The Pentagon name change sends the wrong message to men and women in uniform.

President Trump recently suggested that the United States should rename its military establishment, currently known as the Department of Defense since 1949, as the Department of War. It is a bad idea—but not for the obvious reason that it could sound too bellicose to foreign ears. It is doubtful that many US allies will shrink from cooperation with the United States because of a name change. Alternatively, US rivals and enemies will fear demonstrated capabilities and intent, not semantics. 

The case against a name change, rather, lies in the message it sends to American men and women in uniform as well as the general public. The “Department of War” is a misleading and tendentious name for the job of the American military in today’s world.

First, President Trump is correct to note that the United States has struggled on the battlefield since the War Department was reorganized into the Department of Defense in 1949. The name change did not directly affect US military performance in the succeeding decades, but it remains a valid observation nonetheless. With a Department of War, as well as a Department of the Navy, the United States fought Great Britain to a draw in the War of 1812 and then went on to win the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II.

The United States had somewhat messier outcomes in the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century and in some brawls closer to home, with Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, but generally prevailed in those as well. And without commenting on the morality of it, the United States Army, as well as state militias, defeated Native American tribes in most of the hundreds of battles fought against them between independence and 1890. Since 1945, however, the United States has fought North Korea and China to a draw, while losing outright in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The result of the Iraq War depends on one’s definition of US war aims. 

However, the Department of Defense rebrand cannot be held responsible for a dearth of US fighting spirit. A supposed diminished focus on lethality at the Pentagon was not the problem in Korea or Vietnam. If anything, the United States applied far too much firepower to little effect in both cases. The watchwords in Vietnam were “prophylactic artillery barrages,” “search and destroy” infantry operations, and, of course, “carpet bombing.”

For all the struggles of recent decades, moreover, the American military has performed in a tactically and technically brilliant manner in the overthrow of Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989, in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the Kosovo War of 1999, the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the “surge” in Iraq in 2007, the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 (along with many other Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders before and since), and the defeat of the ISIS Caliphate in Iraq and Syria from 2014 through 2019, among other combat successes. 

If there has been a problem since 1949, it is the difficulty of the missions that the United States has assigned to its armed forces. These have included complex counterinsurgencies, nation-building operations, and, in some cases, unfeasible political-military strategies. The ability of US soldiers to fight should not be in question.

Reflecting on the period since 1949 should also lead us to remember the main reason not to rename the Department of Defense. As the great scholar Bernard Brodie pithily observed at the dawn of the nuclear age, “the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on, its chief purpose must be to avert them.” To be sure, the US military has fought plenty of conflicts since Brodie issued that injunction. However, on the central challenge of the Cold War—facing down the Soviet Union—the military deterred war and ultimately prevailed without directly fighting the rival. 

In today’s age of renewed great-power rivalry among nuclear-armed states, the military must again heed Brodie’s mantra. Effective deterrence requires real combat capability, and the military must continue to train vigorously for possible war. The day-to-day activities of the armed forces—training, deterring foes, reassuring allies, conducting joint exercises, and carrying out various limited missions—are of immense importance. Success in military policy a decade or two from now will be measured by whether it continues to do those things and thereby avoid war. 

The name Department of Defense may not be perfect. However, faced with the alternative, it is a far better overall approximation of what the United States should expect from its armed forces.