Department of Defense or Department of War?

Department of Defense or Department of War?

In the aftermath of World War II, in 1947, the US War Department was renamed and restructured into the Department of Defense. On September 5th, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order changing the Department of Defense to the Department of War as a secondary title.

What’s in a name? That question animated a spirited debate at The Fletcher School, where experts and more than 50 students gathered to consider whether the United States of America’s Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of War. The event, presented by the Institute for Business in the Global Context (IBGC), quickly escalated beyond semantics into a serious reflection on the role of the military, diplomacy, and national identity.

War, what war?

Elliot Ackerman F03, New York Times bestselling author and Marine veteran, advocated his point first, urging the government to avoid euphemisms and use the clearest possible terms. “By calling something what it really is, using the toughest words like ‘slaughter’ or ‘kill,’ we actually wind up with much less war,” he maintained. Wars, he insisted, should sting: “This brutal candor, far from glorifying conflict, might make war… as disruptive as COVID in our mind.”

Without clarity of purpose, the department might carry out acts it has no business meddling in, such as engagements in the Middle East, where the US is saddled with a vast mission to engage in diplomacy and nation-building. He argued that a Department of Defense might similarly deploy police officers or immigration agents in the country under the vague name of defense.

“If you think [the military] exists to deter war, then you’re not going to have a very effective military,” he added. “It’s also the strongest military that deters war.”

Defense’s defenders

Monica Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies, offered a sharp rebuttal. “A Department of War romanticizes merciless lethality,” she warned, while real security “comes from diplomacy, international law… economic development and investments in healthcare and education.”

She pointed to history for perspective. The Cold War, won peacefully without nuclear war, unfolded under the Department of Defense. “The change to Defense was deliberate… emphasizing a defensive rather than aggressive posture,” she said, crediting Eisenhower’s strategic wisdom. Professor Toft also sounded constitutional alarms: “Reverting to War Department signals a shift away from a diplomatically oriented security policy towards a military-first approach.” Costs would balloon, too: “The name change alone would cost upwards of a billion dollars,” excluding labor.

She concluded that U.S. credibility lies not in renaming but in “alliances, economic interdependence, and credible defensive capabilities.”

A Department of Peace?

Alex de Waal, the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation, raised a beacon of hope: why not a Department of World Peace?

Referencing John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech, de Waal called for “genuine peace… the kind that makes life on Earth worth living.” He rejected cynical skepticism about peace ministries, noting global norms: “Everybody changed their ministries of war to ministries of defense” after the United Nations outlawed war as a tool of conquest.

Citing C. Wright Mills, de Waal noted that World War III will not be caused by specific actions, but by conditions that make the sequence of events possible: the war economy, weapons on standby, militarized mindsets, “crackpot realists” always arguing for the next best escalation—things that are expected to be prepared by a Department of War.

“The pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, but we have no more urgent task,” he concluded.

Students weigh in

In typical Fletcher Reads the Newspaper fashion, the conversation bounced back to the crowd. Students broke into groups to write op-eds on the topic. One group pointed to a dangerous unintended consequence: “Calling it the Department of War makes it easier to engage in said war with whatever group you specify,” warning that war rhetoric now targets domestic groups.

Others highlighted the power of words internationally: “If the world had to call what’s happening in Ukraine a ‘special military operation,’ would it cause so much outrage?”

Most agreed that words matter deeply, shaping public opinion and policy, even if a name change alone could not fix America’s deeper militarism, and that a cultural change is urgently needed.

The Department of Defense may keep its name for now. But the debate revealed a larger question: how does the United States of America reckon with the realities of war in an era marked by protracted conflicts, shifting threats, and public fatigue? One student neatly captured the unvarnished truth with a suggestion: “Maybe it should be called the Department of Blood.”