed forces has become preoccupied with nonmilitary priorities. In keeping with this belief, I would argue that the two most critical problems facing the Pentagon today are the lack of accountability on the part of senior officers and the weakening of the American defense establishment’s commitment to the martial virtues and military ethos.
Regarding the first, it seems abundantly clear that accountability has been missing in the military for some time. Recently, a Marine officer was court-martialed for his social media posts demanding such a reckoning after 13 service members were killed in a suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Appearing in uniform on multiple occasions, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller demanded accountability from political and military leaders. But as one Army officer observed during the early phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom, “as it stands now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”
Last year, the Wall Street Journal posted an article claiming that the Trump transition team had drafted an executive order that would “create a board to purge generals … which, if enacted, could fast-track the removal” of flag and general officers “found to be lacking in requisite leadership qualities.” Although the Wall Street Journal went on to claim that some viewed this as an attempt to politicize the military given the then-president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” it is actually in the spirit of the pre-World War II “plucking board” established by George Marshall, to review officer records and “remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient.” The goal, of course, was to remove “dead wood” to make room for younger and more capable officers.
Regarding the second, too many in the government in general and the Pentagon in particular seem to have forgotten the purpose for which the U.S. military exists. Since the founding of the republic, although we have asked our military to do many things beyond soldiering, its primary purpose remains what Samuel Huntington, in his classic study of U.S. civil-military relations, The Soldier and the State, called its functional imperative: to fight and win wars.
The foundation of this functional imperative is a military “ethos” that underpins unit cohesion and thereby military effectiveness. This ethos, which has served the republic well, is the foundation of trust among soldiers, between superiors and subordinates, and, at the societal level, between soldiers on the one hand and citizens on the other.
It has long been an article of faith that to execute its functional imperative on behalf of the nation, the military must maintain an identity distinct from that of liberal society. Indeed, a democratic republic faces a paradox when it comes to the relationship between the military and society at large: The former cannot govern itself in accordance with the democratic principles of that society.
If the military fails, the society it protects may not survive. Long experience has taught us that certain kinds of behavior are destructive of good order, discipline, and morale, without which a military organization will certainly fail. The goal of military policy must be victory on the battlefield, a purpose that cannot be in competition with any other, including the provision of entitlements, “equal opportunity,” or diversity. Indeed, the battlefield mocks “diversity.” Unfortunately, many of those in positions of responsibility, including far too many senior members of the military itself, seem to have forgotten this imperative.
This attitude is the result of another set of social forces that Huntington called the societal imperative, “the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society” that tend to undermine martial virtues and the military ethos. Huntington was concerned that in the long run, the social imperative would prevail over the functional imperative, undermining the military virtues necessary to ensure military effectiveness.
Huntington continued that the focus on the societal imperative tended to produce two outcomes. When the external threat was low, those who favored the societal imperative sought “extirpation,” the virtual elimination of military forces. When the external threat was higher, they pursued a policy of “transmutation,” refashioning the military along liberal lines by stripping it of its “particularly military characteristics.” Today, with the military’s submission to the ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” we have transmutation on steroids.
Indeed, diversity now trumps military effectiveness as a goal of military policy. But as many observers of the military have noted, attempts to address an alleged lack of “diversity” in the ranks can actually make things worse by pushing “identity politics,” which, by suggesting that justice is a function of attributes such as sex and skin color rather than one’s excellence, tends to divide people rather than unify them. Identity politics undermines military effectiveness, which depends on cohesion born of trust among those who operate together.
For most of American history, the U.S. military leadership stood up for the military ethos, explaining to fellow citizens why it is critical to military effectiveness. Sometimes they prevailed. Sometimes they lost. It was for this reason that the military has remained one of the most respected institutions in America. But this seems to have changed in recent years.
The commitment to “diversity” at all costs is today’s party line within the Pentagon. No one wants to be accused of racism or sexism. Thus, too many officers hold their tongues as the rank and file are indoctrinated by DEI and the like. Those who don’t can find themselves sacked.
Beyond a change in names
I contend that the name change will be merely symbolic unless Hegseth actually implements reforms that address the Pentagon’s real problems: enforcing accountability and focusing on the ability to wage war rather than DEI. A good start would be for the military to make the kind of Root-like reforms recommended by Donald Vandergriff in his book Adopting Mission Command, which identifies shortcomings in military decision-making traceable to culture and leader education.
Vandergriff, a retired Army officer and a particularly insightful observer of military culture, describes the Army as a product of the industrial age, in which each person is trained on an assembly line to do the same specific job in the same specific way. In this model, leaders and soldiers alike are built in the same way as their inanimate equipment. Vandergriff contends that the officer education model used is inherently flawed because it is based on teaching a prewritten scenario with a definite “correct” answer. But there are no prewritten scenarios, and even the use of planning contingencies is problematic because contingencies never unfold exactly as planned. Cookie-cutter training results in officers who are not being educated to defeat a thinking, learning enemy.
Vandergriff recommends reforms that would institutionalize decentralized “mission command,” which he traces to its Prussian and German roots. Prussia, a small state by European standards, nevertheless developed a very effective army. It did so by developing and promoting officers who demonstrated flexibility, initiative, and adaptability and who were capable of accomplishing the commander’s intent in a decentralized manner.
Vandergriff argues that changes on today’s battlefield make the development of such officers imperative if the military is to fulfill its functional imperative. Changing the name of the entity responsible for securing the United States is a hollow gesture without substantive changes in military culture.
Dr. Mackubin Owens, a retired Marine and former Naval War College professor, is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.