By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Department of Defense the "Department of War," reverting to a title it held until after World War Two when officials sought to emphasize the Pentagon's role in preventing conflict.
Trump signed the executive order at a ceremony in the Oval Office. It was the latest rebranding of the U.S. military and included his decision to preside over an extraordinary military parade in downtown Washington,
D.C., and to restore the original names of military bases that were changed after racial justice protests in 2020.
He has also challenged conventional norms over domestic deployment of military, creating military zones along the southern U.S. border with Mexico to aid an immigration crackdown as well as deploying troops in cities like Los Angeles and Washington.
The order would authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as "Secretary of War" and "Deputy Secretary of War" in official correspondence and public communications, according to a White House fact sheet.
The move would instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to make the renaming permanent.
Department name changes are rare and require congressional approval, but Trump's fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the party's congressional leaders have shown little appetite for opposing any of Trump's initiatives.
Two Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida, and one Republican House member, Greg Steube of Florida, introduced legislation on Friday to make the change.
The U.S. Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when Congress consolidated the Army, Navy and Air Force in the wake of World War Two. Historians say the name was chosen in part to signal that in the nuclear age, the U.S. was focused on preventing conflict.
Changing the name again will be costly and require updating signs and letterheads used not only by officials at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., but also military installations around the world.
An effort by former President Joe Biden to rename nine bases that honored the Confederacy and Confederate leaders was set to cost the Army $39 million. That effort was reversed by Hegseth this year.
Critics have said the planned name change is not only costly, but an unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.
Hegseth has said that changing the name is "not just about words — it's about the warrior ethos."
This year, one of Trump's closest congressional allies, Republican U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, introduced a bill that would make it easier for a president to reorganize and rename agencies.
"We're just going to do it. I'm sure Congress will go along if we need that ... Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive too if we have to be," Trump said last month.
Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was originally changed to be "politically correct."
But for some in the Trump administration, the effort goes back much further.
During Trump's first term, current FBI Director Kash Patel, who was briefly at the Pentagon, had a sign-off on his emails that read: "Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense & the War Department."
"I view it as a tribute to the history and heritage of the Department of Defense," Patel told Reuters in 2021.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Idrees Ali; Editing by David Gregorio)
