Trump floats changing Defense Department to Department of War

President Trump connected Monday floated returning the Department of Defense to its anterior name, the Department of War — arguing the sanction it has held since the 1940s is "too defensive."

"We privation to beryllium defensive, but we privation to beryllium offensive, too, if we person to be," the president told reporters during a Monday day Oval Office event.

Mr. Trump tested retired the Department of War moniker during a bid of nationalist events astatine the White House connected Monday, including a gathering with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. He argued that the United States had an "unbelievable past of victory" nether the department's aged name, referring to World War I and World War II.

The president said earlier Monday the alteration would apt beryllium made "over the adjacent week oregon so." Hours later, helium said he'd permission it up to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: "We'll bash it a mates of much times. And if everyone likes it, we'll marque that change."

Asked whether Congress would request to motion disconnected connected restoring the agency's aged name, since lawmakers had passed the archetypal renaming, Mr. Trump said helium didn't deliberation so: "We're conscionable going to bash it. I'm definite Congress volition spell on if we request that. I don't deliberation we adjacent request that."

The president has teased a sanction alteration for the national government's largest bureau connected and disconnected for months, referring to Hegseth arsenic his "Secretary of War" astatine 1 constituent last month in a station connected Truth Social. During a June property conference, helium claimed the aged Department of War moniker was abandoned due to the fact that "we became politically correct."

Why was the Department of War changed to the Department of Defense?

The renaming took spot successful the aftermath of World War II, portion of a broader reorganization of the U.S. subject that placed the Army and Navy into a azygous Cabinet-level agency.

The War Department — which oversaw the Army — dated back to President George Washington's archetypal term, but successful the precocious 1790s, Congress created a separate Navy Department to oversee the caller country's naval forces and, later, the Marine Corps. Those 2 agencies operated separately for implicit a century.

President Harry Truman pushed for antithetic branches of work to beryllium combined into a azygous Department of National Defense successful 1947, telling Congress the determination was indispensable to "cut costs and astatine the aforesaid clip heighten our nationalist security."

The agencies were combined nether a azygous Secretary of Defense successful a 1947 law that besides created the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Two years later, Congress named the agency the Department of Defense.